Confessions of a Christian film critic: A response

 

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“I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.” John 12:46

As a Christian who aspires to write about movies for a wide audience, Jesus’ words in John hold special resonance for me. Like humanity’s endless struggle between good and evil, the movies offer a powerful interplay between light and dark. In a movie theater, we may sit in darkness for a time, but the light of the projector lifts us up out of the darkness. This interplay of light and shadow is especially powerful for the Christian who desires to write about film.

Thus, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday’s essay “Confessions of a Christian Film Critic” comes to me as something of a revelation. It’s a candid, honest, and reflective account of what it means to be a follower of Christ and a lover of movies, and the challenges of writing for a secular audience.

But, as the great religion writer Terry Mattingly, a mentor and former professor of mine, points out, this is the confession of a liberal Christian film critic, specifically, an Episcopalian. Mattingly asks what the same essay would look like if it were written by a conservative religious believer. As someone who hails from the non-denominational evangelical tradition, I thought I would attempt to answer that question. Join me as I explore a response by, of course, asking more questions (Jesus did a lot of that), looking to areas in which I agree with Ms. Hornaday as well as points of contention.

HONESTY IS SUCH A LONELY WORD 

I believe that God can speak through both secular and religious filmmakers to deliver messages of great power and truth. I also believe that God’s presence can be completely absent from a movie; film can be used for great evil as well as great good. Hornaday certainly believes this too, but, as a respected journalist, she is careful to never let her biases alienate her readers.

She describes “the journalistic habit of not allowing my personal biases to surface, thereby inappropriately using my work as a religious platform and alienating those readers who don’t share my faith or have no faith at all. Those individuals have every right to read a movie review or essay without feeling sermonized, excluded or disrespected.”

The most important aspect of a critic’s work is honesty. And I believe there are times where a Christian critic must speak out against something he/she finds reprehensible or antithetical to God, even if it might end up excluding some readers. That would involve letting at least some personal biases come to light. A recent example is Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (which Hornaday was not a fan of either). Although not one of Scorsese’s best, the movie is well made. But, the film’s glamorous depiction of sex and drug use gave me a headache. Christians are often called to turn away from the things of this world, and I certainly was turned away by this movie. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I was not a believer, but I am; how can I ignore a “personal bias” when it changes my entire perception of a film’s quality? Of course, this doesn’t explain my undying love for films like Pulp Fiction and A Clockwork Orange. I admit my religious protestations are not always consistent. But honest critics may find it difficult to separate their religious worldview from how they felt about a film; and that’s exactly as it should be.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE 

I greatly admire Hornaday’s increasingly strong—and very Christian— stance against senseless violence:

“As a student of film history, I know that violence is a long-standing, even essential element of cinematic grammar and audience catharsis; as a Christian, I find it increasingly difficult to accept portrayals of brutality that are glib, meaningless, played for laughs or cynically nihilistic.”

That list of movies would be pretty darn long. Hornaday feels drawn to a higher standard in calling out senseless violence. The late great Roger Ebert, who viewed film through his culturally Catholic lens, did the same, ripping apart positively reviewed blood fests like Kick-Ass and The Raid. But can a Christian still enjoy the impeccable craft of a Tarantino film? Can we detach ourselves from their voyeuristic bloodletting? I imagine Hornaday (and certainly Roger Ebert) might be more accepting of an equally brutal Coen Brothers film like No Country for Old Men (although fellow Post critic Stephen Hunter was not a fan). Do we puritanically judge movies by their level of violence, or whether that violence serves some sort of artistic statement that we find palatable? What about sexual content?

I’m not sure I have an answer, because film is such a subjective experience. A film we might never expect to move us might leave us in tears, and we may take offense over a movie we expected to love. Again, there’s no rhyme or reason to how we may respond to violence in one context, but not in another.

FOR YOU ALWAYS HAVE THE POOR 

But how do we respond to movies that reflect the concerns of this world through a godly lens? Hornaday writes:

“I’m constantly on the lookout for films that lift up our capacities for connection and mutual understanding — not as sentimental, schoolmarmish morality plays, but as an artist’s genuine healing response to a broken and confused world. Anything that seeks to honor or nourish or at least acknowledge our fumbling, feeble, quietly heroic attempts to help get each other through the heartbreak and suffering of life will always earn at least a nod of gratitude from me.”

