|  TIKKUN OLAN
Perhaps one of the difficulties in dealing with this subject (especially through the lens of tikkun olam), is that the film treats the spiritual quest at a personal level, while tikkun olam really has a more cosmic focus. It is hard to take wide ranging concepts and portray them in a single life. To be sure, spirituality is often personal and internal, but its greatest value is that it plays itself out not only within a life, but in the world around us as well.
Miriam’s story is not sufficiently developed for us to understand her spiritual longings. We only see that she is unhappy and unfulfilled. Even when we come to understand what she is doing in the strange scenes in various houses and at night, we really don’t quite get her compulsion. A better development of Miriam’s story would also help us to understand the gift of a kaleidoscope she gives to Eliza. That gift is her way of passing on her vision of the world (broken), but we never get to discover Eliza’s understanding of what she sees through it.
Even though the film fails to show us the way to find spirituality (and may not even trust that spirituality can be found), it does give us the chance to consider our own sense of the spiritual in our lives. Do we think spirituality is hard to achieve? Do we see spirituality as something that should be approached with care and caution? Which of the characters are we most like?
The film ends at a point that leaves open the idea that tikkun olam will come to the Naumann’s world, but we don’t know if that comes or not. It is hard to repair the world. The shards are many and scattered. Perhaps there is hope, though, that if this family can be restored, the rest of the world can be as well. --Darrel Manson
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