LET ME HAVE MY SON

Name: LET ME HAVE MY SON
Item: LET ME HAVE MY SON
Author: Gaby Gaduh

"Heart-Rending"

Content: -1 Caution advised for older children, including teenagers, and sensitive adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

LET ME HAVE MY SON is a drama about an elderly Christian man in Minnesota searching for his son at a mental hospital. Although Ben Whitmore has been told to come retrieve his son, Benny, the hospital’s lead psychiatrist, Dr. Bitterman, seems to be preventing him from seeing Benny. Then, Benny goes missing from the Infirmary. As Ben searches for Benny, he has more trouble trying to find him. Eventually, Ben himself briefly becomes a patient in the mental hospital.

LET ME HAVE MY SON is available for screening from home. It tells an emotional, sometimes nightmarish, but ultimately redemptive and inspiring journey into the world of mental illness. For example, it has a strong Christian, uplifting, pro-family worldview with multiple biblical references and positive references to Jesus, salvation and Heaven. The movie also contains some emotional, heartwarming moments, including inspiring images of love and new life.

That said, LET ME HAVE MY SON has some intense references to mental illness and death, including a scene about shock therapy. It also has some brief foul language. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children.

Content:

(CCC, BBB, L, VV, N, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong Christian, pro-family worldview with overt Bible quotes and references about an elderly Christian man searching for his missing son in the mental hospital to which the schizophrenic son has been committed for years, with strong positive references to Jesus, God, resurrection, salvation, Heaven, passages from Chapter 15 of First Corinthians, Chapter 21 of the Book of Revelation, a man shouts “I’m free! Thank you, Lord!,” the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” hymnal books, and the power and importance of love

Foul Language:

Three “d” obscenities, one borderline “Dear Lord” profanity, one OMG profanity, and a place is called a Hellhole, plus a reference to stopping a car so a person could relieve himself

Violence:

Light and slightly intense violence occurs when two orderlies physically try to wrangle patients during several scenes set in a large mental ward with various rooms, some orderlies in a Christian mental hospital hold down a struggling mentally ill man, a man is given shock therapy during which he has disjointed visions, two men wrestle a mentally ill young man to the ground in a flashback, and a man is dragged through the snow and bloody stigmata appear on the back of his hands and cause two bloody streaks in the snow

Sex:

No sex

Nudity:

Brief upper male nudity in some scenes set on a beach

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or illegal drugs, but there are references to psychiatric drugs used to treat mental illness; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A psychiatrist says all he has said is how do you know there is a Christian God and mocks the idea of there being any cure for schizophrenia, including a Christian or spiritual cure.

More Detail:

LET ME HAVE MY SON is a drama about an elderly Christian man in Minnesota searching for his son at a mental hospital where the staff seems to be preventing him from seeing his son. Available for virtual screening from home, LET ME HAVE MY SON is an emotional, sometimes nightmarish, but ultimately redemptive and inspiring journey into the world of mental illness, a cinematic journey with a strong Christian, biblical worldview, brief foul language and intense scenes that’s designed for older mature audiences.

An elderly Christian man named Ben Whitmore wakes up from a nightmare about his son, Benny, calling for Ben in a snowy landscape. In the nightmare, Benny is there in the snow calling for Ben to take him home, but Benny suddenly disappears as Ben tries to run to him.

Ben wakes from the dream and starts to go through some old photos of his two sons, David and Benny, and his daughter, Ginny. It’s a Herculean task, so he leaves a message for Ginny to come to his house and help him sort through the photos. After the call, Ben suffers a massive heart attack. Just then, Ginny calls. Ben barely reaches the phone, then collapses.

Ben survives making it to the hospital, where he has to say for a couple days after put some new stints into his heart. When he’s released to go home, his daughter, Ginny, leaves a live-in nurse with Ben. The nurse’s name is Holly Christmas.

Early the next morning, Ben is awakened by the phone ringing, but Holly is fast asleep, something that she had promised was never going to happen. Ben makes an effort to reach the phone. The person on the line is the head nurse from the mental hospital, Middlemouth, where Ben’s son, Benny, is staying. Although the doctor there, Dr. Bitterman, had told Ben that Benny will never be cured of his schizophrenia, the head nurse says that Benny has been cured suddenly, and Ben should drive to the hospital to pick up Benny and drive him home.

Although his doctors told him not to drive, Ben immediately gets dressed and gets in his car. He pulls away just as Nurse Holly rushes out the door to try to stop him, to no avail.

Three hours later or so, Ben arrives at the mental hospital. The staff meets with Ben in a conference room to talk to him about Benny. Although the head nurse had told Ben over the phone he can take Benny home, Dr. Bitterman seems disinclined to release Benny. He says Benny is in the Infirmary now. An emergency calls Dr. Bitterman away, and the meeting breaks up.

Ben is ushered into Benny’s room to pack up his things. In going through his son’s belongings, he discovers a message from Benny to him. The message says, “For Dad” and cites a Bible verse, 1 Corinthians 15:19-20, with the words, “If only for this life.”

Ben is still waiting for them to bring Benny to him when he hears an alert over the hospital’s loud speaker system that Benny has disappeared from the Infirmary. Orderlies are ordered to search for Benny, so Ben starts doing his own search for Benny. As he searches, he has various encounters with the patients.

Ben searches and searches for Benny, but he has more and more trouble trying to find his son. Eventually, Ben himself briefly becomes a patient in the mental hospital, and Dr. Bitterman repeatedly reminds him that, “Schizophrenia is an incurable disease,” even though it was the hospital that called Ben to tell him that his son is being discharged.

Parts of LET ME HAVE MY SON have a Kafkaesque quality. Franz Kafka was a Czech novelist whose books are famous for having nightmarish settings where bizarre, impersonal, authoritarian, and/or confusing administrative situations make the main character feel powerless to understand or control what’s happening. Ultimately, however, it has a strong Christian, uplifting, pro-family worldview with multiple biblical references and positive references to Jesus, salvation and Heaven. The movie also contains some emotional, heartwarming moments, including inspiring images of love and new life.