Historically, meaning in the
history of cinema, perhaps too much effort or attention initially went into fidelity
to doctrine, especially in Christianity. Heavily stylistic, unrealistic epics
could be said to merely illustrate doctrines. Then as filmmakers began to think
in an open-ended way concerning how to depict the transcendent both visually
and ideationally (i.e., as an idea), the dominance of the earlier
control-orientation slipped away to be replaced by innovative ways of
understanding how the transcendent may relate to the realm of our daily mundane
existence in the world. The extraordinary potential of filmmaking to tap into
the human imagination without necessarily providing definitive answerers could
be seen. I submit that this historical trajectory is a positive development. This
does not mean that heterodox belief has or should win out; in fact, religious
practitioners, including the clergy, can help filmmakers to depict the
transcendent and its relationship to our existence in novel ways that do not
seem so formulaic as to be easily brushed aside as less than credible. Old wine
can indeed go into new jugs, and even new wine may be tasted without the world
collapsing as a result.
Let’s begin with the old approach.
“In his 1936 encyclical Vigilanti Cura, Pope Pius XI argues that, insofar
as ‘the motion picture has become the most popular form of diversion which is
offered for the leisure hours . . . ,’ it is crucial that Catholics pressure ‘the
industry [to] produce motion pictures
which conform entirely to our standards.’ Only in this way can ‘the motion
picture be no longer a school of corruption’ but ‘be transformed into an
effectual instrument for the education and the elevation of mankind.’”[1]
But what standards? Are they moral or
theological in nature, or both? Are the standards moral only that can be
derived from theological doctrines? If not, on what basis are the extrinsic
moral standards legitimate for the Church to enforce on Hollywood? The very
notion of standards, moreover, connotes the negativity of
prohibition, whereas teachings instead would imply that films are made
proactively to illustrate through narrative principles and values found in
Christianity. Rather than fixate on Hollywood as being corrupt, the pope could
have pictured it as an opportunity full of potential, ignoring the decadent
films. For beyond educating people, films can elevate us, as the pope admits. In
short, rather than viewing the glass as half empty; it can be viewed as half
full. Rather than concentrating on emptying out the stale brew, the focus can
be on that which is added that is salubrious from a distinctly religious
standpoint. What does it take to do so?
Going from the mentality of
slapping a ruler on a wrist to helping filmmakers to render the transcendent through
narrative using visuals and sound entails eclipsing the subjectivity of the
filmmakers as well as “’the immanent frame’ of technological modernity,”[2]
which includes not only the techniques but also the business of filmmaking.
Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s
Baby (1968), for instance, eclipses Polanski’s own subjectivity (or secular
bias) in leaving it to the viewer whether Rosemary is dreaming or really is raped
by Satan, although the short cut-away later briefly showing the baby’s face in
the crib provides an answer that the supernatural realm that is transcendent of
our world is indeed real. Furthermore, showing the animal raping Rosemary
hardly fits with modernity, including the business interests of Hollywood. In
short, Polanski took a risk, and he was not out to superimpose his own views of
the supernatural onto his audience. That is, Polanski resisted what Heidegger
calls the “culture-industry,” wherein, according to Barnett, “cinema merely
discloses the rich subjectivity of the artist rather than any truth conveyed by
the work itself.”[3]
Instead, Polanski allows Heidegger’s “letting be” to occur by not trying, as
Barnett puts it, “to wrest determinate meaning” from the work.[4]
Polanski creates the openness in which viewers can be open to transcendence in
a metaphysical sense.
Barnett points to The Greatest
Story Ever Told (1965) as being an example of what to avoid in this regard,
as “the thematization of Christian doctrine or dramatization of Christian
conversion” in the film “is most likely to elicit eye rolls and snickers.”[5]
The characters are so stylized and idealized as to please not only the camera,
but the financially-inclined producers as well. Nothing offensive. Nothing
challenging. To be sure, at the time, as the first film to show Jesus’ face,
the film could have been reckoned by some people as controversial. Even so, merely illustrating a Biblical narrative visually and with sound goes only so far. The Ten
Commandments (1956) too, goes only so far. Both films are “safe” in that they follow well-established
doctrines exquisitely and present the Bible in the modern medium.
