Manglehorn:

A Story About Intimacy
As what we long for and yet resist

The film Manglehorn takes its name from the man at the centre of the story it tells. He is elderly but still works as a locksmith in a small Texan town. He is a solitary person as his marriage has failed and he hardly ever sees his only child called Jacob, a successful business man in his twenties. We rarely see anybody in his store which is dark and its front window is so dirty that it lets in very little light. His main work seems to be answering calls from people who have locked themselves out of their cars.

A solitary man
He lives alone with Fanny his cat which is the focus of much of his affection. He seems to have a relationship with someone called Clare but I was not sure that she was part of an intimate relationship he had in the past or whether she was a creation of his imagination. He writes to her regularly only to have all his letters returned unopened. She seems to offer an outlet for his need for intimacy without this involving him in actual relationships that he would have to take responsibility for developing and maintaining.

Uncomplicated intimacy Fanny offers

Manglehorn is discontented with himself and the world he lives in, so much so that he says at one stage, ”I got nothing but frustration and disappointment from life”. There is a very revealing example of this disconnect between himself and his world when we see him out walking and he comes across a horrific pile up of cars. We are startled by his indifference as he continues eating his takeaway meal without once stopping or being involved in the tragedy he was witnessing,

Not a very uplifting figure to base a film on one would think. However, there is a lot of charm about the way Manglehorn relates with the people he meets during his working day and added to this is that he is played by Al Pacino. Even though Pacino is much less forceful than in other roles he plays he brings his own unique dynamism to the one he plays here.

One person who is seduced by this charm is Dawn who works at the bank where Manglehorn has an account. Even though she is much younger than he is she is charmed by him and especially when he asks her to join him for a meal. But this turns out to be a great disappointment for her as he insists on talking endlessly about his imaginary friend Clare and refuses to be drawn into the intimate relationship Dawn is looking for.

How we long for and yet resist intimacy

Manglehorn seems to me to be a film about our longing for intimacy as well as about our difficulty in doing what it takes to satisfy this longing. The film also portrays in stark terms the effects of our failure to answer this essential call of adult life. Manglenorn personifies our society which seeks instant intimacy but is not willing to face the pain involved in cultivating long-term relationships of some depth. As a result, he is afflicted by the modern malaise of depression that results from a loss of faith in ourselves, in others and in the world around us. It is in getting our whole person involved in cultivating these relationships as well as the love that creates and sustains them that Jesus says we will find life.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” Lk 10:25-28

Where we find life
We get an in-depth explanation of what Jesus is saying here from the writings of Erik Erikson, a German born American psychologist who wrote a lot about how we develop by answering four calls of adult life. These four are the call to identity, to intimacy, to become generative and finally there is the call of our later years to integrity or to the wisdom we learn from devoting ourselves to life’s key relationships.

Erikson believes that we cannot become intimate or share ourselves with another if we have not a self to share, a self that we accept and appreciate and thus find significant or important. If we do not accept our own limitations and appreciate how gifted we are as human beings and as people who ‘participate in the divine nature’, (2 Peter 1:4) we will have nothing that we will want to share with others. It is only safe to reveal ourselves to others when we are at home with ourselves, with our strengths as well as with our weaknesses.

I believe so deeply in what Erikson is saying that I have written a book called, The Search For Something More. based on his four calls of adult life. In connection with the film I am particularly interested in how Manglehorn’s failure to answer these first two calls to identity and intimacy affected his life. There is no doubt that as George Bernard Shaw points out that there is a lot of shame in our life, things we have not accepted and that we are reluctant to share.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us, ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

I think it is true to say that if we do not accept the limitations and sinfulness that are the source of our shame, we will not be able to move on to all we appreciate about ourselves and others. In this situation is is easy to understand why we erect a barrier between ourselves and others. It meets a need we have to hide from others all we are ashamed of. This is the limited and wayward self that we have never fully accepted and that will not allow us to appreciate how gifted we are by nature and by Grace.

The Wall
Some time between their first child and their last they allowed a wall to be erected between them. At the beginning it was little differences that were not sorted out and were stored away. These differences gave rise to feelings of frustration, doubt and resentment that they thought were too divisive to bring our into the open. He hid his fear of failure and she her sadness at losing him. Each sought refuge in other places and persons than in each other; he sought solace in his office while she channelled all her energy into her children.

So there the wall stood between them, so tall and thick that they could no longer touch each other across it. It was not the fruit of hostility or conflict so much as a failure to take the pains to work regularly at removing the obstacles to their communing.

Creeping separateness
In his book, A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken tells the story of his marriage and the effect that his long absences, while he was abroad working on a ship, had on it. He explains how he and his wife worked with these long periods of separation. However these periods of separation were not the real threat to their marriage. This was what they called ‘creeping separateness’ .

But why does love need to be guarded? Against what enemies? We looked about us and saw the world as having become a hostile and threatening place where standards of decency and courtesy were perishing and war loomed gigantic. A world where love did not endure. … But why? What was the failure behind the failure of love?

One day in early Spring we thought we saw the answer. The killer of love is creeping separateness. Involvedness is a gift of the gods, but then it is up to the lovers to cherish or to ruin. Taking love for granted, especially after marriage. Ceasing to do things together. Finding separate interests. We turning into I, what I want to do. This was the way of creeping separateness. And in the modern world, especially in the cities, everything favoured it. …. The failure of love might seem to be caused by hate or boredom or unfaithfulness with a lover; but these were results. First came the creeping separateness; the failure behind the failure.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the way we love and relate intimately with ourselves, with those close to us, with others and with the whole of creation is the cultural atmosphere in which we live today. A recent study sponsored by the European Union found that most of our divisions that have emerged at the personal and global level, such as the growth of fundamentalism, are due to the major divorce that has arisen between Religion and what the survey calls today’s dominant culture. This makes a priority of material and monetary values to the detriment of the love and the relationships that Jesus makes central. This cultural situation forces us to face the choice that W B Yeats explores in the following poem.

Faced with two ways: one broad one narrow

The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark,
When all that story is finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark;
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
W B Yeats

Jesus speaks about this choice between “Perfection of the life, or of the work” and it is very clear which for him was a priority. As we saw above, life for him is to be found in getting our whole person involved in learning how to love and relate. This for him is the precious pearl to buy which we must sell everything else that is of lesser value.

The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

In his parable of the sower Jesus reveals what is involved in making our own of this pearl. He says that if we are to make our own of the pearl of his love we must learn to listen and respond to it. For Jesus intimacy depends on the quality of this ongoing communication.

But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. Lk 8:15

The fruit of this communication, that it takes a lifetime to harvest, Is an intimacy or union that Jesus describes as “complete” as it is a share in that which he has with his Father and with their Spirit.

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Jn 17:22-23

At the end of the film, Manglehorn realises his mistake and returns to see Dawn. He wants to enter into the relationship she has offered him but she says that he will have to pay a hefty price for this as he will have to learn to listen and respond to her love.