Star Wars Spirituality: Part 4In his book, Catching Light: Looking for God in the Movies, author Roy M. Anker writes about finding meaning and morality in the intergalactic saga. Part 4 of 4.by Roy M. Anker | posted 5/19/2005 12:00AM
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Wednesday's segment ended with Darth Vader saving his son Luke from the Evil Emperor, and in doing so, restoring himself to Jedi status—a transformation no one guessed was possible: "Through the son's witness of love, the father is redeemed, and the father and son meet in reconciliation and true communion." That's where we pick up the story, with Luke huddled over his dying father …
This is aptly symbolized by Vader's dying request that his son remove that stark black mask, itself a potent visual symbol, so he might at last see his son with "my own eyes" or, as 1 Corinthians 13 puts it in the rapturous image of reconciliation and intimacy, "face to face." As the son was willing to die for his father, the father in his last gesture willingly dies for his son. When Luke tells his mortally wounded father that he will die if he removes the mask and that he must get Darth Vader from the Death Star in order to save him, the hideously maimed old man, whose appearance is an apt visual reflection of his inner distortion, replies simply to his son, "You already have." Luke has given his father salvation and, as we soon see, redemption. In this expression of love, both father and son realize the good and holy identity for which they were made. Evil as manifested in the Empire and in Darth Vader has been defeated; goodness reigns.
Partly because the Star Wars saga is melodrama, and partly because human instinct tends to prematurely separate the sheep from the goats, the potential for the redemption of Darth Vader never crossed the well-set minds of most viewers. For some, the redemptive ending was not entirely plausible. The Time magazine reviewer, for example, thought it corny. But the very surprise it occasions effectively uncovers the bad manners of contemporary cynicism and hopelessness. That is admittedly a preachy point to make, but the effect of the ending of The Return of the Jedi, the unlikely return itself, pivots on the audience's usual gullibility about the way the world usually works, which is badly. Sinners, whores, and late grape-pickers all the same, contemporary imaginative habits are constrained to see judgment and doom, to turn away from the possibility of renewal.
Vader's redemption completeThe fullness of the redemption of Darth Vader, which is the final fruition of the motives and actions of the Force, is best seen in what happens in the last scenes of The Return of the Jedi. From the exploding Death Star and the Endor moon, where Leia and Han Solo await the return of Luke, the camera cuts abruptly to a gorgeous shot of the head of a burning torch against a black background. The camera moves with the torch as it ignites a funeral pyre where the body of Darth Vader lies, still attired in black helmet-mask and black cape. The camera cuts to Luke Skywalker, who holds the torch and watches the flames engulf the pyre and the body. Here light and fire burn in the darkness to consume darkness, an apt visual evocation of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, with its rhapsodic fugue on light and darkness.
The camera stares for a long time at the fire consuming the darkness of evil, this ancient Christian symbol for purification (and in the work of modern poet T. S. Eliot). The camera tilts upward to the darkening Endor sky where, with still more imagery of light in the darkness, fireworks explode in celebration of the victory over the Empire. For the film's last scene the camera tilts down to take in the twilight Valley of the Ewoks, where small fires light many parties of celebration. At one of these we find the familiar crew of characters dancing and backslapping in celebration. Luke Skywalker arrives to hugs and congratulations from his sister and compatriots, including his old rival Han, who has finally come to understand that it is he, and not Luke, whom Leia wishes to marry.
Still mourning his dead father, Luke wanders off to view a consoling vision of two nearby shimmering figures, a ghostly Obi-Wan and Yoda, gentle and smiling; they are then joined by a third Jedi, someone not seen before in the film but also dressed in the monk's robes of the Jedi. Slowly it dawns on viewers that this unfamiliar face resembles the maimed suffering face of Darth Vader; indeed, it is he, but he now appears healed and renewed in the person of the redeemed Jedi Anakin Skywalker. The malevolent Lord Darth Vader is dead. Evil and death have not conquered; the good man who Vader once was lives again—forever. He joins the others to smile on Luke, who will hereafter always have with him these guiding presences, emblems and agents of the abiding care of the Force, which is love itself. A spiritual brotherhood reigns over all, giving solace and hope, pointing the way for the future.
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