This gets a big “amen” from me. There are some great secular films out there that Christians will likely be especially drawn to, as they provide a unique perspective in confronting human brokenness. They might even spur religious viewers toward missionary work or other ways of serving and reaching the world’s poor. Films like Blood Diamond or The Year of Living Dangerously are rich experiences for any viewer, but may hold special power for those who identify with Christ’s tremendous passion for the poor.  The former devolves into typically showy Hollywood displays of violence, but the latter has a great deal to say about the topic. Take character Billy Kwan’s reflection on how to respond to suffering: “What then must we do? We must give with love to whoever God has placed in our path.” It is in responding to films like these that Christians can add their unique, necessary voices.

Hornaday’s liberal Christian tradition leads her toward a more hands-off approach when it comes to mixing her faith and her criticism. After all, she wouldn’t want to offend anyone. But it should be noted that the cross of Christ is sometimes very offensive, and it will clash with mainstream culture as often as it will mesh. Abhorring senseless violence or glorification of sinful behavior, while also admiring art that calls us to a higher purpose, should be a goal of every good critic. But it should hold special consideration for the Christian critic. Hornaday gets all that right. But her goal of masking that consideration in “language having to do with humanism, transcendence and cosmic mystery” strikes me as a bit false. A critic should not only describe how he/she feels about a work of art, but why. If Hornaday’s faith is the impetus behind her opinions, she should say so. Such a response transcends “objectivity” and reaches higher to the critic’s main goal: honesty. Honesty from a Christian critic can help lift us out of the darkness, not unlike bathing in the light of the silver screen.

Read about my take on more specifically Christian Hollywood fare. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier review: The Marvel machine hums

Captain America is probably the only superhero that would have his own museum exhibit. In an early scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) goes to the Smithsonian to look at his own display, detailing the history of the Captain, from his WWII era bravery to the bold part he played in the Avenger’s defense of Manhattan during an alien invasion. It’s a credit to the film and the universe it creates that we fully believe that the Captain would have his own museum exhibit. He’s not some flying, mutated monstrosity or eccentric mechanized billionaire. He’s a flesh-and-blood hero that just happens to have super-strength.

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The Winter Soldier is a thoughtful and engaging addition to the Marvel canon.

The first Captain America movie did a fantastic job of setting up the Captain and his place in the Marvel universe. He was the patriotic one (obviously), the one who stood up for his traditional values and his clear-cut concept of right and wrong no matter the circumstances. That’s easy enough when you’re fighting Nazis.

But in the Winter Soldier, the Captain is more of a hero for our time. He questions what it means to be a hero, and feels lost in a modern world 80 years ahead of his time. It’s here we find the Captain, working with returning SHIELD teammates Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to protect the organization from outward attack. But new forces threaten to compromise the organization from within, and the Captain soon has to contend with the shadowy agent Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) as well as the mysterious Winter Soldier, who seems hell bent on putting the Captain down for good.

The movie’s action is, dare I say it, marvelous. The Captain’s shield bounces off of baddies’ skulls with the ease of your favorite childhood bouncy ball. The directing team of Joe and Anthony Russo give the film’s many intense fight scenes a sense of weight and drama that help to render realistic something as ridiculous as a ricocheting trash can lid. One thing missing from recent Marvel fare has been good old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat, and The Winter Soldier has it in spades. But that doesn’t mean the level of destruction has gone down. In particular, a car chase involving Nick Fury is easily one of the coolest and most exciting in recent memory.

If The First Avenger played out like a techno-tinged patriotic war movie, The Winter Soldier plays out like a ‘70s spy espionage thriller. The Captain moves quickly from one revelation to the next (and boy are there some doozies) in his attempt to unravel the mystery of the Winter Soldier. It’s at times unrelentingly intense.

