A Brush With Fate (Hallmark TV, 2003)
- Information at Internet Movie Database
- Themes
- Difficulty Recognizing
Evil - Beauty shows itself to be Evil
- "A Brush with Fate" traces the history of a "famous" painting from the 18th century to its present owner. The movie opens when an art teacher/artist takes a teaching job at a private school. As he goes to meet several faculty at lunch, he notices a non-descript, plain, middle aged, very myopic female teacher. He asks his collegues about her. They explain that she is the literature teacher and that she is a bit eccentric. Later she comes to the art teacher's classroom and she proved to be as eccentric as his colleague had warned. She invites him to her home and introduces him to her father who is wheelchair bound. He unable to speak because of a series of strokes. She is unwavingly devoted to him. When the art teacher suggests that she get additional help for him, she balks. She leads the art teacher to a viewing room and in it is the famous painting. She tells him that it is by the famous artist, "Vemeer." This time he balks and tell her that there are fewer than forty Vemeer paintings extant. That when she shows him all the research that she has done, hence the story begins as she traces the history of the painting and the lives of the previous owners. The stories are rich. Afterwards, the art teacher asks, "how did it come to be in your possession?" The story continues as she tells her father's part in it, an officer in the Nazi regime. The father came and drove a Jewish family from their home. As the foot soldiers were pushing them out of their home, her father notices the painting. He was so intrigued by it that he admired it for what seemed like hours, meanwhile a little Jewish boy had hidden beneath the dinner table. As he finished admiring the painting, he kindly called the little boy from underneath the table and asks tenderly, "would you like to go with me?" Then he leads the little boy by the hand and removes the picture from the wall then they leave. As the spinster is weaving this tale, she has the art teacher's rapt attention. He asks, "where did your father take him?" She told him to the concentration camp. Then she nostagically muses that her father had only one regret...that he didn't rise higher in rank in the Nazi regime. Disgusted, the art teacher bounds from the house. She runs after him and castigates him for his morality. In her tirade she tells him such devotion to the painting is LOVE. In the middle of the night she packs up her father, her research and their painting and disappears. I think this movie makes excellent sermon illustrations about idolatry and secrets and how they can enslave us. (Pastor Angela Shannon, Trinity English Lutheran Church, Ft. Wayne, Indiana)
- Difficulty Recognizing
Evil - Beauty shows itself to be Evil
