More Than One Lesson

Martin Scorsese has never kept his Catholic upbringing a secret. While he has certainly never made Christian films, his lifelong internal struggle of faith has informed his work throughout his now 50 year career as a filmmaker. It is most overt in works such as Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Gangs of New York. But it is such a part of him that his films that don’t have at least a small piece of Christian iconography are notable for the absence of it. He is probably the only mainstream filmmaker of which that can be said. Now with Silence, Scorsese takes an unflinching look into what it means to truly be a follower of Christ under the harshest of circumstances.

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Rob Zombie frustrates me. On one hand, he’s clearly a distinct and visionary director, with a strong command of imagery and a rich understanding of the foundational horror films of the 20s and 30s. With each new film announcement from him, I’m immediately curious. I reacted the same way when his recent death-match slasher 31 was announced. However, with every film of his besides The Devil’s Rejects, I’ve walked away disappointed.

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Sequels are continually regarded, however unfairly, as automatically inferior films. Recent entries in the superhero and science fiction genres have rebuked that stigma, but they’ve not abolished it. It is particularly challenging to craft a sequel to a film which is regarded as a landmark. So when William Peter Blatty set out to direct a third sequel to the legendary horror classic, The Exorcist, it seemed a matter of incredible folly.

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Several times throughout Hidden Figures, one of the film’s three protagonists- African-American women working at NASA in the early 1960s- will walk into a room, and dozens of white co-workers will turn to look, very surprised at who they see. Some of them look skeptical, some alarmed, some distrustful, and others still, are clearly upset. While this could have become a heavy-handed visual to repeat so many times, it quietly becomes an interesting thematic idea which ties into a claim one of the three women makes during the film. The idea of how important it is to be first. This was true of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and it was true for the women working for their opportunity to be a part of that race. What these women find is that the first one through the door isn’t always welcome there. The first is often greeted with hostility or incredulity. To be accepted, the first can’t merely be competent. The first has to be great.

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Several New Year’s roundups noted the plethora of faith-friendly films released in 2016, including more than one positive depiction of Christians from heavyweight Hollywood directors. Perhaps the two most notable were Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and Martin Scorsese’s Silence (if you count the latter’s limited 2016 release). Gibson, drawing from life, and Scorsese, drawing from literature, presented full-bodied Christian characters that demanded to be taken seriously. They were neither caricatures nor cardboard cut-outs, but complex men putting skin in the game for their deepest convictions. Tim Gray at Variety also noted John Hurt’s portrayal of a wise priest in the biopic Jackie. It may seem pathetic to be grateful when Hollywood gives us a priest who is neither a megalomaniac nor a pedophile, but the change is still welcome.

Despite this good news, an effectual Christian presence was lacking in one Best Picture contender, ironically one of the films where it was most sorely needed. I’m speaking about Manchester By the Sea.

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“The river flowed quiet again, reaching toward a gentler shore.” – William Peter Blatty, from The Exorcist

There are stories which are so affecting, so deeply impactful, that they become the standard-bearer for their genre – or for stories in general. To the horror fan, one of the unrivaled masterpiece standard bearers is The Exorcist. The author of that novel, and of the screenplay which became the film, has passed away.

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If his first two features are any indicator, Damien Chazelle really wants all of us to love jazz. We may be indifferent to it- or possibly even hate it- now, but with 2014’s Whiplash and now his musical La La Land, Chazelle appears to be making that his life’s work. Whether or not he reaches his ultimate goal, as long as he keeps making films at the level of his first two, he is certainly achieving something special.

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And so we continue with my inexplicable tradition of ringing in the New Year by listing some of the notable movies that are now ten years old. This year, however, this is particularly poignant for me, because my wife and I moved to Los Angeles in January of 2007. It was also the same year that I started podcasting over at Battleship Pretension.

Little did I know at the time that 2007 would be one of the best movie years of my lifetime, with no less than four absolute masterpieces being released over the course of the year (see if you can guess what they are!).

The following movies are now officially 10 years old. Happy New Year!

BREACH
GHOST RIDER
BLACK SNAKE MOAN
ZODIAC
300
SHOOTER
THE LOOKOUT
GRINDHOUSE
HOT FUZZ
SPIDER-MAN 3
KNOCKED UP
RATATOUILLE
SICKO
TRANSFORMERS
RESCUE DAWN
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
SUNSHINE
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
SUPERBAD
3:10 TO YUMA
EASTERN PROMISES
IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
INTO THE WILD
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
MICHAEL CLAYTON
GONE BABY GONE
AMERICAN GANGSTER
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
ENCHANTED
THE MIST
JUNO
ATONEMENT
I AM LEGEND
CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
THERE WILL BE BLOOD

One of the salient features of a particular kind of film marketed explicitly to evangelical Christians is the use of what Tyler Smith calls “the emblem.” Among other characteristics, it typifies what Tyler has classified under the umbrella of “Christian social drama” in his master’s thesis. Examples of this genre include movies like Fireproof, Courageous, War Room, God’s Not Dead, and Do You Believe. The form of the emblem varies from movie to movie, but consistently, there’s some monument or object that represents the characters’ commitment to family and faith.

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