The movie also stands out from the comic book crowd in its tackling of the real-world, modern day themes of security and military protection in the digital age of widespread surveillance. From the NSA to Facebook and cell phone companies, these are timely American fears, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find a superhero movie tackle them with such gravitas. It adds a welcome shade of moral grey to the Marvel cinematic universe.

But, before this review gets to dire, the best thing about The Winter Soldier is that it’s incredibly fun. Johansson and Jackson have never been better, and their characters get some of the film’s best scenes and lines. Evans has truly embodied his role as the iconic American hero. Redford has a ton of fun with a meaty villain role, and newcomer Sam Wilson (aka the Falcon) is a welcome addition to the team. It’s also a very important movie in the Marvel cinematic universe, jam-packed with several bombshells that will deeply shake up the future of all the comic juggernaut’s Avengers-based franchises.

Comic movies with this much going on tend to collapse under their own ambition (Iron Man 2, anyone?), but The Winter Soldier can march on with little care for building up to an Avengers movie. In fact, there are times where it doesn’t feel much like a Marvel movie at all. That’s a very good thing. The meta-references to the Marvel universe that the filmmakers were surely obligated to include are somewhat distracting and drag the film’s pace down a bit, but they’re rare and not especially obvious for those not looking for them.

The “Marvel Machine” has been accused of sometimes churning out bare-minimum efforts to satisfy its desire to expand its universe in order to make even more movies (and more money). That complaint may be justified, but this supercharged sequel is prime evidence that Marvel still trades in thoughtful, timely and engaging blockbusters. You’ll want to see it again the second it’s over.

Noah and the (un)welcome return of the biblical epic

Note, some spoilers for Noah follow.

Movies like Noah are a good part of why this site exists. It appears to be the rare case where Hollywood has created a satisfying story of true faith in God that also stands as a good movie a secular audience can enjoy without feeling like they’re being preached to. That’s a lot of pressure for any movie to live up to.

Of course, Noah doesn’t reach those lofty expectations. And, while it reveals some disconnect between Hollywood and largely religious-minded America, it shows signs that things are headed in the right direction.

Noah is, by many accounts, a good movie, and, while it certainly wasn’t made by a Christian man, it was made by a Jewish director who has a deep, abiding respect for the stories he grew up with. He was drawn not to the Sunday-school-sermon version of the story of Noah’s Ark, but rather God and humanity’s continued grappling with original sin.

“When (Noah’s Ark) is taught to kids, it’s about the good man and his family,” director Darren Aronofsky said in an Atlantic interview. “They don’t talk about the duality of original sin.”

Aronofsky has shown the ensnaring power of original sin in graphic, excessive detail in bleak films such as Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler. He explored a dual nature of sorts in Black Swan.

Concern from faith-based audiences stems from several sources, primarily being its accuracy to the original text. Of course, the original story is rather lacking in detail, so details additional details had to be included to make the film into a true epic.

Some of these decisions work better than others. A particular head scratcher is the inclusion of the “Watchers,” fallen angels that now walk the earth as giant stone monsters. They help Noah build the Ark (so of course it takes much less than 100 years). They move the tale more into the realm of science-fiction, rather than historical biblical account. Which, in Aronofsky’s words, was exactly the point.

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The flawed epic Noah lays the groundwork for future successful mainstream Bible-based movies.

“I think it’s more interesting when you look at not just the biblical but the mythical that you get away from the arguments about history and accuracy and literalism,” he said. “That’s a much weaker argument, and it’s a mistake.”

That will certainly sound blasphemous to many Christians and Jews that take the early Old Testament account as literal truth. But Aronofsky is definitely on to something here. He goes on to say that the Bible is historically sound and reliable after the Flood narrative and the story of Babel. But the early creation account is by its very nature mythical, because it is so deliberately lacking in detail. Aronofsky is pulling us away from arguments about literalism over something we have never seen, and instead inviting us to appreciate the way God is sharing his story with us. That’s why arguments about a literal 6-day creation, according to the Genesis account, are rather silly.