To be sure, over-stylized, non-realistic illustrations of Biblical narrative can contain allusions to the holy that seem genuine or real. In the television miniseries, Jesus of Nazareth (1977), for example, an eerie scene takes place in which other-worldly instrumental music plays as Jesus silently walks, with bright back-light behind him highlighting his meager, weak (yet paradoxically strong!) form, toward Pontius Pilate, whose facial expression intimates that something wholly other is going on in the case of Jesus. We see something similar in the realistic reactions of the disciples witnessing Jesus recusitate Lazarus in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Both scenes resonate with the qualities of the holy described by Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy. So the phenomenon of the holy can be depicted in a catching way even in heavy-stylized (i.e., unrealistic) films whose primary orientation is to present established Biblical narratives in an orthodox way.
It would take perhaps until The
Last Temptation of Christ (1988) for the transcendent itself to again be
raised as a question rather than an established fact with respect to
Christology, or Christian dogma. The Exorcist (1973) explicitly raises
the question of whether the supernatural demon really exists, though the psychological
bias of modernity is eviscerated by supernatural feats that cannot possibly be
explained as mental phenomena.
Of course, the very existence of
the transcendent need not flagged and left up in the air for a film to
represent religion in a way that resists the easy and convenient stylization of
modernity. The Others (2001)
resists simple movie technique by turning the tables on the viewers without
questioning the reality of the transcendent. Ghost (1990) also provides an
innovative way into there being another realm, though with the familiar bipolar
trappings of heaven and hell that ironically give the film the veneer of established
doctrine—such easy formulaic being used by the modern industry of film to sell.
To draw out the transcendent in a
way that does not seem trite or already well-groved, “Filmmakers must uncover
the tensity between beings and Being, between the systematized habits of the
human world and the raw primitivity of non-technical existence. Thereby, the
mystery of being-in-the-world is manifested, and with it, the possibility of a
truly poetic encounter with Being itself.”[6]
Overstylized, too-conventional depictions of Biblical narrative can fall short
in terms of showing the human “struggle to discern the divine presence.”[7]
To manifest “the ineffable and invisible” beyond “normal sense experience,” “a
fundamental incongruity between human everydayness and the transcendent world
is expressed” even as both are contained within a oneness.[8]
This incongruity must burst through preconceived notions, as are in heavily
stylized Biblical epics, or the depicted transcendent will not seem real to
viewers. Put another way, raw Being should challenge the viewer, yet not be so different
or new that it is not believed to possibly represent something real beyond the movie
theater or living room.
The subtle, almost-invisible cascade
of ghosts going down the stairs in Poltergeist (1982) and the human’s
facial expressions of simple wonder are much more suggestive of another realm
than is the over-fabricated, almost sensationalistic hole in the bedroom closet
heading to the other realm. The liminality of the numen, which lies between
realms in at least the human imagination, is difficult to capture visually, and
is thus too susceptible to being done up in a meretricious or gaudy way by
filmmakers in line with modern sensationalism and cinematic technique.
There are of course new ways of
telling old stories. The Chosen, a television series made in Texas of
Jesus and his disciples, is a case in point. They are all presented in a
realistic way, as are the Romans. Matthew is mildly autistic. Jesus has some
very human reactions to everyday situations. Yet the world depicted is one in
which miracles take place. The transcendent is real even as the characters are portrayed
realistically. So while some stories, such as The Others, may do away
with conventional notions of a heaven and hell, other stories are quite
conventional yet they resist easy formulation repeating oft seen epics. There is
indeed so much potential in filmmaking to depict transcendence in a myriad of
ways that the old way of controlling the medium so that it conforms with
doctrine in a conventional way has thankfully been defeated. Nevertheless, the danger of an over-reaching
subjectivity of a filmmaker imposed through the medium is still with us, given
human nature, and it may still be too tempting for filmmakers to turn to
heavily stylized Hollywood props and well-trodden plots instead of thinking
outside the proverbial box. I am convinced that the human imagination applied
to religion in film has not come close to having been exhausted.
1. Christopher B. Barnett, “Can Cinema Be ‘Religious’? Heidegger, Technology, and
the Transcendent,” Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary,
139, No. 2 (Spring, 2024): 19-23.
2. Ibid. Barnett is quoting Charles Tayler, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2007), 539-93.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Michael Bird, “Film as Hierophany,” in Religion in Film, John R. May and
Michael Bird, eds (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1982), p.
4.
8. Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Boston:
Da Capo Press, 1972), pp. 3-13.
