From an article entitled “Growing quantity of `Christian’ films now focus on quality”:
In addition to “To Save a Life,” [about basketball players facing a friend's death] other upcoming 2010 Christian movies include “Letters to God,” a Possibility Pictures film about a cancer-stricken boy who writes to God in letters carried by a troubled postal worker. “The Revelator,” a Pure Flix Entertainment production about a terminally ill orphan who tries to save his doctor’s marriage, also is scheduled for release next year.
OK, I’m glad the filmmakers are focusing on better quality. I salute you. But take some lessons from the past. I am currently teaching a course entitled “Major Christian Authors,” covering such authors as Dante, Spenser, Herbert, Bunyan, Hopkins, Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor. NONE of them wrote about people’s personal problems. There is not one terminally ill orphan in the whole lot. No scenes about broken marriages or friends dying or sports teams winning the big game. These classic Christian authors–who actually did influence their cultures–saw Christianity as being rather more than a means of solving life’s problems, and none of them lapsed into the deadly aesthetic sin of SENTIMENTALITY.
These aesthetically more ambitious movies still have a soft-spot for sentimentality. Try making movies that do not attempt to make us cry. That means no diseases, no thrilling comebacks, no dying children. Try making movies that are exciting, or send our imaginations reeling, or that are funny. You will be surprised how well such stories can express and even explore the Christian faith.
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I love the sound of that course you are teaching.
Honestly, I cannot bear to watch any of the Christian films that have come out. Can movies that are not explicitly Christian, but that are beautiful works of art, still point to the Cross? Can you give us some examples?
sarah… the green mile main character is for sure a type of christ
Thank you for nailing the sentimentality nail on the head! You are so right that the great Christian authors didn’t stoop to manipulation through implementation of sentimentality. Truthfully expressing the common human condition is the way to touch hearts and influence culture.
It seems as if Christian literature and movies hearkens back merely to the Victorian age, and we really need to look a few centuries further back (and to Victorian and Edwardian anomalies) to recover our artistic senses.
Would it undermine PHC’s mission if you published the reading list for the class here? If it wouldn’t…..pretty please?
The reason that those excellent Christian authors eschew sentimentality is that Christ Himself-the Logos- utterly lacked sentimentality. He came to fulfill the Law and to die on the Cross to fulfill God’s essentially hard-headed purpose for the world.
The Hollywood types and the liberal Christian preachers fail to distinguish between Christian love and mawkish sentimentality.
Spot on!
Amen!
Bike Bubba, I could do that. Stay tuned.
I notice that of the authors listed by Dr. Veith, none are Lutheran. They are all Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, or Anglican. What is to be made of this, if anything? What would Lutherans say are the major Lutheran contributions to literature?
Great post! If I were a filmmaker, I would just try to make good movies and not call them “Christian” or market them to Christians in any way, even though they might be thoroughly from my Lutheran worldview. I mean what if a character had to swear or smoke or even dance for the story? Something like “Gran Torino” comes to mind. I loved that movie and I kinda enjoy giving a language and violence disclaimer to puritanical types when I recommend it to them.
Perhaps this is why I think a movie about Bror in Utah would be a riot! ;-P
I’d pay to see that movie!
A good title might be ‘Surrounded!’
The movie descriptions remind me of the Oscar Wilde line, “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
Not to ride a hobby-horse, but I think the main problem here is vocation. Having a little bit of contact with the industry, there are too many Christian artists who believe that the “Christian” aspect of their work makes it superior to the art of the world. “Yeah, the writing, acting and directing is mediocre, but the film is *still* good because its about Jesus.” But it isn’t. It is mediocre. Or in many cases, just plain bad. This is the flip-side of the thinking that says a film has artistic merit because it bashes Christianity.
Shouldn’t a filmmaker’s first concern be simply to make a good movie, rather than a “Christian” movie? And next to understand that no amount of spiritual imagery or testimonials make up for mediocre writing, acting and directing? And then be surprised what God can do with your talent.
I second Bike Bubba’s request for the reading list…
#2 Another movie suggestion for you Sarah. “In Bruges” It came out last year I think and it is rated R for violence and language. But the movie captured the essence of forgiveness and redemption-even of those who we would not normally consider redeemable.
There are plenty of great stories to be told about historical Christian figures that would outshine any fictional treatment that a “Christian” filmmaker could develop. “Amazing Grace” was a very good movie in that vein. What an opportunity to help modern Christians understand the history and traditions of their faith, and to gain some much needed perspective.
Have to admit I kind of liked “Fireproof” because of its rare emphasis in movies on marriage. It was sentimental, yes, but I’m a woman, so what can I say. My husband didn’t like it as much as I did.
