Jessie Gambardella - "The Bridge"

In class we mostly watch movies that skim the surface of a religion and have religious symbols to represent something. The foreign film called MOST is a short allegory depicting one of the greatest stories every told. It tells it in such a way that if you did not know the story it was retelling then you would not see it right away. This is what I like so much about that film; it is not cheesy and if the movie’s true meaning is not previously known it is still an amazingly life changing story. There is hardly any dialogue in the film and is driven by its striking visuals and pure human emotion.
It begins with a single father and his young son who spend every day together. The father works at a train track bridge that needs to be lifted whenever a boat passes underneath. There are specific times that trains are scheduled to pass and all the father needs to do is be there to push the button that makes the bridge go down. There are a few sub-stories of some college students traveling and of a girl that appears to be leaving her sister younger sister and leaves to live on the streets. All of these characters are seen boarding the same train together. The father brings his son to work on this same day; the bridge is up for a passing boat and the father steps out of the room for a few minutes leaving the son to drink his hot chocolate. The train is ahead of schedule and the son sees it coming so he pushes the button but the bridge is jammed. He has seen his father manually fix millions of times and decides to do the same. As the son goes down to the bridge to fix it he falls down into the gears but does manage to correct the problem. The father comes back and sees his son fall but the bridge is still up and the train is heading towards it full of passengers at full blast; there is no time to retrieve his son and push the button down to have the bridge down in time. He makes the decision to bring the bridge down knowing that his son will be caught and killed within the gears. The bridge lands just in time for the train to cross as the father runs outside, but the train is blocking him from running to the other side to see about his son.
The father screams in pain as it passes and the college students are busy joking around, other passengers are distracted by TV, music, or reading. The one person who noticed him bawling outside the train as it passed was the girl, who was living on the streets, just before she shoots up. The girl stops and she and the father make a brief eye contact. The end of the story which is narrated by the father shows him contemplating the purpose of life. Then, walking through the city, and from across the street, he sees the same girl from the train. They notice each other and she bends down to pick up her little girl; she gives a small smile at the man and they soon depart. The father then looks up to the sky, throws his hands up, and smiles as if to say, “Ah there it is.”
When I sat down to watch this movie I was not told that even was an allegory; just that it was a beautiful story. I’m not a crier, by any means, but nothing could stop me after seeing this movie and realizing that not only is it an allegory of God’s sacrifice but an allegory of our own lives. I am a one of the people on that train just passing through life. The movie is filmed in Czech and spoken in Czech. It is titled MOST which translates to “bridge” in Czech. Christ is said in Christianity to be “The Bridge” between us and God. The Son lowers the bridge so that we may have access to a life with the Father. This film personifies this metaphor beautifully and whether a person is a Christian or not it will still make you rethink other’s sacrifices for your life that you have overlooked.