Love Gazes Outward: The Common Thread in Hostiles & JPII’s The Jeweler’s Shop, by Jessica Kramer

By Jessica Kramer, Crisis Magazine, Sept. 18, 2021

Jessica Kramer hails from Cleveland, Ohio and is a freelance Video Host with MRCTV and writer currently living in the greater Washington, D.C. area. She is a graduate of Liberty University (former Protestant, Catholic convert). …

Hot Take: the movie Hostiles, starring Christian Bale, is a love story. 

One wouldn’t think this gritty, modern western would be a love story, given that it’s rife with suffering and violence. But it is precisely because of its real and raw depiction of lived human experience that it is a love story in the truest sense.

Hostiles is the story of stoic American soldier Joseph (played by Christian Bale) who has one last mission forced upon him before retirement: escorting a former enemy, an Indian chief, safely back to his homeland of Montana. Along the way, he rescues Rosalie (played by Rosamund Pike), a distraught woman who witnessed the brutal murder of her family by a rival Indian tribe. Left with no husband and children, friends or family, she is all alone out West.

It’s classic and simple in nature: the man in uniform on his horse rescues the damsel in distress. He, a gentleman toward her, is the only man she feels safe to continue her journey with. She, a lady in his company, brings out the better angel of his nature. But it’s not just that they’re thrown together in a fated circumstance that makes it a love story. It’s that they both gaze in the same direction: outward toward God amidst their suffering. …

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