Think Not of Bombings, but of a Red Balloon

Questlove of The Roots tweeted something very thoughtful last night regarding the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy. He wrote:

Parents please monitor your kids' TV activity. Watching and rewatching [the] explosions is way too traumatic for young minds to process.

Of course he's right, but I'm sure many parents were way too caught up in the emotion and shock of the whole devastation to remember this. I heeded Questlove's advice and steered Gigi away from the news coverage of the bombings. But my inquisitive child was.....well .....curious, and so she googled the event and read about it on the internet. A few minutes later she came to me crying because it was all so sad and depressing.

To get her mind off the doom and gloom I turned to Hulu Plus and we looked for an uplifting family movie to watch. She saw a photo of a little boy holding a balloon and requested that we watch that film. It turned out to be The Red Balloon, a fantasy short film by French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, that features his son Pascal as a boy in Paris who finds a red balloon that follows and befriends him. It's a sheer pleasure to watch the joy that this inanimate object brings to the boy. I won't tell the ending, but the message to me was: When somebody takes something that you love away from you, God showers you with way more than you initially had.

And to my delight, the film is available for viewing for free, so I've placed it here for you to see. Enjoy! (...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.) -- Philippians 4:8


The Red Balloon won the following awards after its release: Louis Delluc Prize, Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Short Film Palme d'Or, BAFTA Special Award (Film)