Where God Left His Shoes (Movie)

This movie is about a homeless family trying to find shelter during one Christmas. The bulk of the movie is about Frank trying to land a job before 6pm on Christmas eve in order for him to secure an apartment for his family. Unfortunately, every job he applied turned out to be a dead end street, and the audience is left wondering how the movie would end .. would someone be kind enough to offer him a job, would a long lost relative rescue them, would he have a windfall of good fortune, etc.? No, the movie has nothing to do with it. It portrays quite an inside look of a "down and out" man fighting for his family and for his own dignity. It shows that at the deepest part of a man, he would do anything to provide for his family. He would keep fighting even to the point of doing the most humiliating job to provide for the family. In one of the most moving scenes in the movie, Frank took up a cup and went begging on the street while trying to hide his face behind his jacket. He was obviously embarrassed by his mode of earning a living given that he was formerly a boxer. Then his son also came along, begging alongside him, co-laboring with each other, giving each other support, (while at the same time, trying to compete and outdo each other ... typical males!)

There is also a part of the movie where the son eventually broke down from the harshness of life, by the seeming neglect from the father, the lack of emotional support which he so desperately needed. Though he probably understood the maleness, as Frank explained to him, that may have prevented Frank from showing his love more explicitly, his son had to wrestle with this as he learned the language of love from man to man. Frank also eventually learned how to love his son. In the last scene, he whispered to his son that he loved him, and there was such a contentment in his son that he could then rest peacefully even in a subway train. It is a great movie about man, manhood, and the struggle of being a man.

Where God may seem to have abandoned this family, the movie shows that by sticking together, the family actually grows more intimately together. Hardship does not have to tear a family apart, it can draw the family together instead. As long as the family is committed to live and grow together, willing to adjust and adapt to one another, there is hope. Frank has said it prophetically early in the movie "... it ain't where God left his shoes ..". He realized that each new day is a possibility, and that there is hope, that he could have a chance to keep his family (rather than seeing them go back to his wife's ex.). But he was wrong on basing this hope on the job / apartment to keep the family together. He eventually learned that it was commitment, the love in the family, that keeps them together.