Sex, Love, Revenge ... and Atheism? Finally, a Big New Film That Shows Non-Belief in a Positive Light

A young man walks toward the ledge of a tall building. He is clearly filled with trepidation and even terror; at the same time, he has an equally clear air of purpose and resolve. That resolve: To jump.

It soon comes out that the man is an atheist. And the audience's first thought might be, "Oh, right. Atheism -- depressing, joyless, no sense of meaning or life's value. Why wouldn't he just kill himself?" But the story unfolds in places that are miles away from any such predictable path. Far from being depressed or joyless, the potential jumper, Gavin (Charlie Hunnam), has a singular joie de vivre. Far from having no meaning, his life is filled with compassion and intense moments of connection, both large and small. And his suicide attempt is not, as it turns out, a result of his seeing life as valueless and meaningless. It is, instead, an expression of his deep sense of how precious life is.

For reasons I can't tell you without giving away the ending.

Let's get this out of the way right at the start: I enjoyed the heck out of "The Ledge," and am recommending it heartily to pretty much everyone. Atheists, believers who are curious about atheists, people who just like good movies -- I recommend "The Ledge" to all of you. Written and directed by Matthew Chapman (author of Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir and 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania, as well as Charles Darwin's great-grandson), "The Ledge" is smart, riveting, complex, emotionally engaging, visually gorgeous... and best of all, almost entirely unpredictable. Its characters are, well, human -- likable, aggravating, tough, loving, damaged -- and the story is unpredictable in exactly the ways that human beings are unpredictable. It's not a perfect film -- I'll get to that in a tic -- but its imperfections are ten times more compelling than most of the boilerplate crap regularly churned out by the Hollywood machinery. (The movie is available now through On Demand and through online streaming from SundanceNow; it opens in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on July 8.)

It's hard to summarize the plot of "The Ledge" without giving too much away. And I'd truly hate to do that. Again, so much of what's good about this movie is its unpredictability, and I'd hate to take away the pleasure of seeing its surprises unfold. So I'll do my best to explain without spoiling. Soon after Gavin climbs onto on the ledge, he's confronted by a police officer, Hollis (Terrence Howard), who tries to talk him down. And as Hollis gets Gavin to tell him why he's on the ledge, we see the strange story of the events that led him out there.

It's a story of sex, love, revenge, and religion. A thriller, of sorts. Gavin meets an attractive new neighbor, Shana (Liv Tyler): a sweet, pensive, buttoned-down young woman married to an intense Christian extremist, Joe (Patrick Wilson). Joe's genuine devotion to Shana shows up in the form of paternalism and possessiveness... and his genuine devotion to God shows up in the form of close-mindedness and homophobic bigotry. So Gavin begins a scheme to liberate Shana away from Joe and into his own bed: partly out of lust, partly out of compassion, and partly out of pissy hostility towards Joe and his religion. But what starts as a casual, almost light-hearted game becomes intensely real -- as Gavin and Shana's connection grows stronger, as Shana's dilemma becomes more vivid, and as Joe's insecurity -- about both Shana and his own religious faith -- becomes increasingly volatile.

Gavin is the central character here. And in the pantheon of movie characters, he is both one of the more distinctive and one of the more instantly recognizable that I've seen in a while. As his story unfolded, I kept wondering, "Where is he going with this? What makes him tick? What on earth is he going to do next?" And at the same time, I kept thinking, "Oh, my lack of God -- I know this guy." Passionate, funny, combative, compassionate, way too quick with a snarky barb, equally quick to apologize and admit that he's an asshole, tender-hearted, quick-witted, competitive, impulsive, hard-assed, firmly realistic, fervently idealistic... I know this guy. I see dozens of people like him on atheist forums every day. Heck -- I'm more than a little like him myself. It's something I've said many times: To make characters that an audience can identify with, you don't make them generic and lowest-common-denominator. You make them personal. You make them quirky, complex, mixed-up, unique. You make them human. Humans are what other humans identify with... and writer/ director Chapman has done that in trumps with Gavin.