The movie adaptation of "Me Before You," which is based on Jojo Moyes' bestselling novel and released to theatres last month, is a love story at its core, what with lead characters Louisa Clark (Emilia Clarke) and Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) finding love even when they least expect it.
The movie's intent is to make audiences swoon and shed tears, but Christian author Ellen Painter Dollar thinks there are dangerous lies in the movie's plot. Dollar writes on her Patheos blog that "Me Before You" tells audiences that people with disabilities live difficult lives that aren't worth living, and they are a burden to their loved ones.
Will's planned suicide was portrayed as a selfless act of love when he told her, "I don't want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don't want you to miss out on all the things someone else could give you."
Moreover, she thinks "Me Before You" tells people that the only life that is valuable is the one governed by people's personal preferences and choices, and should things go the other way, suicide would become a rational, acceptable response.
She also worries about the insinuation that life is subject to a kind of dualism that separates the body from the welfare of the mind, spirit, and soul. When Louisa suggested that Will go back to Paris, he refused, because he "want[s] to go to Paris as me, the real me (the Will before he became quadriplegic)."
"As tempting and straightforward as it is to believe that my impaired body is somehow betraying or limiting the 'real me,' the truth is far more complex," says Dollar. "Our interior selves - our minds, souls, and spirits - do not exist separately from our bodies, but in constant communication and relationship with them."
Dollar argued that Christianity was more compelling because "contrary to a common misconception that faith is about developing an ethereal spirituality that ignores the demands of the body, our faith is grounded in the material."
God was also "incarnate in a man who hungered and thirsted, who sweat and shivered, whose skin was slicked with blood at birth and death, who suffocated to death on a cross."
To think that a person exists apart from their body is "to deny the nature of God," Dollar concludes.
She also worries that "Me Before You" deceives people into thinking that suicide is an admirable decision to take in the face of a life with disability. "People with disabilities will have hard days, unfair choices to make, and pain and hassles in their life that able-bodied people don't have. But none of that makes suicide a rational, admirable decision," says Dollar.
