Remember when movies used to be off limits for Christians? Talk to movie fans in their 60s, 70s and 80s and you hear stories about sneaking into theaters on the sly, for fear of being caught by fellow churchgoers.
What’s funny about that is God used to be a commonly discussed topic in films, at least compared to the films of today. Christians are more accepting of the movies these days, but are the movies more accepting of us?
I thought of this while watching 1957’s “The Seventh Seal,” which was recently rereleased on DVD by The Criterion Collection. The film, in which a knight returning from the Crusades challenges Death himself to game of chess, caused an earthquake in the cinema world. It made an international star of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, helped break down the doors of American theaters for foreign films and paved the way for movies to be taken as seriously in America as any of the classical arts.
And “The Seventh Seal” did all of this while also being brazenly, even agonizingly, religious.
The knight, played by Max von Sydow, hopes to hold off Death until he can stabilize his own wavering faith in God. “I want knowledge!” he demands. “Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me.”
So do those surrounding him. Set in the midst of an awful plague, “The Seventh Seal” paints the anguish of spiritual uncertainty with medieval, even barbaric, brush strokes. The knight encounters people desperately attempting to appease an uncommunicative God, including a parade of flagellants who are beating themselves and others in hopes of ridding the land of sin first, disease second.
“The Seventh Seal” hardly offers a comforting depiction of Christian faith, but it is an honest, searching one. Yet how many Christians were in the audience to see it?
More importantly, would a studio dare make it today, when there likely are a greater number of believers in theaters?
Yes, we’ve had anomalies in recent years, from “The Passion of the Christ” to “Amazing Grace.” But given that moviegoing has become a regular habit for many Christians, why aren’t there more?
I suspect the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s have something to do with this – fundamentalist religious types who vilified Hollywood became the face of American Christianity - but maybe you have different ideas. Why are so many films stubbornly agnostic? What was the last blatantly spiritual, mainstream movie you’ve seen?
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Comments (6)
"The Seventh Seal" is one of the big reasons I love foreign films today. Whether then or now (e.g., with "Let the Right One In") foreign filmmakers seem to tell a much more honest, compelling story than their Hollywood counterparts.
Maybe if movies tend to be less focus on Christians, it's because Christians themselves aren't living those honest, compelling stories. For example, Bach didn't write great Christian music — he wrote great music that happened to be Christian (or commissioned for Christian purposes). Or maybe it's because those compelling Christian stories don't really appeal to the masses, given that ours is a kingdom unseen... how much can Michael Bay really explode in support of Christ's invisible reign?! :-P
Or maybe I don't quite understand the question. "The Wrestler" was not agnostic at all, but took a stance quite in favor of nihilism. "Gran Torino" was blatantly spiritual in that it oozed topics like redemption (and, surprisingly, represented Christianity in a very fair way). "I've Loved You So Long" was a slow burn of a movie about forgiveness, primarily of oneself. And so on, right down my Netflix queue... :-) If the question is why are those movies so unwilling to come down on the side of Christ or to make a decision about Him at all, I'd say it's because humanity itself is so unwilling to come down on the side of Christ or to make a decision about Him.
If you're asking, however, about the last mainstream movie that blatantly, rather than allegorically or metaphorically, advanced Christian ideals, rather than simply addressing spiritual problems, I would say "End of the Spear" would be that movie.
Chariots of Fire
The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
Flatliners
Bruce Almighty
Evan Almighty
Prince Caspian
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Fellowship of the Rings
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
The Passion of Christ
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Amazing Grace
The Mission
Luther
The Nativity
Shadowlands (CS Lewis autobiographical story)
A long Walk Home
For example, Stephen King's Desperation is very much about God. One of my favourite parts in the movie is when one character tells the boy to go over there and pray. And there is a lot of talk about God in that movie. There's also a fair bit of talk about God in I am Legend. And the ending, in particular, really draws on the Christian message of Jesus sacrificing himself for the world. But they also both have something to say about how people other than Christians view God. With both of these movies, I really wanted to talk to another Christian about them. But not many of the Christians I knew would watch movies like that.
One thing I do think is missing is ordinary Christians in movies. I would love to do more Christians, just going about their everyday lives. Instead, they are often characterised as old fuddy-duddies or people that seem to be mentally unstable.
Sadly, for many people (especially "artsy" people) Christianity can seem a little too "easy." Most people don't talk about God so much in our culture, but they may talk about right/wrong, faith, hope, the need for saving - which can be bland and general, or can be the Christian story told in a different guise. I suspect this is what's going on.