Therapist Jane Swigart has noted that a mother's relationship with her children provides "a theater of soul" revealing her deepest hopes, fears, destructive urges, and capacities for love. In a time when our culture seems to simultaneously idealize and devalue mothers, it is refreshing to see a film such as Safe Passage, which examines the emotional life of a mother who is neither a saint nor a monster.
Susan Sarandon plays a woman who has a premonition dream that one of her seven sons is in danger. A terrorist bomb has destroyed one of the Marine barracks in the Sinai where Percival is stationed and it will take a few days to identify the dead.
Sarandon's family rallies around her as they wait for news. During this crisis, she realizes that her sons are decent, honest, and loving proof positive that she has fulfilled her sacred trust by raising them well.
Safe Passage is a valentine to mothers who have fought the good fight and kept the faith in all the messes and miseries of family life.