Wonder how they’ll do with “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” after having mangled the Christian themes in the last Narnia movie.
I wish I had a course like “Major Christian Authors” when I went to college! Do you have a reading list of the best classical Christian literature?
Thanks!
I’m a bit confused about the prohibition on crying – I don’t think crying is the same as sentimentality. Lewis himself wished he could cry more openly – and has profoundly sad scenes of a dying mother in The Magician’s Nephew.
Preach it, brother!
I know, I. Miller, tears are not forbidden to a tragedy, but the “tear jerker” tactic of manipulating people emotionally is not good to do.
Tickletext, these writers are mostly (with the sole exception here of Dante) working in English. German and Scandinavian writers tend to be the Lutherans. Still, in this list, Spenser and Herbert, writing not long after the Reformation, combine the Reformation emphasis on grace and justification by faith in Christ and His Cross, with the Anglican emphasis on Sacraments, making them pretty close to Lutheran.
I’ll post my reading list for that class in the next day or so.
I thank you for targeting the “sentimentality” thing. It’s like they think you can only influence people through emotion. Yes, emotion is a wonderful door into the soul, but making me tear up isn’t going to help me change my life. My wife cries during lots of movies, but she doesn’t always walk away from it thinking it was good or memorable.
C.S. Lewis doesn’t make us cry but his writing is memorable because, like someone commented above, it’s Christ-centered. It’s about the Gospel and God’s work in our individual lives. Some of his writing can make us cry, but he is Christ-centered first and emotional second.
I like what someone said above, that we should be thinking about the quality of the film first before we’re thinking about it being a Christian movie. Maybe we should be Christ-centered first and then build it on the foundation of a quality movie. Maybe then we can start thinking about where the sentimentality comes in, if and ONLY IF it complements the purpose of the film.
I’m not sure I’m making sense, but this is a huge issue that I see in our culture and probably why we’re becoming the laughing stock of the entertainment industry. For some reason a lot of us our sucked into thinking that “it’s good because it’s Christian and better than the last Christian film I saw…”
I agree that tear-jerkers are manipulative and dishonest, but I’m not convinced tears are only for tragedy, either. I love the feelings a eucatastrophe evokes – I cry for joy at the climaxes of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, and think there is a place for tears of joy as well as of tragedy.
Oh, and I cry during Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew.
I. Miller:
I’d say anytime a work was made purely for emotional affect we can write it off as sentimental (happy, sad, angry, etc). Which is what I take from “the “tear jerker” tactic of manipulating people emotionally is not good to do.” concept. ie. whether a work is sentimental tripe is more based on intention rather than character. And on that note, I wonder if we’re just in the duldrums of anti-intellectual Christian movie making? Must we resort to sentimental tactics simply because we have nothing smart to say about it?
You say cry at the climaxes of Lord of the Rings, etc. because something within you connects with that moment–not the other way around. Now, if the moment in Lord of the Rings was sentimental tripe you probably wouldn’t be crying but rather wondering why you just sat through that (and possibly why Frodo whines so much
).
The same thing happens to me. I’ll be watching, playing, listening to something (etc.) and blammo! The waterworks start and I have no idea what just happened other than the work that I am viewing/participating in overwhelmed me emotionally because it was crafted in a manner that drew me in rather than forced itself upon me.
Sidenote: This post reminds me greatly about the recent Dillinger movie and what is, perhaps, the most heavy handed sentimental schlock every created: John Dillinger’s woman friend gets pinched by the cops and Dillinger is shown balling in his car as he leaves her to her fate. Seriously guys. I would go out on a limb and say that Dillinger never cried–ever. But this is where we’re at in society and I’m sure a lot of teenage girls rended their garments at the thought of Johnny Depp in pain.
I personally wish they would forgo the Narnia series, since they already butchered them. I want to see Dr. Ransom on the big screen.
Sentimemtality is the essence of Evangelicalism in this day and age. The only major author remotely adept at handling sentimentality was Dickens. All his immitators are off the mark.
Oh, and for a quality film which shows strong Gospel themes in its storyline, watch Amadeus. We need more movies like that.
#27
A Space Trilogy would rock! Of course, my previous sentence assumes that they do it right and that raises the question of the persistent nudity throughout Perelandra.
On the note from my #30, and I believe this stays on topic (if not please disregard), I think too many times sentimentality is perceived as the only “safe” route to take. And in that sense we get dumbed down–forsaking complex issues (ie. the debates in Perelandra) with simple ones that make us feel good.
CS Lewis wrote Perelandra and purposefully had the characters nude, etc. In a book, this is doable (although in a pietistic sense, I could see mental lust issues) but on the screen we’re left with one big visual conundrum.
