Light of My Life, a dystopian film directed by and starring Casey Affleck, is a great example of a secular film that manages—perhaps accidentally—to reveal divine truth.
The film (watch on Amazon Prime) stars Affleck as an unnamed father, known simply as Dad, who must shield his 11-year old daughter Rag (short for Raggedy Ann) from marauding men, 10 years after a pandemic decimated the world’s female population. Beyond the skillful way the film cultivates a post-apocalyptic mood of dread, isolation, and apprehension, what’s striking about the premise are the implications of a society that has abruptly lost nearly all women.
At a time in our culture when it’s unpopular to suggest that men and women are meaningfully different, the dystopian scenario of Affleck’s film takes this idea as a given. A world without one of the two genders would indeed be bleak and ugly. Why? Because something profound and irreplaceable would be lost—something the other gender could not manufacture or replicate from just itself. The film is revelatory in its portrayal of a morally degraded society where the sexes are severed from one another. Among other things, this horrifying separation highlights the biblical view of the distinct natures of male and female that complement each other and reflect their Creator.
Horror of a Womanless World
What do sad, lonely men do when they discover a rare female still exists? What shifts in a man’s being and ultimately a society when women are taken from the world? After Dad and Rag flee a threatening group of men and find refuge in a church, Rag says, “They were looking for me because I’m a girl.” She ponders this and asks Dad where the men would have taken her. In fatherly fashion, he attempts to assure her that no one would ever take her from him, but the unspoken answer is terrifying.
Dad later explains to Rag that their world needs more women to be right again, to create a balance. “Why can’t men keep it balanced?” Rag asks. Dad responds, “Cause they were scared and sad and lonely and that made them angry, and when they’re angry they lost sight of everything that is important and good in life.”
A world without one of the two genders would indeed be bleak and ugly. Why? Because something profound and irreplaceable would be lost—something the other gender could not manufacture or replicate from just itself.
In order to hide his innocent daughter from these men, Dad disguises his daughter as a boy—close-cropped hair, baggy clothes, a ball cap—when they venture to town for rations. A pivotal scene shows Rag’s longing to express her femininity, as she stumbles across a girl’s closet in an abandoned house. She is delighted, eyes wide with excitement, as she showcases a sparkly jacket, amazed that it fits. Her father admonishes her for her carelessness, however, demanding she remove the item. Hiding her femininity is what keeps her alive.
In a beautiful scene, Dad recounts to Rag the day—shortly before the mysterious virus broke out and wiped out the world’s women, including Rag’s mother (Elizabeth Moss)—that he found out she was going to be a girl. He wanted to know whether he should buy boy or girl clothes and found his answer upon seeing the doctor’s scrawled note on the ultrasound picture: “This is your daughter.” But in this post-apocalyptic world, Dad now has to deny Rag her femininity to protect her. And it’s heartbreaking.
Half of Intended Whole
“Is there really two of every species?” Rag asks Dad, wondering if she’s the only female left. The two lay face to face, illuminated by the glow of a flashlight. Dad has just recounted a version of Noah’s Ark in the kind of improvisational nature a parent undertakes with bedtime stories—part traditional storytelling injected with funny accents and animals with human names. She worries the way only a preteen girl can, even in dystopia. “My legs aren’t long enough,” she tells Dad, showing him a fashion magazine from an abandoned library. He tells her those magazines lie and her legs are just fine because they only have to be tall enough to reach the ground. Body image haunts her even in a society that has been stripped to mere survival.
In contrast to today’s culture—which denies biology in its brazen proclamations that sex is malleable and gender difference is just a construct that serves the patriarchy—the film highlights the distinct natures of female and male and their need to coexist in harmony. The near extinction of females has caused the male species to deteriorate to roving violence and destruction. The film calls this a “loss of balance,” but Christians know this as a break in the biblical design of the complementary nature of the sexes, established by God in Genesis (1:26–28).
In contrast to today’s culture—which denies biology in its brazen proclamations that sex is malleable and gender difference is just a construct that serves the patriarchy—the film highlights the distinct natures of female and male and their need to coexist in harmony.
By setting the film in the brokenness of a world without females, Affleck highlights the beauty and uniqueness that women bring to mankind—not because they are better than men, but because they are different; one half of a divine design that allows both sexes to flourish in harmonious relationship with one another. Despite society’s modern notions of gender being fluid and arbitrary, films like Light of My Life show how women and men have intrinsic value and need each other, thriving in diverse union together rather than in homogenous—and eventually apocalyptic—isolation among one’s own sex.
God’s stunning genius was on display when he designed male and female as distinct sexes that complement and need one another. Sometimes we can’t see the beauty of it until we see the horror of the alternative, which is why Light of My Life is a film worth watching.