One of my favorite movies is Chocolat. The 2000 movie is set in a small French village in the late 1950’s, and stars Juliette Binoche, Judy Dench, Alfred Molina and Johnny Depp. I love it because it is a good movie, but more than its cinematic quality I love it because of its message. In the movie Vianne is a skilled maker of chocolate who wanders throughout France and finds herself settling and setting up shop in a very traditional French village. When she arrives in this village, there is great distrust and even hatred toward her and her daughter. This animosity involves many factors, but it is pinned on the fact that she has the nerve to open a chocolate shop right in the middle of Lent. For the citizens of this village, Lent is seen as a time of denial and repentance, and when one in their village does not conform to their practice they do everything they can to drive her away. The leader of the town tells Vianne early in the movie that their ancestors drove those accursed Huguenots away in a matter of weeks and that she presents a far less challenge than they did.
What makes the movie difficult is that Vianne, though an outsider, befriends hurting people and treats them with love that should have been coming from the Christian community. She helps a lady who is abused by her husband, and welcomes a group of drifters while the village launches a campaign to “boycott immorality.” The priest of the church is caught in the middle of all of this. He knows that something is wrong with the way the Christians are acting, especially the mayor of the town who writes his sermons for him and coaches him all along the way.
What challenges me most about the movie is precisely the thing that I need to hear the most: too often Christians are far more concerned with their rules, rituals, and pious appearances than they are with welcoming the stranger in their midst or offering healing to the hurting. Chocolat makes this point abundantly clear, and I hope you’ll watch this movie.
It is said that the Baptist preacher and sociologist Tony Campolo was once speaking to a group of conservatively pious Christians and told them that “every day 30,000 children die because of hunger and preventable diseases[1] and you don’t give a damn.” He quickly continued, “and what’s so bad is that you are more upset that I said damn than about the 30,000 children who are dying today.”
May God bless us to major on the majors and minor on the minors.
[1]. Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity, New ed. (Lanham, MD: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 3.