An Alternative Approach to Christian Cinema
(Note: this post will discuss spoilers for Silence, The Conjuring and mother!)
Earlier this year, you may have noticed a few headlines regarding the financial success and resurgence of faith-based films. March’s I Can Only Imagine had a downright impressive theatrical run, barely dropping in attendance across its first three weekends. Right around that time, Paul was also making noise at the box office. Over the last few years, faith-based movies have become successful enough to see the launch of the genre’s own bonafide franchise in the God’s Not Dead movies. The success of these low budget, high profit movies can only mean that we’re in for a wave of more of them. And I, for one, am left wondering: what if these movies didn’t absolutely suck?
If there’s one common thread across the recent movies of the Christian drama genre, it’s that they’re all positively stale. These are some milquetoast films, purposefully made to be that way. They are intended to be the equivalent of a phoned-in Sunday mass: comforting and unchallenging. To me, there’s something cynical and clinical to these movies; if I were more in line with the target demographic, I wouldn’t be impressed, I would be insulted. These are not artistic endeavors, but fairly shameless cash grabs.
There’s one sermon from my youth that I recall distinctly, and ruminate on often — that of challenged faith. During this particular sermon, Pastor Jason spoke with a fervor beyond what I can remember as being his usual preaching. A decade later, I can see and hear him clearly, firmly telling his congregation, “Challenged faith is strengthened faith.” By confronting our ideals, by tearing them apart and examining them, by interrogating them, we reach one of two final outcomes: reaffirmation or abandonment. This message has been the most important tenet of my faith since Pastor Jason first spoke it into existence for me.
It is this tenet that causes me to by and large dismiss the current trend I’ve witnessed in Christian film. There is nothing challenging in these movies whatsoever. They are not meant to stimulate audiences’ minds or spirits, but merely to placate them. There are many for whom this is merely enough; it’s akin to showing up to mass every Sunday, going through the motions and singing the hymns while in attendance, and then dismissing the thought as soon as you step out of the church building. It’s a required check in a box on their supposed path to salvation that asks no real effort of its participants.
With the inevitable increase in production of films like these, it is altogether too easy to lament the complete lack of challenging, artistic, or thought-provoking Christian cinema. But I argue that there exists quite a bit of it, if you simply look beyond the faith-based genre.
With 2016’s Silence, Martin Scorsese puts to film perhaps the best contemplation of Christianity I have ever seen. It’s a difficult film to sit through, not just because of its length (nearly three hours) but because of its subject matter. Silence concerns Jesuits priests Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) traveling to Japan in the 17th century, during a time where Christians were being tortured and murdered in Japan. The priests are there to locate their missing mentor Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who is rumored to have apostatized, as well as spread the doctrine of Christianity to the Japanese.
Garfield’s Rodrigues is the real star of the film. The film spins around the question of whether Father Rodrigues will apostatize and denounce his religion or not. Silence spends much of its runtime actively engaging with the Christian doctrine — Rodrigues argues its merits with Japan’s Buddhist Inquisitor several times throughout.
As the Inquisitor tortures and challenges Rodrigues, Rodrigues’ resolve seemingly only grows stronger. While he encourages his followers to apostatize to save themselves, he refuses to do it himself. In the third act, Ferreira reveals himself alive and living in Japan. He explains to Rodrigues that many years ago he apostatized and has been living in peace ever since. Ferreira asks Rodrigues if his refusal to comply is faith, or pride?
Silence is a challenging film. While watching, the viewer is constantly being tugged in different directions over whether they want to see Rodrigues apostatize. The movie culminates in Rodrigues finally doing so, in order to save the lives of five fellow Christians. Before he steps on the image of Jesus, Ferreira tells Father Rodrigues, “You are now going to fulfill the most painful act of love that has ever been performed.”
Is Rodrigues’ decision a defeat or a victory? Silence does not offer a definitive answer. The film is most interested in what follows, as Rodrigues lives a quiet, peaceful life in Japan without speaking of God for the remainder of his life. The film’s beautiful coda illustrates a man of faith who keeps his faith entirely to himself, so much so that the local Japanese believe him to have truly abandoned the Christian religion.
Silence asks us, what would be more important: talking about and preaching our faith, or quietly living its ideals and loving God? Is Rodrigues’ faith and love of God less meaningful because it’s a secret? Or, perhaps, is it even more meaningful for not being shared?
The movie asks, repeatedly, what is faith? How do we express our faith? How do we love others and God? As we watch Father Rodrigues refuse to apostatize, we have to ask ourselves what the difference between pride and faith, or vanity and love, looks like.
When I walked out of the theater in 2016 after finishing Silence, I told myself that I’d never watch the film again. The movie had taken its toll on me, and I found myself thinking about it nonstop for weeks on end. I had found my faith challenged over and over during the course of Rodrigues’ journey. For this piece, I sat down and forced myself to watch the movie again. Even in a second viewing, I find so much of the film’s ambiguity challenging, and, as such, rewarding.
Unfortunately, none of my religious friends have bothered with the film. It seems that because the movie is about a priest who publicly denounces God, they have shunned it. A shame, of course, as I believe it has more to offer Christian viewers than they seem to realize.
If Silence asks us, “What does faith look like?,” then The Conjuring (2013) asks, “What is the power of our faith?” Unlike the other two films I’m discussing, The Conjuring is a fullblown horror movie, so it probably seems odd that I’m recommending it to Christians viewers. Rest assured, however, that I think The Conjuring has so much to offer in this field.
The Conjuring concerns the haunting of the Perron family in 1971. After moving into a new home, several supernatural elements occur and scare the entire family. Carolyn Perron, the mother, seeks the help of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens are devout Christians who work closely with the Catholic church, though neither one is ordained.
