I recently saw The Choral . It is a magnificent movie. It broke my heart in a good way.
Partly because it is so beautiful. Partly because it is so powerful. And partly because of one moment that keeps opening out into other moments long after you leave the cinema.
A choir member who is also a Protestant minister stands and says there is no such thing as purgatory. In his faith, the soul goes straight to heaven or hell. No in between.
Then Clive speaks.
He has come back from the war with one arm. He says purgatory is real. It is the space between two sides fighting, the moment when you step forward and you don’t know whether you will live or die.
The room goes completely still.
I am confident that minister would never stand up and say there is no purgatory again. I don’t think anyone else in the room would either and everyone who sees the film.
What moved me was not only the moment itself, but what it unlocked. How often lived experience cuts straight through belief. How two people can stand in the same place and see entirely different things, shaped by what they have lived, what they have lost, what they carry in their bodies.
It felt like a reminder to slow down in conversations. To listen more carefully. To leave room for the fact that someone else may be standing in a place you have never been.
