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When I feel low, I often cheer myself up by watching US-made Christian movies. I’m not proud of this. Very few are well made or intellectually complex. I’m drawn to them for other, perhaps less respectable reasons, some of which I will share here today.
First, you should understand that the Christian movie industry is a very much booming trade. After the injection of pace with Mel Gibson’s (slightly dodgy) ‘Passion of the Christ’, even the most atheistic Hollywood producer has come to recognise the massive profit-potential in religious film-making. Most ordinary Americans are devoutly attached to their faith, and of these a great number feel alienated by the over-worldly content churned out by conventional L.A productions. It seems only logical then that faith-based productions enter the void left over.
And they have done. They really have. Christian films now reliably bring in millions of dollars, usually despite a paltry budget and so creating a gaping profit margin for the makers.
What are they like? As I perceive the matter, Christian films are usually small variations on the following plot structure: Good Christian girl/boy living a wholesome American life – falls into temptation (drugs, fame, sex, wealth etc…) – gets burnt by the sin they fall into – are saved by their old friends or family from their former wholesome life.
Sounds stupid? I suppose it is. But then there is something weirdly magnetic and comforting in the uncomplicated innocence these films advertise. If the idea of the movies is to tempt you into a different, more wholesome way of life, they are successful to the extent that they make that way of life seem joyful and safe. You come away from one of these films with a desire to avoid falling into life-traps, perhaps even to get out of life-traps you are already in. The feeling doesn’t last long enough for you to do anything about it, of course, but it certainly stays in your mind longer than the messages of Taken 3 or the latest sci-fi abomination.
Christian movies are also appealing to me because of their all-American feel. The characters at the beginning of each film (before the temptations and fall from grace) are living the American dream; a suburban house, a nice car, and a tight family with one beautiful cheer-leading daughter and one athletic and good-mannered son. I’ve always been drawn to idyllic caricatures like that. It matters nothing that this isn’t the reality for 90% of real American families. As shtick goes, it works for me – like a social watercolour painting.
A list of Christian cinema’s flaws would be as long as the list of its virtues. Christian movies are often anti-Semitic (the temptation villain trope character in a film usually looks Jewish). They are homophobic as a matter of course. And though the lead character in each production is usually female, she is also passive, secondary and naïve. These films are anything but politically correct, and this explains sufficiently why they will never break through into the mainstream.
By any religion’s standards I’m a sinner. I like anything that brings me pleasure and have indulged more than I should in uncountable vices. Perhaps it is for that reason that the morals of Christian cinema strike me as exotic and fascinating. They are foreign, but in a way I can’t easily belittle or reject.
D, LDN
Defend the Modern World 
Ha! I love a good, sappy, poorly acted Christian movie, myself. By Christian standards we are all sinners, but the ideals these movies portray are real enough 😉
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Yeah, the acting is pretty corny. But that just makes it better for me. Corny can be enjoyable.
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They seem to be of another time and age, even if not reality, but looking for hope, that there are good things out there, and sometimes some do win the lottery of life..
We do know of people who after tribulations, get to and make the best of life.
Just look at the glossy magazines, selling the possibility of a better future.
Still you need the break where you can find it, as you bring much thought and analysis with knowledge of what you see and hear, that is quietly motivating to me to keep stepping out, and say and do what is right.
It has now been about 3 years since I have quietly started following you,
If you ever get my way, I owe you more than a beer 😉
Another blog I know of gets in to Bach,, to give the mind a break and a change of thinking.
I hope that overall you also get good breaks, holidays, travel, and to live life in its fullest, as well as this voluntary duty you have undertaken on this blog.
Wishing you that great life this New Year
With great thanks Simpleton.
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Many thanks. I’m very pleased you enjoy the content. I hope you also have a great New Year. Cheers.
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I don’t watch TV and seldom see movies but this article does make me think of It’s A Wonderful Life. I didn’t particularly like it that much but I found it interesting and basically agreed with the values, as I understood them.
