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{"id":5618,"date":"2024-05-13T13:12:47","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T19:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/?p=5618"},"modified":"2024-05-13T13:12:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T19:12:47","slug":"we-grown-now-explores-beautifully-a-childlike-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/2024\/05\/we-grown-now-explores-beautifully-a-childlike-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Grown Now\u2019 Explores, Beautifully, a Childlike Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

"Malik <\/a>

Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez in We Grown Now, screenshot courtesy Sony Pictures Classic trailer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The summer blockbuster movie season is here, and Hollywood\u2019s \u201cbiggest\u201d films are making their way to theaters.<\/p>\n

But after you\u2019ve gotten your fill of Fall Guys<\/em><\/a> and power-hungry apes<\/a> and, this weekend, imaginary friends, you might want to check out something on a smaller scale: The poignant, powerful We Grown Now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The film, directed by Minhal Baig and distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, focuses on two kids\u2014Malik and Eric\u2014growing up in Chicago\u2019s Cabrini-Green housing project, circa 1992. Seen through their eyes, Cabrini-Green isn\u2019t just the notorious housing complex heard about on the news, awash in drugs and guns and crime. It\u2019s home\u2014but it\u2019s not the home that their parents hoped to give them.<\/p>\n

The film has plenty to recommend it. The film is really about the nature of home\u2014what it is and isn\u2019t. It\u2019s about family and society and history. But it\u2019s also about faith, and perhaps how that faith filters into all those other elements.<\/p>\n

Malik\u2019s mother, Dolores (played by Jurnee Smollett), raises Malik (Blake Cameron James) and his sister to be Christian. They, along with grandmother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson), pray together, and you get the sense that those beliefs percolate through their shared lives\u2014so much so that they barely notice it. That faith helps bring a certain warmth to their small home in Cabrini, a warmth visually illustrated by their grandmother\u2019s honey-colored curtains. Sure, that warmth is made of more than just Christianity. But it forms an important cornerstone in this tight-knit family.<\/p>\n

Eric\u2019s father (Lil Rel Howery) loves his boy, too. But Eric\u2019s home\u2014which the movie paints in harsher, cooler colors\u2014lacks the familial magic that Malik enjoys. And while we don\u2019t see much of Eric\u2019s home life, religion seems to play a scant role there (if it plays a role at all).<\/p>\n

Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) and Malik have a lot in common. But through faith, we begin to see their differences, too.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Blake Cameron James in We Grown Now, screenshot courtesy Sony Pictures Classics trailer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u2018What Is All This For?\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n***
** In October 1992, a stray bullet killed 7-year-old Dantrell Davis in Cabrini-Green. The death shook both the community and the wider city of Chicago: The mayor vowed to clean up Cabrini (using some frightening heavy-handed tactics to do so). Dolores worried ever more about her son\u2019s safety. And Malik and Eric tried to make sense of the young boy\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
** After Dantrell\u2019s funeral, the two boys sit on some church steps and talk.<\/p>\n
** \u201cHe\u2019s in a better place now,\u201d Malik says.<\/p>\n
** \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Eric says. \u201cI think he just \u2026 go.\u201d<\/p>\n
** Eric admits that he believes that Jesus lived, but he suspects that the Nazarene was just a man\u2014and He\u2019s not coming back. He suspects that the afterlife isn\u2019t real\u2014that Dantrell just died and that\u2019s that. No heavenly reward. No deeper meaning.<\/p>\n
** Malik pushes back. \u201cIf there ain\u2019t no afterlife, what is all this for?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
** Malik holds out hope that all the suffering that he sees does have a place in a greater story. That what happens today does matter for tomorrow. And we realize that Malik\u2019s hope, and Eric\u2019s doubt, are shaping their own trajectories within Cabrini, too.<\/p>\n
** The day that Dantrell died, the two boys are approached by an older kid, inviting them both to try on a diamond-studded watch. \u201cI\u2019m good, Malik says, and walks away\u2014knowing the watch comes from drug money. But Eric tries it on. \u201cWhat does it matter?\u201d He later tells Malik. \u201cMoney is money.\u201d<\/p>\n
** Later, the two boys ditch school and go to Chicago\u2019s famous Art Institute, where they examine Walter Ellison\u2019s 1935 painting \u201cTrain Station.\u201d The painting depicts the Great Migration, when African Americans moved from the hostile South to cities like Chicago. Ellison painted a Black porter carting around luggage for some obviously wealthy white travelers\u2014a depiction that Malik bristles at. \u201cThey can carry their own bags!\u201d Malik says.<\/p>\n
** ***\u201cThey get paid to do it,\u201d Eric says.<\/p>\n

<\/a>*****
* Gian Knight Ramirez in We Grown Now, screenshot courtesy Sony Pictures Classics trailer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTrying to Fly<\/strong><\/h2>\n***
** After the funeral, Malik asked what\u2019s all this for? <\/em>There\u2019s got to be a reason. A purpose. It matters whether he tries on that watch. It matters that this guy in the painting is stuck carrying luggage. It matters that Dantrell died. These injustices matter because there\u2019s such a thing as justice.<\/p>\n
** But Eric\u2019s not so sure. Maybe we don\u2019t get an afterlife. Maybe we don\u2019t have purpose. Maybe justice? No such thing. So why not get what we can now? And does it really matter how we get it?<\/p>\n
** The movie hints at the boys\u2019 different trajectories at its very outset\u2014when the two drag a discarded mattress out to the playground. They throw it on a pile of other mattresses and take turns jumping on them: Malik is the undisputed king of this playground game\u2014and after he marvels at how well he jumped today. \u201cThat was the closest I got to God!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
** Try as he might, Eric can\u2019t quite soar like Malik. His feet are rooted too deeply in this world to go flying into another.<\/p>\n
** By the time the movie heads into the final act, we understand that the two best friends are on two different paths. Without giving anything away, we feel that Malik might jump beyond his Cabrini childhood\u2014fly into a wider world beyond. Eric, we worry, may simply get stuck there, trapped in its poverty and vices.<\/p>\n
** But the film offers some hope for Eric\u2014and again, it comes back to faith. With his friendship with Malik threatened by circumstance and change and schoolboy pride, Eric pays a visit to Malik\u2019s family. And when Dolores says that Malik can\u2019t see him, Eric still hovers in the doorway.<\/p>\n
** \u201cCan we pray together?\u201d he asks Dolores.<\/p>\n
** And so Eric, Dolores and grandma Anita gather together and pray. \u201cHeavenly father, watch over us, your children,\u201d Dolores says. \u201cGrand that we mend all that is broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
* We find a lot of brokenness in We Grown Now<\/em>. But we find a lot of healing, too\u2014and that healing is powered by faith as much as anything. And that\u2019s one of many reasons why this film is so worth seeing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
* *******The summer blockbuster movie season is here, and Hollywood\u2019s \u201cbiggest\u201d films are making their way to theaters. But after you\u2019ve gotten your fill of Fall Guys and power-hungry apes and, this weekend, imaginary friends, you might want to check out something on a smaller scale: The poignant, powerful We Grown Now. The film, directed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2036,"featured_media":5624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365,3],"tags":[122,1000,846],"class_list":["post-5618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-choice","category-movies","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-society"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018We Grown Now\u2019 Explores, Beautifully, a Childlike Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The film is about the nature of home, family and society. 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