In my last post, I argued that a Christian’s primary concern when watching a movie is to discern its message. In this post, I want to list some viewing tips for so doing. What are some explicit and inexplicit cues writers and directors use to convey the message?

1. Pay careful attention to scenes with powerful monologues and dialogs. Scenes like Clarence (Henry Travers) telling George (James Stewart) that he wasn’t alive to save his brother from drowning in the pond in It’s a Wonderful Life, Maximus (Russell Crowe) telling the Emperor (Joaquin Phoenix) his name and purpose in the middle of the Coliseum in Gladiator, or Col. Nathan Jessep’s (Jack Nicholson) famous “You can’t handle the truth!” speech from A Few Good Men are a few scenes that powerfully relay the film’s message. These are the ones that stand out when the credits are rolling.

I realize this isn’t anything profound - pay attention to important dialog. Okay! You usually have to be asleep in order not do that. But I want to emphasize these scenes’ importance because they often function as mile markers or moments of interpretation for the film’s message. Thus, if a viewer doesn’t discern or understand what’s being communicated in them then he or she is missing an opportunity to understand the message.

2. Pay careful attention to minor details and illustrations. One of the beauties in reading a book is that you get to follow along as the author sets every minor detail for every scene. You follow it piece by piece until it comes to fruition in your imagination. Whereas in a movie the scene is set for you and all the details are presented at once. Well, take the time to look around. What’s in focus isn’t the only thing that should be noticed. Look at the landscape, i.e. pictures, buildings, music, extras, supporting actors, etc. These are details that directors pay attention to and use to help move the story along.

They also help set the mood. Now the mood often affects our experience, and as I said in the last post, Christians should be more concerned with the message and less with the entertainment experience. However, the experience shouldn’t be ignored because the forcefulness of the message is often conveyed through the experience. Apart from smell and touch (You get that with the popcorn.), movie watching is a sensory experience. Imagine watching a whole movie without a musical score. (BTW, there are some out there.) The recently released and award winning Atonement wouldn’t be the same were it not for that ingenious musical score that integrates the key strokes and bell of a typewriter.

In addition, illustrations work beautifully and add a certain dynamic to the story.  The examples are endless, so I won’t give them to make this already lengthy post any longer.

3. Pay careful attention to the story’s perspective. In order to discern the message you have to know what’s being said and what’s not being said. In other words, a movie tells a story and there could be multiple perspectives of the same story. So from whom’s perspective is the story told?

Yesterday morning, Aaron led our Christianity Matters class (aka Sunday School) in a conversation about Christians and drama (and at times the “arts” in general). He set out a few very important principles and dangers Christians should be aware of, many of which are provocative and controversial in Evangelicalism. In light of some things he said and given what time of year it is in Hollywood, I would like to zoom in a little closer on the motion pictures.

At the beginning of every new year, Hollywood pauses to acknowledge and award various, outstanding persons and films in the motion picture industry. This year is no different, with the exception of last night’s abbreviated Golden Globes because the continued Writer’s Guild strike and the pending damper on next month’s Oscars. I like to take the time, usually every year, to lay out a few principles I have for viewing movies. (Here are some posts from last year: “Christian Themes in Film” and “The Oscar Buzz”.) For the next few posts, I want to describe what it looks like to view movies through a critical lens.

As a Christian, I’m not concerned primarily about the entertainment “experience” but the movie’s “message”. You don’t have to read film critics with any regularity to notice all the talk about things like casting, screen writing and script, pace, cinematography, photography, musical scoring, costume, editing, and acting. Most critics spend all of their time focusing on those aspects and judging them by some fixed standard. All of those aspects of movie making are very important. A story told at the wrong pace can make for a slow and tiring movie. A character’s role can be fascinating, but if miscast then it’s dull and possibly unbelievable. In the end, however, these things aren’t a Christian’s primary concern.

Our concern is for the message. Motion pictures are modern-day stories by modern-day storytellers. And stories convey a message. A worldview is being portrayed before our very eyes. So what’s the message? Is the worldview compatible with the Christian worldview? What were the writer and director saying about ________? Those are some of the questions I always ask myself after I watch a movie. Part of what it means to be a critical viewer is to be proactive in discerning the message.

