Films, like books, are as diverse as the people who create them. Many portray rare and beautiful stories of dignity, courage and compassion. Others depict characters and situations so disturbing, it can take a few days to "shake them off."
The films below cover the gamut. Some would probably not be classified as "spiritual." These are the ones that need to be wrestled with bravely. They need to have their ideological underpinnings exposed and evaluated again, in the light of faith.
Our job is to take our faith to the movies and stay alert. Spiritual messages may be overt and readily apparent, or they may be discerned only in our reactions to the scenes and stories we see on the screen. Sometimes the best message we can come away with is to follow an alternate way, God's way.
In focusing on film as a spiritual resource, explorefaith hopes to acknowledge the present reality of our popular culture from a position of faith. That doesn't mean that we agree with, or approve of, a film under scrutiny—only that, rather than letting movies dictate a position to us, we go to the theater mindful of God within us, and intentionally create a space into which God can speak.
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
In terms of decoding what is at first glance a rather unusual title, one of
the most poignant scenes in this film is a brief homemade video during
which
Tessa films her sleeping husband Justin—a British diplomat
stationed in Kenya—
while joking about how he is probably dreaming of a
"world without weeds."
THE DA VINCI CODE
It’s a summer action flick—a slow-moving and garrulous one, to be sure, but no
more inherently plausible than when aliens attacked America ten summers
ago in
Independence Day.
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
With all the pre-emptive warnings that church groups circulated about The
Golden Compass—advising religious folk to stay away from
Christopher Weitz’s
adaptation of Philip Pullman’s first installment in
the “His Dark Materials”
trilogy—you’d think the film would be
more…relevant.
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
If you were a beaver and four humans showed up on your doorstep wearing fur
coats, would you let them in? I certainly would have second thoughts.
Funny how
that idea never occurred to me before, even though I’ve read
about the Pevensie
children’s first encounter with the talking beavers
of Narnia countless times.
THE MATRIX
My students often accuse me of madness, but they find nothing particularly
controversial in my observation that The Matrix powerfully names and describes
the forms of captivity into which we're born and within which we live and move
and, by all appearances, have our being.
THE MATRIX RELOADED
As Jada Pinkett Smith describes the Wachowski Brothers,
"They know how
to balance eye candy with deep thoughts."
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS
The Matrix Revolutions makes you want to go back to the good old days
of
1999, when the first of these movies, The
Matrix, delivered so much and promised
so much more.
THE PIANIST
Many films explore the power of art to redeem human depravity, but none
with any more force than The Pianist.
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
Can Homer, Bart and the rest of the animated cast really teach us anything about faith?
