April 2003
Christian movies left behind
By Peter T. Chattaway
THIS MAY sound like heresy, but for years, I have said that I am glad we do not have a Christian movie industry on anything like the same scale that we have a Christian music industry.
Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of music that can usually be found only at Christian book stores. But there once was a time when magazines like Campus Life reviewed mainstream music as well as the relatively small number of albums put out by Christian artists. That was what Christian critics had to do if they wanted to engage the culture on some level.
However, in more recent years, as the Christian music scene has grown into the institution that it is today, it has become all too easy for we Christians to focus on our own little niche market and to ignore the larger musical world as a whole.
So far, movies are a different story. They cost a lot of money to make, and there just aren't that many Christian films out there. So one of the joys of being a Christian film critic is that you have no choice but to constantly interact with the world outside the Christian ghetto.
Still, once in a while it pays to see what Christian film-makers are up to. And every now and then, they get something right. For example, there is the DVD release of Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie.
I was not as impressed with this film as I wanted to be when it came out in theatres last year. I know it's a children's film, but even so, the trivialization of the Ninevites' evil (they slap each other with fishes, one of many nods to Monty Python in the Veggie-Tales repertoire), and the recurring theme that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, seemed trite to me.
I was also disappointed that the prayer which Jonah sings to God from the belly of the big fish had been replaced by a Blues Brothers-inspired gospel-choir number in which a rather mopey Jonah is taught a lesson in mercy by God's angels. This made the character less interesting, to me.
However, the film is quite funny, filled with humour that even grown-ups might appreciate. And the two-disc DVD release is packed with enough extras to impress the folks at Pixar, even if some of them -- such as the computer-animated 'outtakes,' a concept that once seemed so fresh back when A Bug's Life introduced it -- are shamelessly derivative.
Other bonus features include interviews with the directors and composer, a tour of the Big Idea studio, music videos, a storybook and three commentary tracks -- one of which is provided not by the filmmakers, but by the characters Larry the Cucumber and Mr. Lunt. This is one disc that really pulls out all the stops.
Other recent Christian video releases have not been so ambitious; indeed, the films in question have themselves often been little more than mediocre movies-of-the-week.
Consider Left Behind II: Tribulation Force. The first film in this series, based on the highly successful series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, was greeted with a lot of hype, much of it revolving around the film's big-budget pyrotechnics. But it flopped at the box office, and the straight-to-video sequel is a much simpler affair.
Gone are the exploding planes and cars of the first film; now, the only noteworthy special effects consist of the fire that a couple of prophets breathe onto some United Nations troops, and a brief, brief shadow that falls over the face of the Antichrist Nicolae (Gordon Currie).
Meanwhile, the writing and the direction are as pedestrian as ever. The story is basically an excuse to string together several didactic scenes in which our Christian heroes knock down the straw-man arguments of their skeptical friends.
This sermonizing is punctuated by lame plot contrivances -- a sequence in which Chloe (Janaya Stephens) thinks Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron) is seeing another woman behind her back does little more than kill time between the speeches -- and the occasional sinner's prayer.
If the Left Behind movies are intended to scare people into the kingdom, then Joshua, a more polished production based on the novel by Joseph Girzone, tries the exact opposite approach. In this film, Jesus visits a small American town, dressed in modern clothes and going by the slightly different name Joshua (Tony Goldwyn).
During his visit, he questions the local priest's (F. Murray Abraham) emphasis on sin and hell, and he tells people to love one another.
Films about strangers who come into town and shake things up are frequently interpreted as stories about Christ figures, whether the film in question is E.T. or Babette's Feast. Strangely, however, Joshua loses the allegorical resonance of those films by literally making its protagonist not just a Christ figure, but Christ himself.
This film received the imprimatur of the Christian media when it came out in American theatres a year or two ago, partly because it features a score by Michael W. Smith and songs by Christian artists such as Jaci Velasquez (who, incidentally, will be co-starring in a secular movie of her own soon called Chasing Papi). But the film itself presents a cute, watered-down version of the gospel.
The Jesus of this film is the sort of person who goes out of his way not to offend anybody. I have never watched Touched By an Angel, but this film feels to me like the descriptions I have read -- there are no hard lessons, only constant reassurances that we need to think more positively, or something.
And although the film uses certain biblical motifs -- a healing here, a last supper with 12 followers there -- it cannot offer anything analogous to the crucifixion or resurrection of Christ, because Joshua has already been through all that on one of his previous visits to this planet. Ironically, this makes Joshua less of a Christ-figure than the protagonists of many other films of this sort.
Films like Joshua and Left Behind II suggest that the Christian movie industry has a long way to go still. But I have to admit, a part of me will be glad if it never actually gets there.
