GODSTUFF

TONY SOPRANO: HERE’S WHERE THE STORY ENDS

Tony Soprano has 61 minutes left to find redemption.

When the head of the Soprano crime family lay down in an unmade bed alone at the end of last week’s penultimate episode of “The Sopranos,” with an assault rifle across his chest, ostensibly waiting for his executioner to come through the door and wrest him from his (mortal) reverie, perhaps it was already too late.

Judgment Day is nigh for Tony as the modern-day morality play in which he stars as leading man draws to a close after eight years, six seasons and 86 episodes.

All that is left to be resolved, essentially, is whether his story ends with justice, mercy or grace.

That is really what we want to know about ourselves, isn’t it? How our stories will end, whether we’ll be forgiven, condemned, punished or transformed?

As Tony drifted off into what promised to be a dark night of the soul at the end of last Sunday’s episode, a haunting instrumental version of the Tindersticks’ song “Running Wild” began to play.

Music always functions as a kind of Greek chorus on “The Sopranos,” and the song that plays as the credits begin to roll often is a harbinger.

Had the words of the Tindersticks’ song been sung, we would have heard the vocalist mournfully intone, “Running wild through my mind that I can’t sleep tonight/Like a child, like a child I have no place to hide/Running wild, is there no ending. . . . The underside, the underside of my mind/There’ s a cry that I can’t even reach out/There’s a fire, do you feel that, too?/Running through my mind.”

Standing at the gates of hell, Tony has nowhere to run, no place to turn, except inward, face-to-face with his immortal soul.

It’s not the first time — Tony has been analyzed, beaten, shot, nearly died and, most recently, gone on a psychedelic-mushroom-induced spiritual journey — but it surely will be the last. A few episodes ago, as the sun rose over a canyon in the Nevada desert, Tony, on his psychedelic trip, raised his arms to the sky and shouted, “I get it!”

What “it” was has yet to be revealed. Tony yearns to know what the meaning of life is, that much is certain.

“He is a physical portrait of the war that wages in the deep parts of all mankind, the great battle of redemptive good and despairing evil,” Chris Seay wrote in his 2002 televisual exegesis The Gospel According to Tony Soprano.

Seay, founding pastor of Ecclesia Church in Houston, calls Tony Soprano the “neo-Solomon from New Jersey,” comparing the mobster to the biblical King Solomon, a man whose mortal story was even more complicated than the Mafioso’s.

According to Hebrew scripture, King Solomon was the son of King David and Bathsheba. He is renowned as much for his decadence — he had 700 wives, 300 mistresses and unimaginable wealth — as he is for his great wisdom and accomplishments (such as building the first temple in Jerusalem.)

“Tony, like his biblical counterpart, is overwhelmed with a sense of meaninglessness. He has accumulated great wealth and power, yet feels poor and weak. . . . He denies himself nothing, yet continues to live in emptiness and despair,” Seay wrote.

In Ecclesiastes, one of the biblical books attributed to King Solomon, the author expresses his frustration with the human condition.

“It is never enough and that dream of being completely fulfilled now seems pointless; it is fleeting. Tony senses this and agrees with Solomon. ‘I’m like King Midas in reverse. Everything I touch turns to shit,’ ” Seay explains. “The conclusion of Solomon’s journey is that life would be better if man would honor God and obey his teaching. This is a conclusion Tony Soprano has not reached, but is unmistakably journeying toward.”

It’s too late for Tony to undo anything he has done. It’s too late for him to right wrongs, make amends, start again. He’s out of second chances, it would seem.

I’m enough of a rabid Sopranos fan to know it’s as unlikely for a priest offering absolution — particularly Carmela Soprano’s lecherous padre from a few seasons ago — to walk through Tony’s door on Sunday as it is for an angel (unless it’s the Angel of Death) to stroll into the room.

But someone will come knocking.

Maybe Tony will open the door of his heart and ask for forgiveness, as Solomon’s father, King David, did in Psalm 51 when he prayed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

Or maybe he’ll open fire with the AR-10 before finding out who’s on the other side.

Most people would scoff at the idea that someone as morally reprehensible as Tony Soprano could be forgiven. Even further from our grasp is the notion that all he would have to do is to ask.

That makes no sense to our human minds. We’re hard-wired to seek justice (or our limited idea of what that means) and occasionally dole out mercy.

Grace is another story.

It exists outside of sense, reason or karma, maddeningly insisting that 61 minutes is more than enough time to be saved.
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CLICK HERE to read a rare and revealing interview with James Gandolfini posted today on CNN.com.