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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
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Dead Man Walking

Ernie: The absence of the sacraments is pretty stark. Everything is halfway. It sounds good when she tells him redemption is going to come only after he owns up to what he's done, but then that's the whole thing for her, like it's all he needed to do.

Matthew: The priest said it was her job to get him to receive the sacraments; he was portrayed as hung up on exterior rituals and practices.

Ernie: He's saying, "the rituals of the church will get this guy through; it's what we have to offer him." She, on the other hand, shows him the love he hasn't gotten.

Matthew: She touches him as God would want her to.

Ernie: But that latter method is presented as the way things should be, and not as a companion to the sacraments. It sort of makes you squirm. There's no mention of any kind of grace -- even the grace of him having studied scripture to help him admit what he's done. It's all just kind of this personal epiphanous moment of pure religiosity.

Matthew: I think the film doesn't understand the sacraments, doesn't know what they are. It sees them as rituals and signs, instead of actual occasions of grace.