It is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer and it is about a young boy called Oskar who is convinced that his father, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has left a final message for him hidden somewhere in the city.
Feeling a growing disconnectedness from his grieving mother and driven by a relentlessly active mind that refuses to believe in things that can't be observed, Oskar begins searching New York City for the lock that fits a mysterious key he found in his father's closet.
His journey takes him beyond his own loss to a greater understanding of the observable world around him. It is also journey about relationships, love and the search for some of those all important answers to life's questions.
This film touched many chords for me, as well as re-opening the scars of grief in the bitter-sweet way that life can do when half buried memories are re-kindled.
When I moved to Te Aroha nearly ten years ago, some eight years after my beloved Chris died, I also found a key.
It was the key to a box that Chris had ever since Prep School in England, one that he had kept special 'treasures' in. I had been looking for it ever since he died.
I opened the box and found a letter he had written to me when he had gone to his last International Cystic Fibrosis Conference for CF Adults in Europe the year or so before he died- one that I had mislaid.
One I will treasure till I die.
Among other letters and photos, his old harmonica and so on, there was a square jeweller's box containing a beautifully crafted pendant and necklace - one I had never seen before.
It had been made by his Godmother, Sybil Dunlop who was a well-known Art Jeweller & Silversmith in London after the war. I had never seen it before.
It was like a gift from beyond the grave. I felt it was Chris's gift to welcome me to my new home and to say that he would always be beside me.
It was beautiful.
Like Oskar in the film, many of us are searching for something. I have always been a 'searcher', wanting answers to the meaning of life, to the questions "what's it all about Alfie?", who am I? and "where are we going?"
Chris has helped me find many of the the answers, especially since he died - and for that I am eternally grateful. Of course as I've aged I have come to realise that sometimes there are no answers or that we are just not meant to know them. Life is a mystery.
The 'key' is that we just need to keep on searching because that's the whole mind-blowing mystic of life and of death. If we knew all the answers there would be nothing to search for, nothing to explore, nothing to seek.
'It is better to travel well than to arrive,' said the Buddha.
So I will continue on my journey and as we only have the 'present' the 'precious present' I know it is up to me how well I use it; how well I travel and how lightly I take myself.
So I will also keep in mind another of the Buddha's saying -
'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water,
after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.'
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