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When I’m with you, I feel safe…it’s like I’m home.�

- Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) to Samantha (Natalie Portman) in Garden State

I’ve watched three films on DVD in the past five days – Anchorman, I Heart Huckabees and Garden State.

Anchorman is a very Will Ferrell-type of movie. A lot of inane humour, mixed in with the absurd bordering on slapstick and underneath all that, a lot of heart. I don’t quite know how else to describe it. It’s simply a Will Ferrell-type of movie.

I Heart Huckabees is a quirky mediation on philosophy and the meaning of life that strangely reminded me of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, though perhaps that’s because they both star Jason Schwartzman, who seems to be the poster boy for films of this genre. It’s a film that bears repeated watching, mainly because it’s unlikely you’ll get it the first time round, unless you’re a philosophy major; which means I need to do some major reading up and research before I try to get a better handle on the film. I do happen to think, at this point of time at least, that Rushmore is the superior film and that David O. Russell’s earlier effort Three Kings is a better gauge of his ability as a film maker.

My favourite of the three is Garden State. Admittedly, it is a far simpler treatment of the theme of life and meaning in life than I Heart Huckabees, understandably because it’s writer-director-actor Zach Braff’s directorial debut but that’s what I like about it.

There are a few ambitious and clichéd shots where it’s plainly obvious that Braff wants the audience to know that his character Andrew Largeman is undergoing an existential crisis but barring those, the beauty and strength of the film surfaces when he’s content to simply portray the interactions between the various characters. Of course, the film is helped by understated but powerful performances by Braff himself (I love Scrubs!), Natalie Portman (One of my three favourite actresses!) and Peter Sarsgaard.

I think I identified with the protagonist, Andrew Largeman, a lot. A shot near the beginning of the film where he lies on the bed in a plain-white room and stares up into a ceiling is precisely the shot I’ve dreamed of doing years ago when I still harboured dreams of being a film maker. And it captures so perfectly that state of existential angst – who am I, why am I here, what’s the point of all this – that I was struggling with so mightily before my Father found me. The fact that Andrew has a screwed up relationship with his parents, especially his father, made the film resonate even more deeply.

Of course, my struggle now is not with those questions mentioned above – they’ve been utterly answered – but with the challenge and the excruciating fight to be a Christian, a true son of God.

And that’s where and why the words at the top of this entry pierced me deeply. It resonates from when I was before a Christian and even now when I’m a Christian. We search for identity, we desire to find ourselves, some place where we belong, where everything makes sense and, in the end, if we seek hard enough, we find out that “home� is not a thing. It’s not even a place.

Home is a person.

In Garden State, Andrew’s home is Samantha. In our world, this living state we find ourselves ensconced in, home is a return, and in so many ways much more than that, to the garden state Adam and Eve were once in and which we now have access to thanks to the Cross.

Home is Jesus Christ.

Home is being in Christ. Home is, most wondrously, being one with Father and the Son through the Spirit. When He’s with me and I with Him, I feel safe and I find myself as I truly am. Not who I think I am or what others think I am but who He thinks me to be. And life is such a marvellous discovery and journey of that.

Whatever struggles and trials might come my way, whatever battles lie ahead, I’m safe.

I’m home.