This is a spoiler if you haven’t seen it (mind you my interpretation may be so off track it may make no difference; it’s quite a while since I saw it also).
Basically George Bailey is married to Mary, she is vivacious and they several children. Although I don’t recall much in the way of overt Christianity (there is a supernatural element, a kind of caricature of God and angel) I’d say they are decent Christian folk… along the lines of The Waltons or the family in Little House On The Prairie but more especially I’d say they basically represent the so called bourgeois.
However George, who is something like a bank clark who prides himself on his modest integrity, living within his means etc, none the less finds himself struggling financially, confronting something like bankruptcy, which brings on a midlife crisis. He becomes overwhelmed with a sense that he has sacrificed a potentially more adventurous, exciting and fulfilling life for safe mediocrity and alas ‘all is vanity’; it is as he is contemplating suicide that he encounters a man (an angel). The angel gives George a guided tour of what his town, what it would be like had he never existed.
Well, the town has basically gone the way of Vegas – brothels and casinos etc. This revelation and, if I recall, the many loyal people in his life (a loyalty that George didn’t really realise existed) come to his aid and they all live happy ever after, so to speak.
One of the things that struck me is that when he is given this guided tour of the alternative reality he sees Mary and she is a dowdy “old maid” (though appears quite young in the relevant scene which I think is deliberate), she is a Librarian i.e though she could have embraced her inner ‘hamster’ (if you can’t beat ’em join ’em) and indulged in a string of reckless love affairs she opts instead for a life of civic duty that cramps her vivacious style. She helps, in her modest way, to maintain what is surely one of the few remaining bastions of civilisation.
I’m also reminded of Anne Eliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Anne, who is born into aristocracy, was persuaded in her late teens by her dear, late, mother against an engagement to a Mr Wentworth who is essentially a nobody but has naval ambitions.
Some nine years late, her mother having died, her father is a vain and pompous man who fails to live within his means. Her younger sister, Mary, is a chronic neurotic and her older sister is more like her father (basically a vacuous socialite). To make matters worse Wentworth, now the successful Captain Wentworth, has arrived back on the scene and Anne can only realistically assume that she has completely missed her opportunity and must stoically observe from the sidelines as, in all likelihood, Capt Wentworth’s attentions are are drawn to Mary’s younger sister in-laws.
I think of a modern platitude, as I see it (so long as you’re happy that’s all that matters) It is obvious that Anne cannot be happy but crucially she has self possession and dignity; anybody whose opinion is worth anything admires her, indeed to know her is to love her, and that really does matter. Thankfully this story also has a happy ending.
I think the power is obvious; however fictional these exemplars of the qualities we admire – and I think the popularity of Jane Austen attests to the fact that probably most people really do admire them (even in spite of themselves) – however much they are in short supply in reality they really are of great value and not merely the stuff of escapist fiction.
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I love It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s an uncomplicated argument against despair. I wish there were more movies like that.
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I haven’t read much Jane Austin. I really should.
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You say you haven’t read much? – so which *have* you read? I’ve read all her books. She’s very astute, and often very funny. I commend to you particularly one of her lesser-known works – “Lady Susan”; it is a study in deception as practised by the pretty and charming and clever and entirely amoral Lady Susan. As you read it, allow yourself to imagine what a thoroughly-non-PC Indie film-maker could do with the plot, updated to 21st-century England, with the Lady Susan character a sly and seductive muslimah infiltrator who has inveigled her way into an old British family and is wreaking havoc.
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I’ve read a few chapters of Austin, but never an entire book. I tend to read mainly non-fiction. I shall look up the book you recommend.
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Yes by all means do. I really liked Persuasion, I thought perhaps I liked it more than Pride And Prejudice but I read Pride again and it really is very good. I haven’t read Northanger Abbey or Emma but certainly intend to.
