MOST (The Bridge)

A simple but beautiful and profound story, MOST quietly stuns audiences everywhere it plays. Rich with meaning and symbolism, some viewers have said its better than many feature films they have screened. Indeed, this 2003, 33-minute short earned an Academy award nomination for best short film and went on to win top prizes at three other film festival competitions – Dances with Films, Heartland Film Festival and Palm Springs International Short Film festival.

You may have heard the story in church. It’s based on a sermon illustration. But here, Hollywood veterans, producer/director/co-writer, Bobby Garabedian and producer/co-writer, William Zabka (Johnny Lawrence from the KARATE KID movies) craft a picturesque, heart-wrenching, fairy tale-like fable among the Old world charm of Prague, Czech Republic and Poland.

A father and son love each other very much. Stargazing or enjoying tea together, the two are nearly inseparable. One day, Lada, the son, asks his father if he can join him at the bridge. The bridge is where the father works as an operator, raising a drawbridge when a boat must pass and lowering it when the train arrives. On the one day that Lada joins his father at work, a train arrives early. Lada tries to alert his father that the train is early, but his father cannot hear him. Father is away, inspecting some machinery. So, the boy rushes to throw the switch manually, enabling the drawbridge to drop and let the train safely pass. But, by the time the father discovers the problem, Lado has accidentally fallen into the drawbridge wheel and pulley mechanisms. The father must make a choice. Save his son and let the train wreck. Or, lower the bridge, save the train and sacrifice his son to the crushing wheels.

Some may guess the ending already, but I won’t spoil it by saying it here. However, MOST goes the extra mile in packing the story with strong symbolic images. Many of these symbols are left unexplained, but the discerning viewer will understand them. MOST lets the viewer see some of the sin and depravity of some of the train passengers. And, it also depicts new life and new hope to one of the train’s most desperate passengers.

MOST is not a frontal assault, blatant in its storytelling. It creeps up on your and enters your spirit through the backdoor. Director Bobby Garabedian told me “secular� audiences or film critics have never accused him of making Christian propaganda. After seeing MOST, I can understand why. But those “who have eyes to see and ears to hear� can clearly see the parallels to God’s redemptive love for us sinners.

MOST stands up there with PASSION OF THE CHRIST and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA as a re-definition quality Christian filmmaking. It’s that good. (In fact, I think its better than those two feature films because it fulfills its modest goals more fully than those overreaching efforts.) And any Christian filmmaker who is blessed to watch MOST will be challenged and inspired to create equally beautiful and poignant pieces of work.

What should Christian film be like in order to inspire and challenge audiences? It needs to be very, very good, and MOST is just such a film. The acting if first rate, especially the adorable boy Lada (played by Ladislav Ondrej). The performance of the father, Vladimír Javorsky´, will make every parent who watches MOST cringe, cry and hug their children closer. The locations, sets and trains all induce whimsical feelings of European enchantment. The use of color and lighting furthermore, create a storybook quality. But, the story here is key and it’s a doozy. Bathrobe epics, underwhelming apocalyptic thrillers and manipulative treacle may have defined Christian film as it once was, but MOST now sets the bar up where it should be. You can order it by going to www.mostthemovie.com.