In Noah’s most arresting sequence, Noah describes the creation of the universe in the language of the Bible, while we see what appears to be theistic evolution, showing how God might have guided the earth through evolutionary processes. Whether you fashion yourself a creationist, evolutionist, believer or non-believer, Aronofsky is showing that it is God’s story, not always the sometimes non-existent details, that matter to us. However he brought it about, we can still stand in awe at the majesty of God’s creation.

EXAMINING THE BIBLICAL EPIC

Views this complex, this simultaneously faithful and radical, have been a long-time coming in both Hollywood and the evangelical filmmaking community. God and the movies go way back, to the birth of the “biblical epic,” movies that told biblical stories using ground-breaking effects and popular Hollywood actors.

The most famous of these is probably “The Ten Commandments,” starring Charlton Heston. Made by the legendary Cecil B. DeMille, the film remains a powerful visual experience, despite its dated special effects. But DeMille’s films revealed the problem with Hollywood’s interpretation of the Bible: they were distinctly lacking in the soul department. Perhaps even more than the parting of the Red Sea, we remember the Jewish people writhing half-naked in front of the golden calf. DeMille was a provocateur, emphasizing the tawdry and voyeuristic over any serious examination of God’s redemption.

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Old Hollywood biblical epics were often more concerned with ticket sales than saying anything significant about God.

Other biblical epics weren’t really biblical epics at all. Take the Oscar-winning Ben Hur. It’s subtitled A Tale of the Christ, but it’s only peripherally about Jesus. Ben Hur (Heston, again) crosses paths with Christ throughout the movie, but the story calls too much attention to it. Later in the movie, Ben Hur declines hearing the Sermon on the Mount because he must participate in an epic chariot race. This “oh, and by the way, Jesus/God” attitude permeated much of old Hollywood’s attempts at telling scriptural stories.

The industry’s interest in these tales waned considerably after Ben Hur. Disasters like Esther and the King and King David did nothing to entertain the masses or inspire the faithful. It seemed the biblical epic had run its course in the cinematic universe.

A PASSIONATE GAME-CHANGER

Of course, this was all before Mel Gibson’s compassionate masterwork The Passion of the Christ. The 2004 film, following the final hours of Jesus Christ’s life before his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, was the rare Christ-centered film that everyone, Christian or no,  absolutely had to see, if just once. Critics were turned off by Gibson’s relentlessly graphic portrayal of Christ’s suffering, but that was the point. Audiences turned out to the tune of $370 million, a stunning figure for what is easily one of the more violent movies ever made.

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The Passion was a rare example of how The Bible and commercially successful cinema could work in harmony.

From a Christian perspective, one has to ask whether a film like Passion’s message is diluted by its R-rated brutality. That’s a valid question. But the movie was a game-changing faith-based film for several reasons. It was a rare example of a faithful believer pouring his heart and soul into a passion project, independent of big-budget studio financing. It also showed that people were hungry for faithful biblical content, even if it wasn’t “entertaining” the way traditional biblical epics were (the image of someone eating a bucket of popcorn while watching the torture of their messiah is one that still fills me with a strange mix of fear and laughter).

There were a few attempts to cash in on the biblical epic after Passion’s success, but they mostly ended up like The Nativity Story, making little impact at the box office or in the hearts of moviegoers. Since then, spiritually minded films seem to have drifted off in two directions. The first is the increasingly popular “faith-based” films, usually created by evangelical Christian filmmakers. Popular examples include Fireproof and the recently released God’s Not Dead.

As a Christian, I don’t want to write off these movies entirely. Their messages of hope and trust in God even in our modern consumerist society are ones that people need to hear. But, as a fan of quality filmmaking, it’s hard not to try and avoid them. The major problem with these types of films is that they build stories around messages; most screenwriters know that great movies are only made when the opposite is true. Great messages are drawn out of great stories and characters. Heavy-handed dialogue, stiff acting and “clean, family friendly” entertainment may do some good in affirming the faithful, but often come off as culturally clueless and boring to non-believers. There are some exceptions; Blue Like Jazz, the adaptation of Donald Miller’s bestselling book (based on his real-life experience attending Reed College, touted as the most godless university in America), struck the right balance between conveying a Christian message and providing an interesting character and story. And yet, evangelical filmmakers seem to think that Christianity is all about sentiment and easy uplift.

