Last Monday, Pope Francis passed away.  Over the course of his twelve-year pontificate, there were moments I felt proud that he was my pope, and others when I worried about his direction for the Catholic Church.  The times that I worried pertained mostly to his statements on economic disparities, which always sounded too socialistic for my taste.  What I came to appreciate most about him, particularly in the last few years, was his commitment to poor and oppressed people.  Society has a tendency to look to the past and compare it to the future, believing that the present is so much better than the past.  As a blanket ideology, there is some truth to this position.  Populations have grown thanks to advancements in medicine and information moves (for better or worse) at a pace that gives access to ideas in some of the remotest parts of the world, to name a few ways in which things have improved.  At the same time, Pope Francis emphasized the Church’s role in walking with the weakest among us because they still exist.  Whether someone is sick or marginalized, for whatever the reason, these are the people that the late Pope Francis, like Jesus, wanted us to embrace.  While watching The Legend of Ochi, I thought of Pope Francis and how he would have handled the fictional society we see in it.  As my review unfolds, I believe you will see the obvious parallels.

The society featured in The Legend of Ochi is on a small island in the Black Sea, at least according to our initial narrator and main character, Yuri (Helena Zengel).  To the loner teenaged girl, it must seem like a small place where the only alternative to sheep herding is being a part of the cadre of young people who hunt ochi.  This latter activity is essential as these humanoid creatures regularly kill and eat their livestock, sometimes attacking humans.  They are a cross between a gremlin and a yeti, like if a mogwai grew to be the size of a chimpanzee without turning into a rambunctious murder monster.  They also have no problem with water.  Like gremlins, though, they do most of their work at night, and that is when Maxim (Willem Dafoe) leads his band of adolescent ochi hunters into the woods.  It does not take long to spot a group of the intelligent beasts, though they know of the encroach of people long before they are revealed.  In the scramble of teenagers wildly firing guns and starting fires, an ochi pup gets separated from its mother.  There is no gender revealed for this little one, nor is it given a name, but for clarity’s sake I am going to refer to it is Jeff.  Jeff’s mother is wounded and cannot get to her offspring.  All the same, Maxim’s group retreats.  Even though they had not killed any ochi, the next day he talks about how proud he is of their performance.  A forlorn Yuri watches from the back, gently stroking a pigeon she has befriended, not enjoying her father’s bombastic speech.  That evening at supper, a song comes on the radio that reminds Maxim of Yuri’s mother, Dasha (Emily Watson), who had left some years ago.  This is a sore subject for Yuri, and she rebels when Maxim suggests that she went away because she did not want her daughter.  To quell the rising argument, Maxim orders Yuri to head out to check the ochi traps.  It is during this jaunt that she encounters Jeff, who has his little leg caught in a steel vice.  Jeff wants nothing to do with girl, but she manages to pin him back and free him. Though he attempts to escape, his leg is too damaged to get far, and he is too weak to make a good effort.  Taking compassion on the creature, Yuri scoops him up and brings him to her house, promising not to hurt him.  Once in her room, he is still all fangs until she inserts a set of costume teeth to make him feel more at ease.  From there, he grows more comfortable with her to the point that his bird-like hoots become louder.  With a village trained to treat such sounds as a sign of danger, she quickly decides that she is going to run away with him and return him to his home.  On the way out her window, she is stopped by Petro (Finn Wolfhard), her adopted brother, who is trained to kill ochi but lets her go.  The next morning when Maxim realizes that his daughter is gone, he assumes she has been kidnapped by ochi when he finds blood and fur in her room.  Assembling the ochi hunters, including Petro, they depart to look for Yuri.  Noticing that Jeff is hungry, Yuri goes into a grocery store, but Jeff is noticed in her backpack.  In the ensuing panic, Jeff bites Yuri out of fear.  She does not blame him, but later it looks like some kind of infection is happening as a large lump breaks out and turns blue.  At the same time, she begins to be able to communicate with him, in speech and in understanding his whistles.  Before any major discussions can commence, though, she falls into an ochi trap.  The person who gets her out is Dasha, who has experience dealing with the ochi in a more peaceful manner.  It is her that taught her daughter the melodies that make up the creature’s language, having learned them from ancient texts Dasha collected over the years.  Still, she believes that Yuri’s goal is a foolish one, which angers the teenager.  Yuri soon departs in search of Jeff, finding him by using the ochi hoots.  Maxim gets to Dasha not long thereafter and discovers a map that leads to the main area in which the ochi reside.  That is Yuri’s destination, too, and she gets to the river side entrance before Maxim’s forces.  Maxim cannot understand why Yuri would defy her in this way, and goes in after her alone.  He almost catches up to her, but injures himself by getting his leg pinned between two logs, roughly similar to what happened to Jeff.  Asking for his understanding, she assists in freeing him while seeing Jeff’s gentleness.  With that, they head into the ochi enclosure where a number of leery adults watch them.  A peaceful exchange is almost ruined by a trigger-happy ochi hunter before Petro can wrech the gun away.  The situation is calmed again by the arrival of Dasha, who plays a song that seems to speak to the ochi.  Jeff and his mom are happily reunited, as are Dasha and Yuri, and the movie ends.

