Theodophilus is an enigmatic person in the Bible whose name literally means lover of god, but is sometimes translated as loved of god or even friend thereof. When shortened to Theo, as in the case of Vincent van Gogh's very understanding brother, it simply means God. To live up to such a name a person must be sorely tested. A stunning example of this existential challenge, in the form of a Middle Eastern misadventure, is beautifully documented in Theo Who Lived, opening Dec. 16 at that stand-alone jewel of independent film programming, the Roxie.
Theo Padnos is a 45-year-old itinerant journalist, in his father's words, who quixotically crossed the border from Antakya, Turkey, into Syria in 2012, running through orchards with only his backpack towards a story he hoped would earn him $500 upon publication in the New Republic . Had he known the scale of the tale on which he was launching himself, he might not have hopped that fatal barbed-wire fence. Any inkling of how much trouble he'd get into he simply ignored, hot in pursuit of an unnamed truth he could only find through suffering, captivity, and deprivation.
Through his foolishness, Theo earned himself 22 months of confinement in various dungeons, as his Al Qaeda captors shifted their headquarters. His guards hoped he was CIA, due to his impeccable Arabic, which he'd picked up wandering around the Middle East. He was no ordinary prisoner. He'd already written books, even converted to Islam, in his writerly quest to enter the mind of the "enemy." His backstory wasn't known, since his byline didn't match the legal name on his passport. He passed for one more American journalist to be kidnapped, sequestered, and ransomed.
David Schisgall has directed this film with grace and eloquence, letting Theo tell it his way, in a site-specific reenactment that is itself a bit adventurous. The two of them retrace the itinerary from Antakya to Aleppo, Syria, as Theo, who has the wide-eyed gentleness of Ishmael in Moby Dick , narrates the danger, pain, and philosophical clarity that enabled him to survive intact. He's worried he's putting his old mother through a harrowing time, and this very worry is a life-line back to the stately farm in Vermont where she re-enacts dicing onions as her way of staying grounded in daily life.
New England is a different country. We don't see much of it anymore. Bernie Sanders was a brief burst of Yankee sensibility that took the country by storm. New Englanders are known for their common sense, marbled with a mystic streak exemplified by Emily Dickinson, and a maverick virtue embodied by Henry Thoreau. Schisgall, who also hails from that neck of the woods, captures the quiet dignity of the womenfolk working for Theo's release. Emotions run deep, with only a few flashes of sadness in the eyes. Theo embodies the best of his heritage by remaining resolute, virtuous, poetic, and even loving to his captors.
There are many ways to receive this film: as a travelogue to a war zone, as a nightmare road trip, as a primer on torture, or as an uncanny juxtaposition of two cultures too far removed from each other to have any hope of reconciling differences. Yet Theo manages to communicate with his keepers, and in an echo of the great warrior-gone-native Lawrence of Arabia, to see and be seen by them as an equal in humanity. The end result is the most subtle anti-war film imaginable. By his amazing feat of foolish self-endangerment, Theo serves as a mystic sacrifice who breaks the chains of war.