Rare and provocative film explores family traditions

Pearl Diver Sidney King, 2004. 97 minutes.

Pearl Diver is a remarkable gem of a film. It tells the story of two estranged sisters, a tragic event that drove them apart, and another that opened the door to reconciliation with their shattered past and with each other. This is an emotionally rich story visualized by award winning cinematography and careful flashback sequences.

The film resonates with echoes of the most widely known Anabaptist iconographic image, that of Dirk Willems’s rescue of his pursuer on a frozen river. Combining elements of family drama and murder mystery, the film draws viewers into a familiar yet strangely foreign world.

Marian Miller and Hannah Eberly, who grew up in a conservative Mennonite family in Elkhart County, Indiana, have lived for twenty years in the shadow of their mother’s murder. Hannah moved away to Chicago and became a writer. She comes to terms with her past through her writing. Marian married John Miller and together they tend the farm and raise their daughter Rebecca. Marian’s pain is suppressed in other, more interior ways. Both sisters are drawn together again through another unfortunate event, which precipitates their having to face the darkness of their past and to negotiate their hidden secrets.

The movie wrestles with the consequences of bad things that happen to good people, and the effects of those bad things on family systems. It shows how difficult it is to come to terms with one’s fears, how paralyzing it can be to keep secrets, and how complex it can be to negotiate between competing worldviews. Each sister must, in the end, make a sacrifice in order to reconcile with the pain of the past and to heal the damaged relationship. In the process, they discover that their experience of that dreadful event has wrought havoc in ways neither of them could fully know without difficult and risky self-disclosure.

The film moves from the particular to the universal in many ways. What shall be done with our family stories? How do we accept or reject the traditions with which we grew up? How do we appropriate our traditions, transform them, live with them, and let them go?

But most of all, Pearl Diver opens up exploration of the classic Mennonite iconic image Dirk Willems who reaches out across the ice to rescue his pursuer. The film asks, as no book could ever do, if and whether that image ought to carry the freight it’s often been called to bear. The movie poses the ultimate question, “What would you do if?”

This is director Sidney King’s first feature film. It has won five awards at film festivals across North America, including the Audience Award at the Winnipeg International Film Festival. Unfortunately it will not likely be screened in theatres in Canada. The DVD is set to release May 6 at your local Blockbuster store and also available for purchase at Amazon.com and MontereyMedia.com.

Rent it; watch it; discuss it. And spread the word. This film is a rare and provocative treat.

Gordon Matties is associate professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at Canadian mennonite University. Check out his faith and film website at cmu.ca.