Sometime in the early to mid ’80s, a man named Arlen Faber (Jeff Daniels) met God. In 1988, Faber published a book entitled Me and God in which he shared his encounters and conversations with none other than the Big Guy himself. In the weeks and months that followed, the book topped best-seller lists, dominated the covers of every major magazine, and became an overnight pop culture phenomenon. Twenty years later, with ten percent of the “God market” still firmly in its grip, the book about a man and God is considered to have redefined spirituality for an entire generation. However, ask anyone if they’ve ever met the mysterious man who spoke to God and penned His thoughts for all to read, and the answer would be a resounding no.
Open The Answer Man, a movie about lives full of questions, people in search of answers, and a man who actually doesn’t have them all. Arlen Faber may be revered by millions as the man who changed their lives forever, but when we first meet him, he’s just another guy swearing at the mail carrier who has so rudely interrupted his afternoon meditation session. When his frustration with the latest series of self-enlightenment books reaches a breaking point, he’s just another rude customer that bookstore owner Kris Lucas (Lou Taylor Pucci) must ask God “to grant him the serenity to accept that he cannot change.” And when his back goes out and he crawls his way to a newly opened chiropractic clinic owned by Elizabeth (Lauren Graham), he’s just another person in need of a healing hand.
Of course, such a famous name can only stay hidden for so long, and soon Kris and Elizabeth are more than aware of who Faber is. Struggling to stay sober while still living with his alcoholic father, Kris brokers a deal with Faber to take an offending book or two off of Faber’s hands in exchange for answers to questions. “Why can’t I do the things I want to do? Free will or destiny? If God created everything, how come there are so many bad things in this world? How can I love my father even though he’s selfish and he’s scaring me?” Kris asks. “Nothing happens to you; you choose what you want. Opposites. Without bad, we would never fully recognize or appreciate good. You have the free will to run towards or away from a purpose. Let go of your expectations,” Faber answers.
As Faber gets to know Elizabeth, their relationship is less one of teacher and student and more one of mutual respect and trust. A single mother who straps her school-aged son into a futuristic car seat every morning and bids him goodbye with a “Be careful. Have fun,” she invites Faber into her life as one of what seems to be very few men on whom she’s been willing to take a risk. Elizabeth turns to Faber for encouragement and trusts him with her son. But when an actual crisis occurs and Faber literally offers nothing more than an apathetic stare, between his words and his actions opens up a disconnect.
As we pretty much see from the beginning of the movie and Elizabeth and Kris come to see gradually, Faber isn’t exactly the man so many people imagine him to be. He is rude, he is deceitful, and most of the time he only seems to care about himself. When he puts on a fake name for the afternoon, he picks Zebulon, Hebrew for “exalted.” As he reveals in a scene in which he shows Elizabeth his collection of monster figurines, allowing any of his monsters out of his locked closet and into the open for even a minute is nearly unfathomable. But as we see, when those monsters do come out and that expectation of who he should be meets who he actually is, it is somewhat of a rude awakening.
In a way, The Answer Man is a film that challenges us to not so easily accept and praise the spiritual leaders who offer us straight paths to enlightenment, peace, and hope. But at the same time that the film challenges the humans who claim to hold all the answers to all our questions, it also brings the God behind those answers under question.
As Kris tells Faber, Faber pretty much confirms his worst fears: “I mean you had the Man on the phone, and this is where it got you.” As Faber tells Kris when he asks about heaven and hell, his less than comforting concept of it all is that the rapture is like a monster movie… and God is the monster. As Elizabeth’s son awaits the return of a father who never will, so arises a challenge to the belief that our creator will ever return to us. As characters ask question after question to hear only silence, so is posed the question of if God even knows, cares, or exists at all.
At the end of it all, it’s difficult to say exactly what The Answer Man has to say about God. He might be real; He might not. He might still be involved in our lives; He might not. When it comes to the answers we do have, as Faber puts it, maybe we just made them up, or maybe whoever’s up there actually used us to communicate the truth. But if there’s one truth that The Answer Man almost definitely points to, it’s that it’s not so much the answers that give us the hope and reason we need to live; it’s how those answers come alive, how they reside inside of us, and how they move in the world in which we live. As many answers as Faber gives Kris, when he needs help, it is Elizabeth’s embrace that means even more. As much as Faber’s answers make sense of what can often be confounding concepts, simply knowing how to explain a truth does not mean it’s any easier to face. Cue a final series of events involving honesty, transformation, and a chance for new beginnings, and I am reminded of why, even on the days that I feel like God doesn’t exist or left long ago, a piece of me knows He’s still here. For speaking louder than any words and reaching across the greatest expanse of time and space is this: “God so loved the world that he gave His one and only son that we might have eternal life.”
