While I’ve got the movie “Hanna” in mind (from the earlier thread on its oddly rustic cabin), there is a nicely ironic moment in one brief conversation worth noting.
In a scene where Hanna is on the road with the British caravanning family, the mother (whom we’re told has studied art and anthropology and “got her first at Cambridge”) is driving and attempting to carry on a conversation with Hanna, who is basking in the sun and enjoying the breeze from an open window. As the landscape passes, the mother enthusiastically remarks:
“I feel so grounded in the countryside. The city stifles me. Emotionally, creatively, spiritually. Places like this bring us closer to God.” [Despite the whiff of Green, this is suspiciously similar to a traditional sentimental view held by British landed aristocracy.]
“God?” replies Hanna.
“Well, not in any monotheistic sense. Buddha, Krishna, the god within. Whatever you believe in. What do you believe in, Hanna?”
She glances at Hanna, and, correctly interpreting a blank stare and silent response, laughs and answers her own question: “Nothing!” She doesn’t realize how nicely this judgment rebounds.
Mum is indulging a mood here, not seriously addressing human belief. You don’t really “believe in” anything if you casually accept all beliefs as equally valid (probably on a moralized rationale of tolerance and inclusion, but also in determined avoidance of human conflict). She regards belief with the same detachment she might apply to a cuisine, as though specifics are neutral matters of personal taste–as one might prefer a Madras curry or a home-cooked pot roast–not fixed concepts of a moral universe providing the basic framework for guiding a life, and thus of consequence.
So who’s the Nihilist? The post-modernist educated at a top university in Europe, or the multilingual but unenculturated teen, home-schooled and raised semi-wild in the boreal forest to survive?
I’ve got to believe writer and director understood fully the irony in this exchange.