As I have aged, I have learned to be careful about making blanket statements.  When life brings us trouble, it is easy to cast everything around us in a despairing light.  We encounter bad traffic and think all drivers save for ourselves are terrible.  We have a bad experience with a customer service representative on the phone and suddenly our patience with similar people disappears.  I am sure you can come up with your own examples.  One I would like to highlight based on today’s film, Erin Brockovich (2000), is the notion that there is no such thing as a good corporation or government.  They each want to retain for themselves as much and power as possible, and they do not care who they harm in the process.  Like much of what I have already discussed, this is hyperbole.  However, when these entities do err, it is our Christian duty to hold them accountable.  How that happened in one case is the subject of this film.

One of things one can assume would be needed in order to maintain this balance would be for Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) to be a lawyer.  Instead, the eponymous character is a single mother looking for a job.  The interview at the beginning does not result in employment.  Frustrated, she gets into her beat up car and drives away, only to be t-boned as she drives through an intersection.  The attorney to whom she is referred is Edward “Ed” L. Masry (Albert Finney).  Based on the fact that she is the victim, she expects him to be able recoup at least some of her mounting medical bills.  Instead, the jury sides with the physician defendant, a decision not helped by her fiery attitude.  Ed takes the brunt of her ire as they walk out of the courtroom, and she must go back to her three kids and carry on trying to provide for them without the expected windfall.  She makes a number of phone calls in search of work, but nothing is successful.  Instead, she returns to Ed’s office and starts making herself useful.  When he finally notices her, she forcefully talks herself into a position.  Things also slightly improve at home.  One of the babysitters she hires decides to drop her kids off with George (Aaron Eckhart), her biker next door neighbor, without informing Erin.  When the panicked mother finally finds them with him, she is somewhat relieved that he is at ease with them and handling guardian duties well.  He is also attracted to her, but she is resistant to his advances having already had two ex-husbands.  Despite his Viking-like appearance, George wins over Erin and she comes to rely on him as a boyfriend and an extra parent.  This is needed because while going through the firm’s files, she notices that there are medical records mixed in with real-estate documents, and she devotes extra time to understanding them when her co-workers prove unhelpful.  She receives permission from Ed to look into the matter further, and thus she travels to Hinkley, California, to talk to residents living next to a plant owned by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).  Her first contact is Donna Jensen (Marg Helgenberger), whose family has experienced a number of health problems.  Initially, she does not believe PG&E could be the culprit because they had been upfront about the chromium getting into the town’s water supply, and had paid all their medical expenses.  In making further inquiries about chromium, Erin learns there are different types of chromium, one that is actually good for you, but another that is used to lubricate machinery.  I think you can guess which one those living in Hinkley were consuming.  Yet, because Erin has been spending so much time out of the office, when she finally returns it is to an empty desk and Ed firing her.  It does not take long for him to realize his mistake, this time caused by a scientist who had called to give her more information on chromium.  Ed sees that there is a potentially major case on their hands, and Erin agrees to hand over the information she has collected in exchange for reinstatement of her job, a raise, and benefits.  With this, it is back to work, interviewing larger numbers of people, doing more research at the county water administration’s office, and collating all the data.  This means George taking on an increasingly greater role in childcare, though with less time spent as her boyfriend.  He suggests that she quit and find different work, but she has become invested in the lives of Hinkley’s residents, seeing the pain PG&E has done to young and old alike and promising to do something about it.  While the evidence is mounting of wrongdoing, Ed points out that they still do not have what they need to demonstrate a conspiracy.  He is also taking on a great deal of financial risk himself, paying out of pocket all the legal expenses needed to fight a multi-billion-dollar corporation.  To help, he enlists a partner, Kurt Potter (Peter Coyote).  Erin is not initially happy with the addition, but with there being a monetary boon, she receives a large bonus in order to hire a nanny. However, Kurt’s involvement still means changes, and his suggestion involves a risky strategy that has those in Hinkley worried that the lawyers are reneging on their promises.  In order to proceed, Kurt tells them that they need hundreds of more signatures of people willing to stake their names on the proceedings.  To gather these, Ed and Erin go door-to-door, rallying the support of the last few holdouts.  The biggest breakthrough comes when Erin is approached in a bar by a man named Charles Embry (Tracey Walter).  At first, she is creeped out by him, but then he says that he is a former PG&E employee who had destroyed documents for them.  This breakthrough helps Ed and Kurt win hundreds of millions of dollars for the families of Hinkley, with $5 million specifically going to the Jensens.  For her hard work, Erin is given a final cut of $2 million.

It should be pointed out that Erin Brockovich, or anyone else in the case, did not go into it to get rich.  Indeed, Erin starts the film simply trying to provide for her children.  There is a wonderful Christian moment when, after her failed court case involving her accident, she takes them to a diner.  She allows them to order whatever they like, but gets nothing for herself.  Though she lies and tells them that Ed took her to a fancy lunch, and is thus full, it is a small sacrifice that counts a great deal.  Further, she frames much of what she does as being for her little ones.  She would rather be there for them, but when there are needs to be met, hard decisions have to be made.  They become painful when resentment is involved, such as when her son, Matthew Brown (Scotty Leavenworth), begins resenting her coming home late from work.  Even Jesus was not immune to the difficulties of opting for the path less traveled.  Scripture tells us in Matthew 26:39 that on the eve of His Passion, He asks His Father in Heaven to “let this cup pass from me,” referring to His ordained death and resurrection.  Let us not forget that the next line has Jesus amending His position, stating that it is not His will but that of the Father’s that should be done.  In other words, there is something bigger at play.  For Erin, it is not just about how awful it is to miss out on her kids and their growth, like not being there for her youngest daughter’s first word.  It is about helping get justice for other little boys and girls.  Eventually, Matthew understands the situation when he picks up one of Erin’s files and reads about another young man his age that is suffering from a debilitating disease caused by PG&E.  Such revelations help us understand that we are part of a community, and that it is good to be mutually beneficial to one another.  Like Jesus, our actions should take others into consideration, and when they do not, those matters need to be addressed.

There are many examples of characters in Erin Brockovich coming to terms with the selfishness of their ways.  The only disappointing aspect of the movie is Erin’s willingness to objectify herself in order to get things done.  I guess one has to use whatever tools are at one’s disposal, but I wish she had chosen differently.  Otherwise, this is a pretty powerful movie that will get you thinking.