“Good” and “Bad” Movies, by Reed Lackey

Before we dive into defining movies as “good” or “bad,” it might be valuable to use another more basic term which might be applied to any art in any medium, but which certainly applies to film. Before a film can be considered either good or bad, we first have to figure out whether or not a film “works”.

The word means exactly what you’d think it does in this context. We say a film “works” if it essentially accomplishes what it set out to do. Most movies are intended primarily for entertainment, but specifically within that they might be trying to make you laugh or inspire you or provoke you or scare you. If a film is trying to do these broad things – or if it’s trying to do something far more specific – and it mostly succeeds, then we say the film works. If a film doesn’t work, whether or not it’s good becomes largely irrelevant. Cinderblock might taste like cotton candy, but that won’t make a bit of difference if you’re starving because it won’t “work” as nourishment.

For the purposes of this examination, I want to consider films which largely “work”: films which essentially accomplish what they set out to do, whether that be frighten or move or entertain its audience. In the early 60s, C. S. Lewis wrote a very small treatise about literature and criticism called “An Experiment in Criticism”. In it, he tries to shift considerations of whether or not a work of literature is “good” from how it is written to how it is read, concluding that a book could be considered “good” if it inspired re-reading in people who were of a literary frame of mind.

I’d like to propose a similar shift regarding film criticism, but consider less whether or not a movie invites re-watching as much as why you’d want to re-watch a particular movie. Films that work well tend to linger in the imaginations of their viewers and the best ones tend to generate the kinds of thoughts and emotions which could potentially change their viewers permanently. There are reasons why Casablanca is still sought out, viewed, and discussed with such passion more than 7 decades after it was made, while Kings Row, which was nominated for Best Picture that year, is largely forgotten. History has a way of identifying the best art more successfully than contemporary opinions can.

But what makes a film work, beyond the merely subjective opinions about whether or not it’s entertaining to its audience? I’ll present my most essential and basic definition here, with the disclaimer that the only film school I have ever attended is viewing a little more than 4,000 films. In the most basic terms, a film “works” if it presents a believable world, populates that world with believable characters, and narrates a sequence of events which illustrate something of the relationship between the characters and their fictional universe. Notice that I’m using the word “believable” and not “realistic”. Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings is not a world which exists in natural reality, but in the context of the films, it is as completely believable a world as any set within our present day reality.

The key to believability is consistency. If things happen in the fictional world which seem to contradict each other, the audience’s suspension of disbelief will fall apart. This is true for both the fictional universe and for the characters that inhabit it. One of the biggest weaknesses of Christian film is that its characters tend to act inconsistently within the established conventions of the fictional universe being presented, even though that fictional universe tries to look very much like our own reality.

But the film also has to narrate a sequence of events showing some degree of how the characters in the story influence the world around them or are influenced by it. And that thought is crucial to understanding how I would define a film as “good”. If the film successfully builds a believable world and populates it with believable characters, then we can safely say the film works. But if the film is good, then it’s likely that the viewer will see themselves somewhere within the fictional story. They’ll identify with the hero or the villain or the victim or the sidekick or any number of other possible characters. If they see themselves somewhere in the story and by extension gain some understanding or are provoked to change in how they interact with their own world, then they’ve seen a good film.

That’s my definition. You might disagree or flavor it differently, but these terms are how I define and distinguish good films from bad ones. These definitions don’t have anything to do with whether or not I agree with the worldview or conclusions presented in the films. They are simply a means by which to determine how I need to engage with the worldview or conclusions I take away from the films. I’ve seen many films which present a worldview I agree with that simply don’t work very well. I’ve also seen near masterpieces of filmmaking containing conclusions about the world and about life with which I profoundly disagree.

My challenge to the Christian film viewer is to begin truly thinking about what they’re watching (as well as reading and listening to) first in terms of whether or not it works successfully, and second in terms of whether or not they agree with what the film is saying. The biggest thing I would love for Christian film lovers to move away from is the simple condition of content management. That’s another article for another time, but it is extremely unhelpful to engage with art purely on the basis of whether or not it contains violence, sexuality or foul language. Such standards, taken to their purest degree, would disqualify the Bible itself from being read.

Once we have engaged with a film through the terms of filmmaking, rather than through moral policing, we can speak more profoundly and authoritatively about what the film is saying or exploring. And once we’ve come to understand, in far more specific terms than this article can define, the qualities of films which work well and are also good, we can begin to make profoundly impactful art as well. In that case, perhaps there may yet be hope for the voice of the Christian imagination to contribute constructively to the artistic conversation beyond the terms of the financial success or failure of its films.