A beautiful look at ugliness of adultery

John Zmirak

Let me start off by squandering my credibility with the reader: The best new movie this fall is a low-budget independent Christian film set in the country music industry and inspired by the lives of kings David and Solomon, with voice-over narration throughout the movie from the Old Testament. It's called "The Song."

Sounds impossible, right? A movie like that might be sweet, well-meaning or uplifting – precisely the sort of thing you'd send your teens out to see after their Young Life meeting. But you wouldn't want to sit through it yourself. The cheesy acting, didactic script and clumsy production values would send you cringing out of the theater, eager to catch up on Netflix with back episodes of "The Blacklist." Right?

Wrong. "The Song" is nothing like your standard "Christian movie." For one thing, its acting is stellar – from the first moment, you believe that these people are real and feel like you're living among them. Their problems, sins and addictions aren't airbrushed. We see how everyday selfishness and evil corrupts quite ordinary people, and how selfishness can corrode the best relationships.

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"The Song" looks, sounds and feels like one of those "indie" films that win awards at festivals like Sundance or Toronto – minus the nihilistic message, gratuitous gore and cringe-worthy sex scenes. Its original soundtrack is full of authentically beautiful, catchy songs you'd expect to hear on the radio. But best of all, the story is true and powerful:

Jed King, a handsome and earnest young singer/songwriter, is striving to climb out from under the shadow of his famous/infamous father, David King. King was a Johnny Cash-style country music legend whose faith-based songs were mottled with the fallout from his problems with pills and women. (Jed himself was the product of ugly adultery.) No one wants to hear young Jed's songs. They want him to grind out covers of his father's 30-year-old hits.

It's only when Jed meets Rose, the beautiful and overprotected daughter of a gun-toting old coot who owns a vineyard, that Jed is inspired to write a decent song. It's better than decent: It's a hit, and the creative binge that's sparked by his newfound love makes Jed a star in his own right.

Soon after their marriage, he starts to go on tour – and here's the crucial point: Rose refuses to travel with him. She puts her attachment for her aging father before her marriage and sends Jed off on long, lonely tours that support her and their newborn son in style. (The biblical phrase about leaving your parents and "cleaving to" one's spouse is relevant here.)

When Jed returns, she becomes increasingly reluctant to make love to him – unaware that he is fighting off temptation at every turn from lustful groupies. When he returns, pent up with sexual temptation, his eagerness makes her feel like he's simply using her. And so she keeps making excuses for sleeping apart.

When Jed goes back on tour, he is paired off by his manager with a lovely, exquisitely talented female singer named Shelby. Her tattoos and taste for recreational drugs mark her off as quite a different sort of woman from his wife. Shelby certainly isn't "frigid," as Jed begins to see Rose. She knows and loves his music and is at his elbow every day while his wife is far away caring for her father instead of her husband.

You might think that the rest of the story writes itself. I don't want to give it away. Suffice it to say that "The Song" depicts with ruthless honesty the problem of adultery among believing Christians, and presents both sides of why some marriages fail – even among the faithful. It highlights the crushing pain that we inflict upon each other when we break our solemn vows and the slow, uncertain process of seeking and granting forgiveness.

I saw the film at the urging of my co-author, Jason Jones, who makes it his business to promote good faith-based films. I brought along a female friend, and after the movie we argued genially about which character was more at fault in this troubled marriage, Rose or Jed. It's a measure of how balanced, true, and complex the movie was that each of us could find strong support for our point of view.

"The Song" does what good art should: Instead of teaching a lesson, it raises painful questions, and helps us to work them through the sufferings and struggles of the characters. It's a moving, convincing and, most of all, beautiful film. I hope couples take the time to see it together. It might get them talking honestly about the most important thing in the world: The love that creates human life.

John Zmirak is co-author of "The Race to Save Our Century: Five Core Principles to Promote Peace, Freedom, and a Culture of Life."