On Protection, Redemption, and the Quiet Structure of the Miraculous Medal
“If a rifle appears on the wall in the first act, it must be fired later.”1 This dramatic principle reminds us that in a work of true integrity, no object is without purpose. The details we seem to glimpse in passing will, at the proper moment, return and project themselves into the depths of our inner life.
As a Christian, I am often drawn toward those inescapable details within light and shadow. The appearance of the Miraculous Medal almost always leads me further inward. There is little need to overinterpret the director’s original intention; as Roland Barthes writes, once a work is completed, the author withdraws, and meaning is fulfilled only in the gaze of the viewer2. For this reason, I return to those details that arrest me, dwelling on them, testing their weight. The experience is not unlike reading Jorge Luis Borges, where meaning does not present itself directly, but unfolds through metaphor and through the quiet architecture of the labyrinth3.
In Green Book4, Tony Lip, an Italian-American, accepts employment from the African American pianist Dr. Don Shirley. The story is set in the United States in 1962. They travel across half the country, leaving New York and moving into the American South, still shaped by the system of segregation known as the Jim Crow laws. In that era, when discrimination remained deeply embedded, Tony serves as both driver and bodyguard, accompanying Dr. Shirley through a tour marked by hostility.
Throughout the journey, Tony wears a Miraculous Medal. If one is familiar with it, the detail is difficult to miss. What does such a choice suggest? Tony loves his family, yet he is not a flawless moral figure; he is coarse, pragmatic, a man formed by necessity. Viggo Mortensen sets aside the refined composure of his earlier roles and gives Tony a dense, physical presence, something unpolished, almost excessive. And yet, it is precisely this man who, across a journey shaped by tension, fulfills the role of a protector with consistency.
Tony’s character reflects what the Miraculous Medal upon his chest suggests: the protection of the vulnerable, and a commitment to a simple, unadorned sense of justice. In a time marked by deconstruction and cultivated cynicism, such values may appear conservative, even unfashionable. Yet this small object, resting against his body, allows us to trust him. The audience enters the journey with this quiet assurance and follows it into danger. Within the enclosed duration of the film, the Medal offers a form of silent consolation. It does not remove uncertainty. It makes it bearable. As with the Medal in the world beyond the screen, associated with Mary, it becomes a way of recognizing one another, of facing what lies ahead, and of extending protection toward others.
The spirit of the Miraculous Medal is not limited to protection. It also carries endurance, redemption, and forgiveness, even when one stands within sorrow.
This same presence appears in another form in the 2024 French film Quand vient l’automne5, directed by François Ozon. The Medal worn by Michelle leaves a different impression. This film, shaped by a restrained sensibility and carrying an echo of the French New Wave, stands apart from Green Book. There, the Miraculous Medal appears only in passing, often within movement; here, it is brought forward through a series of still close-ups, placed deliberately before the viewer. The effect is immediate and familiar: silver hair, lined skin, and the old-fashioned religious object worn at the neck of a grandmother.
At first, we are guided into Michelle’s ordinary later life: church bells, conversations with friends, family gatherings, and the quiet tension with her daughter. The Miraculous Medal appears to do little more than confirm this identity, stable and predictable. Only when conflict emerges does the surface begin to break. Michelle reveals that, in her youth, she survived through prostitution. She insists on calling it a profession, a means of survival, yet it remains a past her daughter cannot forgive. When tragedy follows—when Vincent, the son of her friend, newly released from prison, accidentally causes her daughter’s death—Michelle makes a decision that resists easy judgment. She protects him. As she says at the beginning of the film, the one who returns is not beyond redemption. In this act of forgiveness, one finds not resolution, but a form of continuation. It allows Vincent to begin again. It also returns, quietly, to her own past.
In the Biblical narrative, slaves and prostitutes stand at the margins, marked by rejection. Such marks are often enough to fracture a life. Yet when the crowd prepares to stone the adulterous woman, Christ says: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”6 The will of God, revealed in Moses leading slaves out of Egypt, and in Christ’s refusal to condemn, points again and again toward redemption. Faced with the depth of human frailty, we do not stand above it. We do not judge from a higher ground.7
Within cinema, the Miraculous Medal functions as a cultural sign that carries both protection and redemption. Tony stands as the visible protector. Michelle, in a quieter way, embodies redemption. This small object anchors the narrative, giving weight to what might otherwise dissolve. The recognition it creates does not begin with the film itself; it comes from a longer history, one that has passed through upheaval and suffering, as reflected in Through Plague and Fire. Like Mary beneath the Cross, in grief and in watchfulness, it remains silent, and yet it endures.
We take pride in such a value. Why not? In a world that does not slow, that does not settle, what could more faithfully call us back to courage and compassion than the simple act of wearing a Miraculous Medal?
Notes & References
Footnotes
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Chekhov’s gun: a dramatic principle proposed by Anton Chekhov, stating that every element in a narrative must be necessary. ↩
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See Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author (1967). ↩
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Refers to Jorge Luis Borges, especially works such as The Garden of Forking Paths, where labyrinth, infinity, and metaphor form a distinct mode of thought. ↩
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Green Book (2018), an American biographical drama directed by Peter Farrelly. ↩
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Quand vient l’automne (2024), directed by François Ozon. ↩
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John 8:7 (KJV). ↩
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Matthew 7:1 (KJV): “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” ↩