Andy's Rainbow completely overwhelmed me with it's exquisitely, quietly understated and yet 'universally core soul level understandable' - by people of any, all, or even including no particular path of 'faiths', living in our world today.
Although I have been a lifelong fan of 'films of substance' - i.e. those with stories, content, and characters that stay with a viewer 'forever afterwards' through their life, this film surpassed any & all my expectations.
(Admittedly, I am a little bit of a 'film snob' since youth, and spent many years of early adulthood working in the finest 'alternative, art & foreign film theatre' - The Vogue - in Louisville, KY. where I grew up. But I strive to always keep an open mind, and love seeing the work of young, rising independent film-makers)
Andy's Rainbow captured me from the very first frame and didn't let go until the last credit faded to black. And I wasn't alone, not by a long shot.
In my entire life of extensive 'film going', I have never experienced being in a theatre with an entire audience who, I could hear, were as equally immersed and engaged. It was an incredible experience.
To be in a single room with hundreds of people, and hear - throughout the entire picture - their own laughter out loud, soft chuckles, gasps, sighs, tears (yes, out loud, and not just the women either!) And yes, I had no control over my own as well.
My own father was sitting next to me and reached out to hold hands, multiple times, in the course of this movie. I am 52, and that hasn't happened since I was a little child.
There have been only a very few times in all my life I ever saw him so emotional - but those were always in huge personal life-changing circumstances, certainly never at a movie.
Another unusual oddity, to me, was how long so many people lingered in the lobby afterwards discussing the film - it was not 'just a few', the theatre employees themselves seemed mystified. I think it over an hour & a half before the crowd finally couldn't be called 'a crowd' anymore. I just wandered quiet, unable to go get in the car & focus on traffic, and overheard many things others were saying, and knew I was not alone in that avalanche of feelings that had been brought to the surface within my own self. It was a comfort very deep somehow.
Andy's Rainbow reaches the innocent 'child' who eternally lives in all of us, and also at the same time, that part of us that, through our lives, have either seen or suffered from some of the hardest things that many endure, in their own unique ways.
To me, this film reaches into profound realms, the center of our souls. And it does so, with a 'mastery of truth' so simply, so sweetly, that I am just blown away at the 'deepest insights' of Jacob Dufour (the writer/creator) and everyone, the entire production company, who brought this movie to life so as to share with others.
I am grateful, to God, to have had the privilege of seeing it myself - and traveled almost 3 hours to another city to see it for a second time last week (never in my whole life did that before!) Andy's Rainbow touched me, intimately, in a way that exceedingly few films have ever even come close before.
And I have probably seen many of 'the best ever made' - both here in the US as well as from around the world.
But never have I seen any film that "gave so much, for so many, with - seemingly on the surface - so little."
And that, to me anyway, is the mark of a genuine "Masterpiece of God" - and it doesn't matter a bit whether the viewer even believes in a higher power of any sort or not. True masterpieces surpass such things, they reach towards and touch us personally, in ways that no words can every fully express or define.
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