As the Warrens investigate the things that go bump in the night, they also take the time to get to know the Perrons. Ed helps Roger, the father, fix up an old car. They help cook. They clean. They play. In short, they make sure their presence in the Perron home is one of warmth. They combat the forces of Satan not just with the Christian iconography seen in every horror film made for the past few decades, but with their goodwill and love.
Lorraine believes strongly that she and Ed’s God given purpose is to help those in need, particularly with demons. You can’t have God and angels without Satan and demons, and I find it particularly interesting how heavily the Conjuring films lean into the Catholicism of the Warrens. In lesser horror movies, the holy, healing power of God could come off as corny; in The Conjuring, it comes across as sensible. The existence of God in this movie is never in question. Of course God is real, The Conjuring tells its viewers, and of course His church is the way to help the Perrons.
In the film’s climax, Carolyn is possessed by the demon witch Bathsheba. Despite not being ordained, Ed performs an exorcism. Ed is skeptical about attempting it, but Lorraine assures him that his faith in God is strong enough for him to do it and help this family. The movie plays this straight, with a sincerity lacking in most horror films. In the end, Lorraine projects a vision to Carolyn of her daughters, of love, and this very schmaltzy scene allows Ed the opening he needs to finish his exorcism. The power of faith and God prevails. The Perron family is saved.
No doubt, The Conjuring is a movie skipped by the crowd lining up to see God’s Not Dead 2. And yet, I bet they share more in common than most realize. The entire Conjuring franchise is surprisingly Christian — it is always the belief in God that saves the day, His holy power superseding the power of all unholy things. Some might even argue that The Conjuring is just as safe and palatable as those faith-based films I earlier derided. I might agree, if The Conjuring didn’t feature some of the most terrifying moments I’ve ever seen in a theater. It might be taken for granted now after its sequels, spin-offs, and the box office bonanza of It, but five years ago when it was released, The Conjuring changed the horror game. It was a genuine R-rated horror blockbuster, something unheard of, and it was unabashedly Christian. More Christians should view it as an alternative option for a faith-based movie night.
Darren Aronofsky established his interest in Christianity with Noah (2014), but it was with mother! (2017) that he fully embraced his artistic vision for the religion. Inexplicably advertised as a horror film, mother! is a metaphorical retelling of the Bible, with several distinct twists. Jennifer Lawrence’s character is Nature, and Javier Bardem is God. Their house, which Lawrence spends much of the film tending to, is earth.
I won’t retell the entire film, but the first two acts breeze through, among other things, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah’s flood. All of this is (mostly) straightforward; it’s not until Lawrence gets pregnant and Bardem writes the New Testament that things get absolutely bonkers.
With the creation of the New Testament, hundreds of people begin piling into their home, there to worship God. Nature feels confused, and neglected. God is constantly ignoring her in favor of his fans. Eventually, their house turns into a literal raging battlefield, as Aronofsky illustrates man’s nature toward war and destruction. None of this is particularly subtle, but it is unnerving.
At last, Nature gives birth to baby Jesus. In a scene that is quite difficult to watch, God’s fans murder the infant and eat it, to portray the Crucifixion of Christ and the holy ritual of communion. Nature is, understandably, extraordinarily upset. God seeks to forgive mankind, or else, He claims, the baby’s death is in vain. His forgiveness will be His greatest gift.
At this point, Nature heads down to the boiler room and blows the whole house up. It is cathartic and extremely over the top. I adored it.
With this conclusion, Aronofsky weaves together a lot of different themes: environmentalism, God’s love of man despite his sins, and the possibility of a flawed architect.
As God tenderly removes Nature’s heart (the film’s brilliant representation for the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden), She asks Him why She wasn’t enough for Him — why did He need to create man? “It’s not your fault,” God croons. “It’s never enough. I couldn’t create if it was. And I have to. It’s what I do.”
Aronofsky paints God as the ultimate artist, and all of existence as His artistic compulsion. mother! asks, “What does God look like? What might motivate Him? Why create us? Why still love us, despite our sins?”
I saw mother! opening night, expecting a horror movie. Instead I got a rather intense and compelling Biblical thinkpiece. I went home that night, read through all of Genesis, and returned to the theater the very next day to watch it again so I could better understand some of the allusions. In total, I saw mother! in theaters four times in its opening week, so powerful was its complexity to me. Aronofsky was asking me to think about God in ways I’d never imagined — he was asking me to think about our place on this planet in ways I’d never considered.
mother! was shunned by audiences upon release; it was a failure at the box office and received an extremely rare F rating from CinemaScore, a company that surveys your average moviegoer. There are a variety of reasons for this: misleading advertising, the graphic nature of the film, the ambiguity of its ending, the fact that the entire third act is all one heightened metaphor, etc. I had hoped a critical reevaluation of the film would come quickly, but alas I think it might still be too soon.
I think mother! is exactly the kind of film that Christians should be watching. It’s challenging in the right ways, it creatively depicts key Biblical moments, and I think it forces us to reevaluate the planet we’ve been gifted to live upon. If nothing else, it’s just so different from anything else being made.
As 2019 settles in and we’re all treated to The Passion of the Christ 2 (that’s not a joke), I implore Christian audiences to demand more from their film genre. More creativity, more thought, more challenge. The genre as it exists needs change; it’s already a stable full of boring, soulless money printing films. While yes, it is easier to watch God’s Not Dead than it is to watch Silence, it’s important to remember what Pastor Jason told me all those years ago: challenged faith is strengthened faith. Seek that challenge in your movies, and shun anything that simply seeks to placate your faith.