The Legend of Ochi ends on a happy note, one of unity and understanding between foes.  Such a conclusion is made possible when Dasha and Petro discover on the wall of the ochi cave long-forgotten drawings that suggest that humans and ochi once lived in harmony.  Now, clearly these are fictional creatures, even if the location in which these events happen has the veneer of being real.  The only specific geographical feature given is the Black Sea, but it is clearly some place tinged with a Soviet past.  At any rate, the origin stories depicted reminded me of the Old Testament, particularly the Garden of Eden, where such animosity did not exist.  Indeed, we were not put on this Earth to be at odds with one another, but Adam and Eve’s curiosity and pride laid the groundwork for sin to enter the world.  There are some so-called Christians that look at the world as a contentious place where you need to stick to your own kind for fear of what the other might do to you.  You can see this attitude in the movie.  When Yuri takes off with Jeff, there is real betrayal in Petro’s eyes.  These feelings are echoed by Maxim outside of the ochi cave.  We are also taught to experience the Faith as children, and Yuri provides the blueprint for doing so.  She is not perfect by any means, stealing a car outside of the grocery store after breaking a bunch of things, not to mention her angry outburst towards Maxim.  At the same time, we see the power of forgiveness, and that is the film’s ultimate message.  God forgives you, too, and I hope that is something you can remember.

One of my problems with watching a movie like The Legend of Ochi is that I remember what I researched for my doctoral dissertation regarding the way Christianity is typically portrayed.  Unfortunately, your usual Hollywood Christian is narrow minded and depicted as acting against the best interests of the protagonist, or society more broadly.  This describes Maxim for most of the film, who quotes Scripture while speaking out against the ochi.  Not to name anyone specifically, but one can see parallels in Maxim to certain groups in the United States and around the world.  Having another group of people against which to form your identity lends itself to broad hatreds that go on for generations.  What these attitudes ignore is the reality that God is the Creator of us all.  Having this in common is the basis of a brotherhood among peoples that we are so ready to throw away when we feel threatened by others.  We do not like change, which might sound like quite the statement coming from a Catholic, but our Church (with some notable exceptions) has always favored treating people, especially the most vulnerable, as emphasized by Pope Francis.  He sought to put God’s love into action, and that is what you see at the end of the film.  It changes Maxim’s heart, and that is a miracle.

There are lots of small miracles in The Legend of Ochi, which is why it gets my recommendation.  From the softening of hearts, to the mechanical wonders that went into its production, there is a lot to like about the movie.  I could have done without Yuri’s thievery, but she is just a kid acting for the benefit of another.  If only we could all have the same attitude, albeit with less stealing.