Every so often, there is a work of art that strikes me in a way that has a lasting impact on how I view the world, or reinforces a particular belief I have. The first time I heard “3rd Planet” by the band Modest Mouse quite literally changed how I looked at music. When I first saw “Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl,” a film directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and written by Jesse Andrews (who also authored the book upon which the film is based), I was moved in a way that caused me to think about that movie for literal years afterward.
This effect does not always happen – perhaps because I zone out too much or just don’t have the emotional capacity for the appreciation that the impact works of art can have on a person’s emotions and emotional intelligence. Perhaps that’s a personal failing, or perhaps it’s indicative of my neurons being fried from my mental illness.
In any case, I recently watched the Netflix limited series “Midnight Mass” which was created by Mike Flanagan and tells the story of an isolated island community and the events that befall it when a mysterious priest who is filling in for their longtime pastor Monsignor Pruitt arrives and miracles start to happen.
I would like to focus on one particular character and within the framework of that character, the one particular scene that has had the same effect on me as the above-mentioned works had on me in earlier times in my life. Spoilers ahead.
Riley Flynn is one of the main characters of the series – the first episode enters on the fateful event where he drunkenly crashed into a vehicle driven by a young woman, killing her on impact but sparing him with nothing more than a couple cuts and bruises. Riley sees the girl lying lifeless on the ground as EMTs perform CPR, and he starts to utter the Lord’s Prayer. Another EMT tending to Riley’s minor injuries wonders why it’s always the “drunk assholes” who end up alive and not the innocent kids. A quick montage shows Riley’s guilty plea and sentencing to jail for 4 years, and ends with him lying awake on his cot, staring into the wall as he sees an image of the girl he killed lying in a pool of blood, covered in glass shards reflecting the blue and red lights of police cruisers.
This image repeats many times throughout the series up until episode 5, where it changes at the very end.
Riley discovers, during his meetings with Father Paul (who is, in fact, a rejuvenated Monsignor Pruitt who encountered a vampiric being while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and returned to Crockett Island with it in order to “bless the residents” and “people of his flock”), that Father Paul is the Monsignor and, after realizing that the Father lied about local drunk Joe Collie’s whereabouts, returns to the community center to confront him.
Upon entering the community center, Riley sees the vampire draining its blood into a vessel for Father Paul to mix in with the sacramental wine, and, before he can react, is attacked, killed, and turned into a vampire himself by the creature.
Despite Father Paul’s framing of this as a blessing, Riley sees what Father Paul is blind to and realizes that he cannot live as a vampire and that his only option is to embrace the coming dawn and die so that he does not hurt anyone else.
Perhaps it is Riley’s relatively fresh experience of killing another, albeit unintentionally, that helps him to so easily make the decision not to accept the “gift” of vampirism. He understands that one of the only things a human has in this life is their ability to choose, and by being forcefully turned into a vampire, he must now choose between giving in to the insatiable hunger or accepting his death by sunlight.
Riley and Erin (his childhood sweetheart with whom he has rekindled a romance upon moving back) have a discussion earlier on what happens when you die. Where do we go? It is a question that has been pondered by countless individuals over centuries, and there is still no concrete answer or proof.
Despite being a vampire, Riley talks to Erin and convinces her to row out to sea with her on a boat even though she thought he was dead. He tells Erin his story, which consequently takes most of the night until early morning, and upon finishing, Erin remarks that this is why he brought her out here – so that he could kill her and feed with impunity.
But she is wrong, and Riley explains that he brought her out there because he would have nowhere to go. He could not hide from his eventual fate. Riley knew, almost immediately upon being revived, that he could not live this way. He could not exist as a vampire and lie to those whom he loved and cared about, with Erin chief among them.
And so we view Riley’s last words as he bares his soul to Erin:
I brought you out here so I’d have nowhere to go. I’m not as strong as you – I never was. What do I want? I want you to take this boat and row to the mainland and leave this place and never look back. But I knew you wouldn’t do that. I knew you wouldn’t believe any of this unless you saw. I want you to run. But I believe you’re gonna row back there and do everything you can to try and save them. I’m just so sorry you have to see this.
I love you, Erin Greene. I’ve loved you my whole life – one way or another. I did my best.
I did my best.
And the sun rises, and Riley Flynn opens his eyes, and is greeted by the same girl he killed and who has haunted him for years, but she is different. She is no longer covered in blood staring back at him with lifeless eyes from a body covered in glass. She is looking at him with a wise kindness, and a small smile escapes her lips as she reaches out to take his hand and take him from this life to the next. Riley rises from his seat in the rowboat, takes her hand, and the next thing we see is Riley Flynn immolating in the sun and Erin Greene screaming in horror as her friend and lover turns to ash before her very eyes.
There are plenty of death scenes in cinema, and plenty that prey on vulnerable audiences or give in to shock value – especially in the horror genre. Some death scenes have stuck with me – Boromir sacrificing himself in The Fellowship of the Ring, Captain Kaneda staying behind to fix the solar shield in Sunshine, Billy sacrificing himself at the end of Stranger Things season 3. These all have a common thread – they are individuals who put the group above themselves. They sacrifice themselves to save a group of people who cannot save themselves. Perhaps that is why Riley’s death sticks with me – he sacrifices his life so that he can attempt to save Erin’s life. But what sticks with me more is the forgiveness Riley receives at the end of his life that he has so desperately been seeking. The young woman whom he killed, whose life he took while in a drunken stupor, appears before him – not mangled and covered in cuts and glass and blood – but beautiful and shrouded in a heavenly aura, backlit by the dawn of a rising sun. There is more than just the surface-level symbolism here. Flanagan has purposely put this young woman in Riley’s vision throughout the story multiple times to evoke not just an understanding of Riley’s quest for sobriety but also his quest for forgiveness and redemption.
Another aspect of cinema that I believe is woefully underused is planned silence. The film adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper uses silence masterfully. There are various scenes where there is commotion but instead of having audio play, there is no music, no dialogue, only the image on screen and silence. In Midnight Mass, this effect is used to juxtapose the serenity Riley experiences with the horror and terror Erin sees unfolding in front of her.
When Riley closes his eyes and then opens them on the sunrise, the only music is a barely-audible rendition of the classic hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” As he rises to meet the sun and go with the young woman, a rushing sound fades in and we cut to Erin Greene screaming in horror as Riley turns to ash in front of her. The screen cuts to black, and Erin’s screams continue, unabated.
While there are plenty of readings of Midnight Mass and layers of symbolism to interpret, I would suggest that this one scene is the lynchpin of the entire story. Father Paul’s insistence that he brought the “angel” to cure and provide miracles for the town and island he loved were quickly erased upon seeing that he only brought the angel back to save the woman with whom he broke his vow of celibacy and with whom he fathered a child and have a second chance at life with them. Despite all the pleading and insistence to Riley and Deb and others that saving and providing for the town was the goal, that simply isn’t true. It was selfishness. Father Paul wanted a chance at the life he couldn’t have; he wanted to be a husband and father and not just a shepherd to a flock.
Riley, however, takes the higher, nobler path. He is robbed of his humanity and, instead of giving in to these vampiric urgings and insatiable hunger, he sacrifices himself. He did his best.
That is all we can hope for – to do our best. And so the ultimate theme of Midnight Mass is that we can, despite our surroundings and environment, hope to do our best.
Nate Livsey 