A Titanic Communication (MHP Column, 11.05)


Art affirms all that is best in man – hope, faith, love, beauty, prayer…What he dreams of and what he hopes for…When someone who doesn't know how to swim is thrown into water, instinct tells his body what movements will save him. The artist, too, is driven by a kind of instinct, and his work furthers man's search for what is eternal, transcendent, divine – often in spite of the sinfulness of the poet himself.


A. Tarkovsky (Sculpting in Culture)



One of the most interesting things to emerge from the depths of conversation at the Arts and Faith discussion board is “The Arts and Faith 100 Spiritually Significant Films List” that has been in place now for two years. This year’s updated, fine-tuned, and otherwise highly debated list has recently been released. I was all set to address within the space of this column the persistence of films on the list that feature an excessive amount of vulgarity and/or obscenity, but the significant number of changes made by this year’s round of voting have spared me the agony of attempting such acrobatics. American Beauty, Bad Lieutenant, and a few other films that toe this line have been tossed out on their ear, making room for a wider range of classic and international cinema.



For some reason, I would feel a bit treasonous in pointing out the films on this list that do contain what some might deem “objectionable” content. (Not serious treason though. I feel exactly Betsy Ross in the ballad in which Bob Dylan discovers that she was a communist because having checked with a magnifying glass, he found red stripes in her flag. Or do I feel like Bob Dylan?). Films like Magnolia, The Big Kahuna, Unforgiven, and Breaking the Waves are all confrontational in their presentation, vulgar enough that light starts bleeding through cracks on the surface of their dialogue or imagery. And then of course we have your Lord of the Rings or The Passion of the Christ, steeped in awful sequences of violence. In any other context, this level of violence would be obscene, but since they tend to match the Christian world view so well they are seldom classed with things as interestingly degenerate as The Last Temptation of Christ. The list does both ends of the spectrum a favor by bringing them in tension with each other.



Perhaps it is these fluctuations of the list that make it so necessary, as over 30 changes have been made to it since last year. Its thoughtful flexibility reflects the community of critics it defines, one both growing in its appreciation of film history and sharpening its self-identity as it engages a broader range of film. You know, semper reformandum and all that. Probably more telling on this point than this year’s actual list are the films that have been left behind. The pop mysticism of The Matrix, Star Wars, and The Sxith Sense were left behind, as were odd picks like Dogma or Last Days of Disco. But we also lost Code Unknown, Waking Life, Secrets and Lies, and a few others that seem like no-brainers. In their place have appeared a few genuine classics such as The Flowers of St. Francis, Rashomon, and Pickpocket.



Yet the question that still lurks about the list this year is: What exactly is it? It isn’t always quite clear whom the list is being prepared for, whether for people of faith who are interested in film, people of film who are interested in faith, or maybe both. It also isn’t always quite clear what criteria form the boundaries of the list. Are these films that lead to significant spiritual reflection, or are they films that simply focus on matters of faith? The very title of the list is somewhat ambiguous, but perhaps this is more linked to the ambiguity of spiritual experience itself rather than a lack of critical conscience on behalf of the list-makers.


I like to think of the list as a sort of back door to faith, your own private entrance to the houses of the holy. The Hidden God contains an essay by Nathaniel Dorksy on “Devotional Cinema,” in which he addresses the moments “not where religion is the subject of a film, but where film is the spirit or experience of religion.” He talks about a transcendent “alchemy” that happens in good film, in films that “lay the ground for devotion.” The list ostensibly contains these sorts of films. It is a monument to a history of people speaking a different language about eternal concepts, testing this new grammar of light, texture, and rhythm as it contacts the contours of faith and reality. The list honors artists in tune with the human condition, putting human faces on high-concept theological realities. And most of these films do more than simply describe these realities; they rehearse them, reproduce them, and enable us to inhabit them. These films are catalysts, mirrors, and antidotes. Simply put, the list is a guide to spaces of insight and reflection that exist off the beaten track of tried and true spiritual practices.



There is always something spiritually significant about turning the camera on the world around us. I bet we can go one step farther though and even say there is something uniquely Christian about good filmmaking, often in spite of the orientation of the filmmaker. Who better to speak to this than the late Francis Schaeffer: “When Giacometti pictures the awful alienation of man, he makes figures which are alienated, but he is still living in God's world and is still using the common symbolic forms no matter how he distorts them. He plays with the vocabulary, but the vocabulary is still there. So there is a communication between Giacometti and me, a titanic communication. I can understand what he is saying and I cry.” To those who disagree, I just refer you to the list.



One question though, why did we vote off all of Peter Weir’s films? That is ridiculous. Hopefully next year will see their return; I will be campaigning with vigor for The Mosquito Coast.