So, in that vein, what is the validity and/or danger of topics portrayed in the visual arts that would otherwise be a non-issue in print?
The “Major Christian Authors” class sounds fascinating! I’ve been thinking about a similar idea for my high school. Veith, I too would like to know what your literature selections are. Also (aside from the fact that these authors are all Christians), how do you tie these writing together into a systematic curriculum? Are there certain specific themes or issues that your selections share?
Dr. Veith, where could I read more about sentimentality. I know sappy when I see it, but I’d like some help on thinking more about sentimentality. It seems to me that many films that have a redemptive arc–not talking about Xian films here–are profoundly moving b/c they resonate with the deep truths of the gospel. That can include, for me at least, a sports themed underdog film. Now that the underdog film can be well done or poorly done, and I suspect that the poorly done versions tend towards sentimentality, and maybe poor craftsmanship as well, but I’m wondering if you can point me towards an essay or two that examine sentimentality.
Sorry about the typo, should say…”Now the underdog film”
Should Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series be brought back in movie form?
Is there a good rendition of Pilgrim’s Progress out there?
Scylding @28, kind of beat me to this. But, when people say “Christian movie” they mean sentamental movie; one that is “uplifting” or “reaffirming of traditional values”, and that doesn’t dwell on the more negative aspects of life on Earth. You are right that say Christians should avoid so-called “Christian” movies.
To me, the best movies from a Christian perspective are those who don’t make Christians look stupid because of their Christianity. When Michael J. Fox proclaims his character to be a Lutheran in Brian DePalma’s “Casualties of War”, and then proceeds to do (ultimately) the right thing when nobody else will, the movie got my thumbs up.
Other examples include Jhimi Kennedy (Glory) and Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) as committed Christians who were also really good shots.
As I write this, I notice that a lot of these examples come from war movies (see Mel gibson praying in We Were Soldiers, or George C. Scott commissioning a prayer during the Battle of the Bulge – true story – in Patton, then having the chaplain who wrote the prayer decorated when the weather cleared).
One of the most positive portrayals of a Christian pastor I have ever seen is John Cothran’s portrayal of the Reverend R.L. in Black Snake Moan. WARNING. In that movie the characters confront sin in the forms of adultry, drug use, fornication, violence, false imprisonment, profanity and mental illness, before some of them find comfort in Christ (and blues music). I really liked this movie once I figured out it was going somewhere serious (the sensational marketing didn’t help there) and it was kind of hard to watch all of the above without feeling a little guilty, but when you think about it, it wasn’t showing anything that doesn’t go on every day, hence our need for a savior.
Thanks Dr. Veith (#22). I recall you saying something similar in your book on Herbert.
Three quotations on sentimentality:
“One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited His goodness, you are done with Him…. Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus’ hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular piety, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”
–Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners
Boswell. “I have often blamed myself, Sir, for not feeling for others, as sensibly as many say they do.” Johnson. “Sir, don’t be duped by them any more. You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling.”
–James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
“[The sentimentalist] is not so much feeling something as avoiding it. He is not feeling what he pretends to feel, and he prefers to pretend, for the pretence is deeply motivated. Sentimental emotions are artefacts: they are designed to cast credit on the one who claims them. The sentimentalist is courting admiration and sympathy. He wishes others to credit him with a warm heart and generous feelings; but he does not wish to pay the price that those things demand. That is why there is sentimental love, sentimental indignation, sentimental grief and sympathy; but not sentimental malice, spite, envy or depression, since these are feelings which no-one admires.”
–Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music
I saw the movie “In Bruges” and felt like the main character wanted redemption, but the way he found it was so unsatisfying to me. That made me really cry. It was a really good movie in some ways and in other ways it left me scratching my head. Nonetheless, it hung around in my thoughts for weeks afterwards. I’d love to see a Cranach blog list of good movies!
I too misted up after In Bruges. Thinking about it, there are a lot of similarities in the film to the Catholic writers mentioned.
When it comes to sentimentality in movies or literature I have always been struck and even condemned by St. Augustine’s insights into the stage and how we often are stirred by emotion for fiction but not for our neighbor in need. Here is a snippet, the whole thing is in the Confessions Book III, Chapter 2:
“Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire. Now, why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched madness? For a man is more affected by these actions the more he is spuriously involved in these affections. Now, if he should suffer them in his own person, it is the custom to call this “misery.” But when he suffers with another, then it is called “compassion.” But what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions. If the misfortunes of the characters–whether historical or entirely imaginary–are represented so as not to touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and complaining. But if his feelings are deeply touched, he sits it out attentively, and sheds tears of joy.”
