Parable

I came to know this movie during my teaching years in a Jesuit high school during 1968. Then I used it without making any reference to Jesus Christ in secular lectures. It is a parable similar to Christ's mission and worthy of imitation even outside of any religious context, it has an universal message useful to teach values to young people. It was a great surprise to me finding this title among the IMDb, in your fine database today, March 30, 2006. I organized a youth movement in the city of El Progreso, Honduras. The students had to "do something for someone everyday" but as a secret kept by the members of the groups of 3. In the initiation rites, they had to clean each others's shoes, with a rag. Then we watched the movie "Parable". Everyone got the message. Now, those students have become Civil Engineers, Medical Doctors, Politicians, Parents, etc. Some tell me how they keep on "doing something for someone", every now and then. A couple of them are congressmen, and one of them became an editor of a large newspaper in the U.S.A.

A white-face clown disrupts acts at a circus that emphasize cruelty. Finally, he frees performers trapped in a Punch-and-Judy performance and dies under the hands of the cruel puppet master.

Parable, allegory, fable: these are words which stand for a story in which non-literal figures stand in for others, and the tale teaches a moral or spiritual lesson. Unfortunately, this one looks like someone got an idea in his head that this was a wonderful symbol for the Crucifixion.

Unfortunately, it's not. Well photographed with real circus wagons.