"Most"

Have you seen the movie "Most"?

It was shown in our church yesterday. Otherwise, seeing as it is a Czech independent short film, I would never have seen it. It is a story about a man who takes his young son to work, where he is a bridge operator, responsible for the lowering and raising of a train bridge over a busy waterway.

Somehow, the train comes early, while the bridge is still up and fails to stop at the signals. His son, who had been fishing, notices the off-schedule train and shouts to his dad, who doesn't hear him. So, the boy goes to try and pull the lever manually from the gears on the ground. Meanwhile, his dad has now noticed the approaching train, goes to look out the window, and is just in time to see his son fall into the gears.

Now he is faced with the most impossible choice. If he lowers the bridge to save the train, his son will certainly die. If he rescues his son, the train, with probably a hundred people on board, will crash into the river and then they will die.

I am not going to do a spoiler, but what I will say is this: I don't know how I could make that choice. Logically, I can say that the hundred lives on the train might carry weight with me, but the carnal need to protect my son might carry more. M and I had this debate on the way home from church, me feeling like the "right" thing to do would be to save the train and him feeling as if the "right" thing to do is to protect our son. Of course, we were both quite relieved that we don't have to actually make this decision, since my conclusion is that there is no easy answer.

It certainly made me hug Will a bit tighter when we got back to the nursery to pick him up after services.