the painted veil

What is the strongest love?

Is it there when the flames leap wildly from a fresh-hewn torch swept through darkness, when passion's blood courses freely through channels of discovery, when only two lovers in all the world exist, and all else fades into oblivion?

Is it hidden in the gentlest touch, the softest murmuring voice, in the quiet romance of flickering candles reflected in dreamy eyes and fine crystal, when love's exalted object soars through a haze of gold, and vows of undying faithfulness spill easily from adoring lips?

Love may begin here, or it may not; but how can it be strong when it has only just been born - bursting perhaps with life, but oh, so very young?

Of all the strange and uncanny things made manifest in this wonderful, broken world, one of the strangest may be this: that the love that is strongest is found in the warm, quiet fire burning steadily in a well-worn hearth - in the one who finds good amidst the badness in another and embraces it all and is bound to it; who hurts this love and is hurt by it mortally, and yet - beyond all reason and beyond its own strength - forgives and goes on loving until the end.

The Painted Veil tells the brief story of such a love, foolishly begun, and cast foolishly aside at the first test. The film follows one utterly disenchanted couple into the heart of China, where cholera ravages the countryside, and where Walter (angry husband of an unfaithful wife) has volunteered to take charge. Intense suffering and hardship will not abide the wearing of masks, and wretched Kitty (the wife) soon learns that she has betrayed a better man than she deserves - has cast aside a treasure in her haste to snatch at glittering pebbles - perhaps beyond recovery. But the simple beauty of the story of their difficult and honest path to forgiveness and real, selfless love is well worth the pain of the journey.

The one gaping hole I found was that a story of such profound reconciliation could leave God so thoroughly out of the picture - except for one disappointing conversation in which a disenchanted nun refers to Him as a negligent and disinterested husband, to whom she feels bound out of duty, rather than love. In a story so full otherwise of redemption and truth, this is the staggering lie it pretends to be able simultaneously to believe. This is how close we can come on our own, inexcusable because we know what is good, but we cover our eyes against its true Source.

But if you can take the good and leave the bad, and fast forward through a couple of scenes, I would recommend putting The Painted Veil on your list next time you go to Video Warehouse or Netflix.com. It's a fallen world we live in, and it's good for us to see the beauty God can grow from the ashes of our own devestation. He can change everything - even our own stubborn hearts.