I think I got at least one thing wrong about Persuasion; I think it might have been Anne’s late mother’s friend (who became a kind of mother figure) who was instrumental in the persuading.
Re It’s A Wonderful Life, maybe if I saw it again I’d enjoy it more, that’s what happened in the case of Shawshank Redemption, but I not a big fan of James Stewart.
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I love the Shawshank Redemption. Must have watched it 3 times. Prison dramas are always compelling for me. It does seem to have a spiritual undertone to it, although that is hard to distinguish from mere sentimentality.
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As regards ‘Christian movies’. There are some I would regard as Christian in terms of the underlying vision of the world that they communicate…whether they were made by avowed Christians or not. The most thoroughly Catholic (in terms of underlying paradigm) movie I have ever seen is by an Australian non-Catholic, Peter Weir: the film “Fearless”. Analogically speaking, it’s a riff on the seven sacraments – the means of grace. Or watch his “Witness” and “Mosquito Coast” side by side. The vision of the heavenly city; and the slow boat to Hell. “Year of Living Dangerously”. “Green Card”, with Andie Macdowall and Gerard Depardieu – it’s not about the modern situation as regards migrants, it was done in the 1980s, it’s really a meditation on marriage, on America and Europe, New World and Old World, and beyond that…before you watch the movie, read the Biblical book “The Song of Solomon”. “Master and Commander”. And “Truman Show” – when you watch it, ask yourself…*who* and what within that film represents what an orthodox christian would recognise as the *real* God? the key to Truman Show is a verse from Ephesians – “sleeper awake, and rise from the dead…”. Then there’s the Polish film-maker, Kieslowski – his Three Colours trilogy, and “The Double Life of Veronique”. Poland vs France, eastern vs western Europe. The Harry Potter books (the movies only in part, because they leave out some critical governing or illuminating images and episodes) operate within and communicate, in mythic/ fantasy form, a fundamentally healthy and Christian understanding of life, love and death – even if the author is a bit like her own scatter-brained ditzy seer Trelawney – she doesn’t know what it was she was saying when she said it and has absolutely no idea that the modern real-life equivalent of death eaters are the Muslims and their enablers and the real equivalent of Voldemort is not Trump (of all things!) but…the dead warlord Mohammed, kept alive in the equivalent of the deadly diary which possesses its readers. She’d probably be stunned if I told her that the real-life analogy for the Order of the Phoenix is…the Jewish state of Israel, and every other decent person or organisation that is standing up to resist the Jihad. Yet: it makes sense, and it makes more sense than anything else. Other films? – I’d give honourable mention to Bruce Beresford’s “Black Robe”, and “Tender Mercies”, and to another film by somebody called Robert Benton, called “Places in the Heart”. Then there’s “Chocolat” and “Babette’s Feast”. But my all-time favourites – and I speak as a practising Christian – are Weir’s “Fearless” and the Kieslowski trilogy (which is allegedly about Liberty Egality Fraternity but is in fact just as much or more so a meditation upon Faith, Hope and Charity).
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The Three Colours Trilogy is fantastic, particularly Blue.
The French film Amelie has a Christian feel to it, although I’m sure that wasn’t intended.
I was put off Harry Potter by the films.
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They do not have to be “christian” films to give you that feeling. One of the films that moves me every time I see it is “Requiem for a Dream” – the lead character(s) are all Jewish – however the storyline becomes instantly familiar with you if are faithless, or even Christian. A life of vice is shown as “the wrong path” – yet the sentiment is just like those daytime (or are they called “Lifetime” films?) that middle America has an insatiable appetite for. The score is absolutely hypnotic.
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Now that is a great film. It’s odd – the first time I saw it I thought it was massively overrated (most people having raved about it to me for months). It wasn’t until the second viewing that I realised just how shattering it is. The older actress was particularly superb.
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Ellen Burstyn.
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Should have won an Oscar.
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I’m sure there are wonderful religious Jewish films out there too.
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