Compare this to Hollywood’s attempts at faithful filmmaking, which took a note from Passion by skewing dark and gritty. These movies faced the opposite problem: their often profane content turned off faith-based audiences, and their religious themes kept secular audiences from embracing them fully.

I’ve written before about Hollywood’s God renaissance, and the transcendent work of Terrence Malick, but a good example here is The Book of Eli. Thanks to its post-apocalyptic setting and star Denzel Washington, the movie made almost $100 million domestically. It’s a powerful account of a man who walks by faith, not sight, and a great illustration that the Bible can be used as a weapon, as much for evil as for good. But Eli kills many enemies, and there are decapitations as well as frequent profanities throughout the movie. This leaves the film a little in the lurch; too much bible talk for an action movie, too much profane content for faith-based audiences.

NOAH AND THE FUTURE OF FAITH BASED ENTERTAINMENT

Which brings us back to Noah. It has been touted as a return to the traditional biblical epic. It is epic, but it’s far from traditional. It’s one of the strangest, riskiest movies to be given a wide release in recent years. To say it’s a faithful rendition of the biblical account is both true and false. In addition to the Watchers, there’s the inclusion of a consistent villain (Ray Winstone’s Tubal Cain) that takes things a bit too far, and the film does itself a disservice by letting us see so little of the actual animals (they all fall into a deep sleep as soon as they step onto the Ark).

The characterization of Noah (played sensitively by Russell Crowe) will also be controversial to many. Noah hears about God’s command to build a boat in a (terrifying) dream sequence, but he never audibly hears God’s voice. This leads Noah to make some decisions that are contrary to what we know God would have him do. He’s a modern-day hero in that he is psychologically tortured, thinking he knows what God would have him do but unsure because he can’t hear directly from God.

This is somewhat problematic, but I think it also fits well into our modern culture’s fears and anxieties about following God on faith. Noah is a troubled hero for a troubled age, but he is still a man of intense faith, committed to carrying out God’s will no matter the personal cost.

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Exodus, starring Christian Bale, will be the next Biblical story to get the Hollywood treatment.

We get no indication in the Bible that Noah is disturbed or tortured by the fact that the rest of the world is being killed for their wickedness. In the film, it troubles him and his family greatly, and Noah questions whether he is any more worthy to continue living than anyone else. His question: can mankind truly be redeemed? It’s a question that, appropriately, can’t be answered until the arrival of Christ, but Noah plays his part in God’s grand tale despite his questions and doubts along the way. He’s not a saint, but a living, breathing, and very flawed follower of God.

The return of the biblical epic will continue in December with Ridley Scott’s Exodus, starring Christian Bale as Moses. I’m fascinated to see what Scott does with more Old Testament material. Noah is not exactly a great movie, and its deviations from the Bible can occasionally be distracting. I don’t think Aronofsky has any pretensions of truly satisfying a faith-based audience, and it seems a bit too artsy for mainstream audiences. But, despite its pitfalls, it lays the groundwork for what biblically based mainstream movies can do for both religious audiences and nonreligious viewers that simply want to experience a good story.

The film accurately depicts the power of our sin, and how desperately we have always needed God to pull us out of our depravity. It also shows the power that true faith can have, and the fruits of following God regardless of our present circumstances. The fact that it does this in the context of a mainstream action film is not only surprising, it’s somewhat of a revelation. It also had a $44 million opening weekend, so that has to count for something.

Cal Thomas, writing for World, put it best.

“After decades in which Hollywood mostly ignored or stereotyped faith, Christians should be happy they have gotten the film industry’s attention. Successful films like The Passion of the Christ, The Bible and Son of God prove that such stories ‘sell.’ Instead of nitpicking over Noah, the Christian community should not only be cheering, but buying tickets to encourage more such movies. Hollywood may not always get it right, but that’s not the point. They are getting something and that sure beats not getting anything.”

Thomas also wrote that watching Noah might inspire conversation around the life-changing book that inspired it. In my mind, a movie that sends us running back to the Good Book for any reason should be applauded.