James Longkumer
From the previous issue...
To engage with movies as Christians, we must first learn to view a movie in its own terms before entering into a spiritual dialogue with it, lest we approach the movie with biased theological assumptions. We must let the images of a movie suggest meaning and direction before making any judgments. And only when the narrative and the larger intention of a movie is grasped and comprehended, then we may begin to engage dialogically with the movie and trace themes, imagery, and symbolisms which resonate with our Christian faith. But movies need not be explicitly “Christian” in their themes to be spiritually significant. At the same time, not all movies have spiritual themes so that they can be watched reverently. We must also apply caution not to spiritualize a movie totally at the expense of the aesthetic experience. The aesthetic must precede any spiritual or theological engagement.
As Christians, our engagements with movies can take many forms. We can relate with Christian themes of certain films with the motifs embedded both in the movies and the Bible. Very often, biblical themes such as agape, grace, hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption (and many more), are implicitly and explicitly interwoven with the narrative of most films. We can also bring movies and certain biblical text into direct conversation or may even compare and contrast the Christ as we know in the Gospels with the metaphorical use of the Christ-figure often portrayed in films. While we all know that there are explicit films about Jesus like The Passion of the Christ or The Last Temptation of Christ, an alternative to such films about Jesus are movies that make metaphorical use of the imagery of Christ substantively. In literature, a popular portrayal of the Christ-figure is the Lion Aslan in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia. There is danger, however, in having overzealous Christian movie viewers find Christ-figures in every crossbar. In some films, however, the Christ-figure is a primary motif that gives shape to the narrative of the movie, as in the film Pay it Forward. Christians must therefore be discerning to recognize such metaphors in movies. Failure to notice such a theme makes a movie watching incomplete.
While film can be a powerful tool for engaging us spiritually, it can also have negative influence on us as well. If movies can be the occasion for spiritual nourishment, it can also destroy our faith and belief too. Christians must therefore be discerning and selective in what we see. We must learn to become knowledgeable film viewers so that our selection of movies entails not only our personal taste, but also a certain level of intellectual and spiritual maturity. One must therefore know where to draw the line and decide what movies or genres one is comfortable with.
In a society like Nagaland where majority of the people claim to profess Christianity as their faith, it is quite saddening to see what a messy society we have created as Christians. In many areas, the church remains irrelevant without its walls and complacent within, and has often failed to appropriate and address the cultural narrative of the wider world. We have boxed God and our faith and the results are proving to be disastrous. While we should not abandon our faith and the church, we must also open our eyes as we attempt to see God anew through alternate ways and means. It wouldn’t be too surprising if young people in Nagaland today would be more interested and intrigued to learn about God, Christ, and about the Christian faith through a movie than listening to mostly dry and redundant sermons in the church. Having said this, we should guard ourselves from extreme appropriation of movies, making movies a “religion” or “religion-like.” In other words, movies should not replace the Bible and the church for one’s spiritual food!
Christians cannot live in detachment from the pervasive cultures around us. Movies are therefore simply part of our contemporary life and culture. Movies help us understand and critique our culture and can provide viewers both experiences of life and greater understanding of our culture and our society’s values. As a narrative within the larger order of God’s created narrative, movies tell us about the age we live in. God is present in all of life and communicates to us through many means, and movies can be just one of those. Popular cultural expressions like movies can function as transforming resources for our lives as well. A movie’s story has the power to rejuvenate and change lives. Movies have also proven to be sources for healing and are capable of liberating bonded souls. As Christians we can no longer ignore movies for the values they engender and the influence they have on the individual and the society. We must learn to engage and evaluate movies in the light of our faith and practices. We also need to talk about the movies we watch so that we can celebrate what is good and make sense of our lives in relation to the world and our beliefs.
The film Becket has been the medium for two individuals in two totally different contexts, who heard God speaking to them through it. Consequently, both of them discerned the call of God into Christian ministry through this movie. One of them went on to become a Roman Catholic priest. The other is a professor of theology at an evangelical seminary today. Can movies make such transforming impact on us? We will know only when we begin to watch movies!
This article serves as a precursor to movie reviews from a Christian perspective, which will appear in this column occasionally.
James Longkumer is a student of Theology