“May I not write in such a style as this? / In such a method too, and yet not miss / My end – thy good? Why may it not be done? / Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none” (Bunyan’s Apology to Pilgrim’s Progress).
Amen Gene. The Church today has somehow got caught up about being so “overtly” Christian that we’ve forgotten how frequently Jesus Himself used metaphor, allegory and good old-fashioned fiction to make his points… to make his audience understand reality the better. Bunyan makes a good point of that in his Apology to Pilgrim’s Progress.
One Christian contemporary film director who has, I think, taken this message to heart is Scott Derrickson (director of such films as The Exorcism of Emily Rose). A graduate of Baylor University, Derrickson wrote a thought provoking article on what it means to be a Christian filmmaker back in 2002 for Century Christian entitled “Behind the Lens”. In particular, he discusses how he himself has found the horror genre a particularly fruitful way to make people consider the bigger questions of faith. As it says in one point in the Exorcism of Emily Rose, “People say that God is dead… but how can they think that if I show them the devil?”
People interested in Derrickson should also google his 2005 interview with Christianity Today entitled “Horror: The Perfect Christian Genre.” Incidentally, Christians be ecstatic that Derrickson will be the director for Paradise Lost, the film adaptation of Milton’s epic poem to be released in 2011. And it’s going to be produced by Legendary Films (the group behind The Dark Night) and distributed by Warner Brothers. So take heart guys! A high quality adaptation of one of the greatest pieces of Christian literature is on the way!
Pardon me, I mean Derrickson is a graduate of Biola University (not Baylor). He did his Masters at USC School of Cinematic Art.
*Sigh, and I mean “Dark Knight” not “Dark Night”. Sorry, I should have edited that all before posting.
Hugo wrote about people’s personal problems. Albeit in the broader context of justice and broad social issues, but still.
I agree with the post and with the general gist of the bulk of the comments.
Out here in the none academic world, however, I am called to minister to people, the bulk of whom have not read anything on your reading list–with the possible exception of Pilgrims Progress. (And even concerning Bunyun’s classic, folk’s exposure to the great book is likely to have been through a condensed version, a video in Sunday School or even a comic book.)
I am glad that you are seeking to raise the literary standard of our culture. I join in the challenge for film-makers to do a better job, but do we need to acknowledge that there is a place for the kind of presentations that have what is being labeled here as sentimental? Besides out where I live broken marriages are the stuff of real life.
Is there an element of elitism coming through here?
This appears to be a science/religious film, according to Christianity Today comments
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2476081689/
Interesting opinions. Since I wrote JOHN, THE REVELATOR (Now THE REVELATOR), I was wondering how you could come to your conclusions based entirely on a logline? Though I would wholeheartedly agree that my story delves into the sentimental, I would caution you about prejudging from a simple sentence.
The point is that it’s purely about storytelling. That’s all. Yes, it is about a boy with strong Christian beliefs, but it is a love story at its core. I did NOT write this story to convert anybody; nor did I write it to impose Christian doctrine. I simply wrote it because the story interested me. That’s all there is to it. Any implication otherwise, or any attempt to hang the past and future of the Christian faith on my head as a writer, is ludicrous.
And Christians are as sentimental as anybody else. To tell an emotionally compelling story–one that makes the viewer cry (as well as laugh, I might add)–is not a crime in Christian circles, though you seem to think it is somehow. We Christians are a compassionate lot and we feel for others who hurt. That’s a wonderful aspect of our faith–not one to be condemned.
Whether it will be a mediocre film (as one commenter suggested) is yet to be seen since the film just wrapped production two weeks ago. I will admit that I wrote the script to produce myself and, since I had very little money, I kept the story simple. In the end, I sold the script. The company that purchased it has limited resources and I’m sure the production value will pale in comparison to most studio films, but that in and of itself wouldn’t make a film mediocre. Nonetheless, given the banter I’ve read here, I would suspect the film will not live up to your superior expectations.
In regard to writers who do the Christian faith more justice by staying clear of the sentimental, I am thankful for their work. But there IS plenty of room for writers who want to tell emotional stories, and I think they do justice to our faith as well.
Blessings.
An afterthought: Months after commenting here, and after the company wrapped production of THE REVELATOR, I’ve finally been given a copy of the final shooting script, re-written by director D. David Morin. I concede: It’s now a preach-fest, void of all originality and appeal. It’s now filled with cliche and has lost its simple sophistication and charm. Once again, the writer gets crapped on. I’ve been randomly re-written so they (director, producers) could “make the script their own.” So much for trusting them with my creative integrity. Hooray for Hollywood–even Christian Hollywood!