Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music and Entertainment
Scent of a Woman and Being “Irredeemable”

Scent of a Woman and Being “Irredeemable”

Last updated on: April 9, 2024 at 7:19 pm by Zachary Miller

Scent of a Woman and Being “Irredeemable” 2024-04-09T19:19:00-06:00 Zachary Miller

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

City Light Films via “IMDb”

There are a lot of things about Martin Brest’s 1992 film, Scent of a Woman, that fascinate me. For one thing, it clocks in at over 2 and a half hours. Where most movies that reach that runtime are some kind of action-adventure epic, this movie is carried almost exclusively by a single relationship, that of mild-mannered 17 year-old Charlie Simms and Lt. Colonel Frank Slade, the cantankerous, blind war veteran Charlie is tasked with watching over Thanksgiving weekend.

Charlie comes across Slade as he is facing a moral dilemma. Charlie is pressured by his boarding school’s headmaster to give the names of three students who humiliated him with a cheap prank. If Charlie complies, his headmaster promises to fast-track him to Harvard. It’s an appealing offer to Charlie, who attends his prestigious boarding school on scholarship, unlike his wealthy fellow students. But is a letter of recommendation worth Charlie selling out over his headmaster’s bruised ego? The implications of his decision weigh over Charlie as he is charged with watching Colonel Slade.

City Light Films via “Oscar Champs”

The film plays a fine balancing act with Slade. He is coarse yet refined. Incisive yet brutish. Slade calls Charlie an idiot and a moron within his first minute of meeting him. You get the idea that there’s no way Charlie could ever placate Slade, let alone impress him.

Slade’s indecency also covers a wide swath of disreputable behaviors that isolate him from society, even family members. He occasionally makes blithe comments about women and various disadvantaged groups. The film’s title comes from a monologue where Slade describes in some detail the sexual parts of a woman’s body. This part of Slade’s personality isn’t necessarily celebrated, it’s mostly played as a quirk of Slade’s that Charlie and others have to put up with. (Still, it’s fair to wonder whether these comments might have been more overtly condemned within the text, if they had been included to begin with, had the film been made later.)

City Light Films via “Letterboxd”

In some ways, this crudeness is intentional on part of the film, and accounted for. The film challenges you to empathize with someone so willfully spiteful as Slade, to discover some context that excuses his brutish behavior. And it poses the possibility that maybe there just isn’t any. At one point, Slade’s nephew disdainfully remarks, “The truth is he’s always been an a**hole. Now he’s just a blind a**hole.” (That’s his nephew Slade is choking in the picture above.) But it takes a person like Charlie to look past the vulgarity and see Slade as a whole person.

Charlie recognizes that Slade is a man displaced. Once a respected war hero, Slade’s volatility is a token of the resentment he feels toward being made to feel helpless. This contextualizes a lot of the nihilism that motivates Slade’s crass behavior and challenges Charlie’s sincere but untested sense of morality. Through their time together, Charlie helps Slade see that he still has much to look forward to and live for. (One of the film’s most memorable sequences has Slade perform a lively tango with a young woman while waiting for their dinner.) Meanwhile, Slade proves the unexpected hand on Charlie’s shoulder as he faces a decision that will determine not only his academic future but also the trajectory of his moral character.

City Light Films via “YouTube”

The thing that drew me to writing about this film through this venue comes back to that challenge the film issues with Slade’s character: does a jerk like Slade deserve our respect or empathy? The modern discourse puts a lot of stock in the notion that some people are just inexcusably vile and therefore deserving of our disdain. It’s easy to see where this mindset comes from, but I frequently question whether this is behavior that Christ expects of people who claim to follow his teachings. That’s why we need stories like this to remind us occasionally that we’d do better to understand “a**holes” like Slade than tear them down. Who knows? These people may even come to become our greatest allies.

Something I find especially interesting, especially on rewatches, is the way that Charlie is not expected to take on more brutish characteristics himself in order to earn the respect of Slade or the audience. Charlie doesn’t have to rise to meet Slade’s rudeness to “grow up” or anything. He’s still a clean, wide-eyed gentleman whose speaking voice never registers above a polite whisper. And it’s a venerating, satisfying, deeply moving moment when Slade’s signature barking gives way to an impassioned defense of Charlie’s character in front of the entire student body and faculty. One of the reasons why movies like this are so powerful is that they affirm that true goodness, like that which Charlie extends to Slade, can bring out the best even in someone as prickly and uninviting as Slade.

Tearing people down can be fun, sure. But enveloping them in Christlike love, even when no one else would? That’s in a class of its own.

City Light Films via “Tweeted Times”

Previous Post

December 27, 2022

Toy Story 2 and Immortality

Next Post

January 10, 2023 Passengers and the Heavenly Life

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Action Movies Animated Christ Classical Film Divinity Faith Finding God Goodness Happiness Heaven Horror Films International Film Judging Love Ministering Mortality Movies Musicals Religion Repentence Rom-Coms Sin Trials Truth TV Shows Uncategorized Valiance Worth

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 March 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 October 2023 August 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Psalm is an ancient call to worship: "Make a joyful noise to the Lord"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 100 Psalm 90 Psalm 117 Psalm 23