count of monte cristo (2002) has such a weird & cool relationship with the idea of god

youve got a guy whose faith goes to shit because life is truly unfair
a "priest" who tells him it doesnt matter whether or not he believes
repeat mentions of god playing no part

this thread is going to talk about god a lot and i know how weird that can be

i dont have any particular faith myself (not a believer of any kind tbh) i was just raised in the church so a lot of what i'm about to say leans on that for context

"god's never in france this time of year"
"god sees you out of the corner of his eye"
and of course edmond's carving on his prison wall, which serves as the final shot in the film

now i'm pretty clearly not a religious person myself but if i were younger and more impressionable THIS would be the movie to sell it to me

"god doesn't give a shit but you can feel the difference when he happens to look in on things" is such a wild perspective and i love it

it's that nihilistic optimism you love to see, which i'm not sure is the film's intent, but that's really how it comes across- god played no part, but he happened to look at the right time, and that's when shit got live

this is a movie about a guy who gets painfully betrayed by just about everyone, and the message comes through as "it is human to want vengeance and god is cool with it, actually" which i think is extremely funny & honest about how people are

im not smart enough about like, religion as something you study to really dig into this but it just hits so different

ive always had a pretty fucking ambiguous, leaning toward flatly atheist take on god, but the god "depicted" in this film is the most interesting take ive seen

you get numb to all kinds of shit you hear as a kid, especially growing up baptist all you hear is cranky old men saying "god is love" between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes and condemning gay people for breathing and beating their wives

this movie endorses an image of god that would be totally onboard with you if you threw elbows with those old bastards in the name of everyone they ever hurt

and i think if you showed me that as a kid i'd be like "hey i like what this dude is selling"

anyway before i get any further lost in the weeds i'll just repeat that count of monte cristo (2002) is a masterpiece and that having a thoughtful and interesting take on god in addition to everything else actually made the movie great in a way i wasnt expecting

you see a rainbow behind edmond in the final fight scene and if you were raised in the church you're like "OHHHHH SHIT"

"IT'S LIKE NOAH GOD SAID EDMOND THIS AINT HAPPENING AGAIN"

christian film companies would kill for that level of hype about god you know

anyway im no less an atheist now than i was when i started watching this film

but a fun take on god is hard to find though and i needed to take some time to talk about how the movie got it right like nothing i'd ever seen before