Henry Poole is Here is a timely film in many senses of that word. To the ancient Greeks time was represented by chronos and kairos. chronos was the word that stood for the passing of time. kairos spoke to the idea of timeliness – as in the right or opportune time. In theological terms, kairos is the kind of time in which God acts. The beauty of Henry Poole is Here is how it uses Henry’s time in the film, and our time in the theater, to infuse chronos – the passage of both Henry’s and our own - with a little much-needed kairos.
All Life is Like Grass
Henry has a chronos problem. He is running out of time. After a visit to a doctor reveals a very rare, but terminal condition, Henry is understandably devastated. Lacking a billionaire to spice up the last days of his life (as Jack Nicholson did for Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List), Henry does what thousands of people, facing the same kind of diagnosis, do every day: he falls into depression and waits to die. Henry does make two obvious changes – concessions to his new condition. First, he decides that since he is going to die anyway, he may as well wreck his diet. Patience, the clerk at the local grocery store, after ringing up nothing but booze, frozen pizza and doughnuts, asks if Henry is throwing parties. He says “no,” and adds that his new eating habits are nothing more than “a phase.” Second, he decides to move.
Everyone has Henry’s problem. We are all running out of time. It is our ability to live in constant denial of this fact that allows us to get on with what is left of the rest of our lives. Only when we are in imminent peril by accident, disaster, or disease, do we become acutely aware of our fragile state. When death is at our elbow is when we finally recognize the truth of the Psalmist: that we are like grass, which springs up and then withers away. And it is within those moments of mortal clarity that kairos can intersect with chronos.
When God Steps In
Not much is revealed about Henry’s life before his diagnosis. What little we get comes from flashbacks. His childhood was filled with parental bickering, and though he is in his early thirties, those scars remain, and he has never married. As a circle of completion, he tries hard to purchase his childhood home, but he has to settle for a different, run-down house in the same neighborhood. He does not want to fix it up, and he rebuffs attempts at socializing from a friendly neighbor. As he often remarks, he isn’t going to be living there long. Henry wants to move through the last days of his life in the manner to which he has become accustomed: alone.
Despite his pleas to leave the ramshackle house as it is, his perky realtor goes ahead and has the house re-stuccoed. One of the stucco patches in the back is discolored by what appears to be a large water stain. But when Esperanza Martinez, Henry’s very Catholic neighbor, steps into his back yard, she sees on the wall not a stain, but an image of the face of Christ. When Henry tells her that he doesn’t see it, Esperanza replies, “You’re not looking.” He tries again, and still no luck. She repeats, “You’re not looking.” Her statement is filled with meaning. Henry has quit looking for anything from life. No longer seeking, he does not find. But the English translation of Esperanza’s name is “hope,” and though Henry is hope-less, she never gives up on him. Continue >>
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