Spitfire was originally commissioned by Gregory Productions with backing from the Sacred Heart League, a Roman Catholic organization, who approached writer/director Lee David Zlotoff, a Jew, about his possible interest in collaborating on a film. Zlotoff told representatives from Gregory, "If your intention is to make a movie with religious overtones, don't hire me." What emerged from their eventual collaboration is a film in which organized religion has been kept largely off screen, so that the deeper theological themes can be given all the more prominence. When Percy Talbot, sitting on a hillside overlooking the Green Mountains, sings several verses to the hymn, "There is a Balm in Gilead," we can sense the possibility of a healing power at work here that is even larger than the beauty of her natural surroundings.

This is an ironic parable for our times, an age in which institutional religion is often seen as dead or dying, even as there is a renewed interest in and even a passion for all things "spiritual." Despite his aversion to "religious overtones," Zlotoff has written and directed a story which parallels the parable of the Prodigal Son, or even the New Testament gospels themselves. You know the story. A stranger comes to town, and by circumstances that do not seem entirely subject to human understanding or control, is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice, which somehow becomes the agent of a grace through which a miraculous healing is offered to all.

Go out and rent or purchase see this winning film, and see if you don't agree with me, "There is a balm in Gilead."