A film need not be explicitly religious to proffer spiritual
meaning. In fact, gritty stories that wrestle with thorny problems that people
have faced or may face in everyday life can be more gripping even theologically
than stories based on religious idealism, such as The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Ten Commandments.
Hidden Figures, for
example, “has no obvious religious message. Rather, it is a feel-good drama
about unsung black heroines in the NASA space race of the 1960s.”[1]
Yet this didn’t stop Fox from hiring Wit PR to market the film to churches. Wit
PR invited several “opinion-leader” pastors to watch filming, one cleric remarking,
“I came away really interested in using film to explore faith.”[2]
The “aspirational story about women who have faith in themselves” could be used
as fodder in a sermon on the Christian theological virtues of faith and hope—the
key being to keep having faith in spite of insufferable obstacles.
Yet just as secular films such as Hidden Figures need not have an explicit religious leitmotif or
thesis in order to be conveyers of deep meaning, so too such meaning in such
films need not be evoked in a religious context. That is to say, even secular
films can bypass the religious organizations altogether to bring principles
with religious import to people directly.
The Matrix, for
example, prompted much discussion not only about philosophical solipsism, but
also Neo as the One. Although non-Christian Plotinus utilized this term to mean
God in the second century, the Christological reference would not be lost on
many Christians. In the film, Morpheus is convinced that Neo is the One who
would go on to save humanity from the
clutches of the machines. Morpheus’s faith, even in spite of the apparent
impossibility in Neo’s death, never wavers. Christian viewers would hardly need
a sermon to drive the point home. For non-Christians, the critical question of
whether the assumption that one person should save humanity isn’t artificial
was debated far outside of explicit religious circles.
Film is indeed an
incredible medium in being able to render even ubiquitous assumptions
transparent and thus able to be critiqued and discussed. That even a secular
film can put religious assumptions in a new, and thus transparent, light—whether
the implications are critical or affirming for a particular religion or religion
itself!—brings cinema into the business of engaging deep meaning. In fact, with
such meaning at the subterranean level in a secular film, assumptions can all
the more readily come to light. It is a paradox that religious meaning from the
pulpit is typically readily apparent and thus the undergirding assumptions are
rarely exposed to the open air.
To be sure, assumptional analysis of religious beliefs can
be explicit on-screen. In The Da Vinci
Code, for example, Robert Langdon and his former colleague debate the
theological import of whether Jesus had a child—unknowingly right in front of
the last descendant of Jesus Christ. The debate is actually about whether the
historical Jesus is the Son of God: the One (not in Plotinus’s sense of the
word). Such an on-screen exercise is of great value too—to Christians and even
non-Christians. Again, the value lies in rendering religious assumptions transparent
so they may be realized and even thought over. Film is indeed a valuable medium
in that it can flush out truth (and untruth) hidden in clear view.
[1]
Brooks Barnes, “Secular
Hollywood Quietly Courts the Faithful,” The
New York Times, December 24, 2016.
[2]
Ibid.