Now I’m not trying to imply that film critics don’t care about the message/story. Far be it! Nearly every review begins with the line “So And So is a story about…” But a critic’s review is less about the message’s content and more about it’s entertainment quality, and that’s only fitting. He or she is a critic in, of, and for an entertainment industry. So that which makes for an entertaining experience qualifies as a good movie in the critic’s eyes. But for a Christian, the entertainment industry doesn’t set the standard by which we judge the content of the message. It’s anything goes in Hollywood. And our responsibility is to be discerning, critical viewers of what goes.

PBS has a must see video on the Emergent Church.

(HT: Owen Strachan)

After waiting so long for Brad Wheeler to have a post here I hate to put something on top of it, but events demand it. Please read past this post for Brad’s maiden post.

Apparently Louisville is hosting the Ford Ironman Triathlon this Sunday, and the race course for the run will be right down Third Street in front of 3ABC. Sam announced this past Sunday that the street would be closed about 10:30 a.m. — This may be all the encouragement you need to get to church early this week. My guess is that you can cross Third when there will be breaks in runners, at least that’s what they do with the 5K run at Derby. If you plan on visiting us Sunday, please allow some extra time to get to us.
For Keith and others who debate the merits of various sports and sporting events, I think this one must be at the very top. These athletes will swim 2.4 miles in the Ohio River. They will run 26.2 miles, and they will bike 112 miles — and all in the same day. I stand in awe. Could football players do this Keith?

One of the growing phenomenon of our culture is our love for pets. For the past two Saturdays I’ve been working in Corydon, IN, which is about a forty-five minute commute. So I’ve been able to listen to all of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. Two stories, one from today and one from last week, have illustrated just how much our culture has elevated the pet’s status and role in the home.

Today’s story comes from Roanoke, VA where the community is in the process of relocating a 20-30 year old pet cemetery. But before the relocation can proceed The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals interceded on behalf of the pets. This organization thought is was only fitting to contact the pets’ owners to inform them of where their pets’ “final resting place would be.” By informing the owners they are helping maintain the relational bond between owner and pet.

The second story is a little more…..Well, I’m not exactly sure how you would describe it. Entertaining, sad, unbelievable!? The state of Wisconsin is considering legislation that would set custody guidelines for pets in divorce cases. According to the report, there is a growing request from divorcing couples that the judge rule on the custody of their pet(s). If this legislation passes, the guidelines would be equal to that of child custody, e.g. weekend visitation rights, mandatory return times, etc. (There is a very comical story about a man that returned his dog to his ex-wife only after feeding it a pack of bratwurst.)

I think these stories illustrate and remind us of a sad reality in our culture: The family as we know it is continually redefined as something other than the husband/father, wife/mother, son/brother, and daughter/sister relationship. In many cases couples are choosing between having children or pets. Family vacations now consist of planning “pet-friendly activities.” All of this is another indicator that the created order is turned upside down because of sin. The family that is intended to reflect the character and relationship of the Triune God has become dysfunctional and distorted. As we continue in our Family Matters course we need to remember how God has ordered the family and how he receives glory from that ordering.

I thought that maybe Keith would post something about Tammy Faye’s death since he has taken care of discussing the passing of other “luminaries” of late. Maybe it’s because of the news cycle that not many blogs have said anything about her passing yet either. At least the handful of blogs that I regularly check have been silent about her. There could be other reasons for silence about Tammy Faye, but I won’t attempt to speculate why.

For those who are too young to remember anything about the Bakkers before their fall, you may be interested to know that they represented to the world, and to evangelicals, much of what it meant to be Pentecostal along with others like Jimmy Swaggert, Oral Roberts, etc. They had their minor differences, but in the North among my very separatist roots, the Bakkers and others showed what the charismatics were like. It wasn’t fair of course to lump them together like that, but it happened. John Piper and others have made charismatic expressions more mainstream today, but it wasn’t so in the late 1980’s. Nobody wanted to seem like the Bakkers and company.

What should we be thinking today about Tammy Faye and the Bakkers? In some ways the Bakker scandal is very far removed. In other ways it remains fresh. It reminds me of the problems we all face of grasping for power, influence, success, etc. When mixed with religion it is a very dangerous potion. The results unfortunately can compromise the name of the church and of Christ. The Bakker’s lives became parables of that problem.

I read the GARBC statement about why it can’t cooperate with the SBC.  Very interesting.  It reminds of what someone told me years ago.  I think there is only a grain of truth in it: an evangelical likes Billy Graham, a fundamentalist doesn’t.