AMERICAN QUILT

 

FOUR STARS – Powerful, Insightful

 

 

       HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT stitches together  the courageous attempts of people to find love in their lives.

       Like a quilt of individually frayed and faded cloths brought together into a pattern of great beauty, the film  weaves together the individually hurting and struggling lives of the film’s characters into a pattern of exquisite film-making.

       Though overt spirituality is strikingly missing from the lives of the women, their quest is nevertheless deeply spiritual.

       Centered around the struggle of a young woman named Finn (Winona Ryder), the film shows how her life is encircled by the women of her grandmother’s quilting bee.  Having grown up under the covering of her grandmother’s friends as they gathered to create a quilt, she returns to their care at a crucial moment in her life.  The question she must decide is,  will she marry her fiance or not?

       Having experienced her own parents’ divorce along with her mother’s cynical attitude about marriage, she finds her fear of marriage debilitating.  In an attempt to support her, her grandmother’s quilting bee begins assembling a wedding quilt for her which they title:  “Where Love Resides.”  As we observe the tattered and torn pieces of cloth being brought together into a meaningful and beautiful pattern in the quilt, we also experience a similar pattern in the lives of the women of the quilting bee.

       Both as medium and message, this is the power of the film.

       Everyone’s life is full of sorrow and pain.  Our quest for meaning and love can often bring us to places of disappointment and grief.  A husband’s betrayal, a lover’s rejection, an unplanned pregnancy, an incestuous affair, or the vacuous death of a life-long love, all leave us in shambles.

       What do we do with such torn and tattered pieces?

       How do we make meaning out of our lives again?  Where does love reside?

       With vulnerability and compassion the women of the quilting bee share their lives with Ryder and with us.  Anna (Maya Angelou), an articulate woman who is the designer of the quilt, shares her tale of a single night as a young and naive woman, and the pregnancy that resulted.  In sharing her pain she counsels Ryder that “doing a foolish thing”  when one is young, can cause life-long pain, and yet, at the same time, the child born to her brought her life-long love.

       This truth, that love resides in the pain as well as the joy of life is the message of the quilt.  As woman after woman shares with us her failures and successes, her sins and her sorrows, we observe the patterns of their lives being reflected in the quilt they are creating.

       The message, “that young lovers seek perfection, but old lovers sew shreds together and  see beauty in the multiplicity of patches,”  is their quilted solution to their quest.  Though not stated in religious terms, this truth reminds us of similar  Biblical teachings about life.

       Life is hard and though we seek perfection, our lives nevertheless become torn and tattered both by our choices and the choices of those nearest us.  But the promise of God is that “everything can work together for good” if we will seek Him and His love.

       God as the master designer, can bring together every piece of our lives into an harmonious beauty if we will allow him to bring the power of his forgiveness and love into our lives.

       In the film, when the quilt is finally made, the meaning of every patch is clearly before us in all its symbolic beauty.  In the final scenes as Ryder is wrapped in that quilt and decides what she will do with her own love, we recognize the courage it requires both to love and to recover the love once lost.

       HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT is an insightful model of how courageous people live their lives.  If to that courage we add the presence of God, we will find a lasting model for life and love.

 

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