Theology through Film
Friday, December 5, 2008
It looks as if I’m going to be teaching a course entitled Theology through Film. I’ve worked up a bit of a syllabus, but will spend the next two weeks or so reading through the important material before I set it in stone. Since this will be the first course I’ve ever taught on my own I thought looking to the learned readers of AUFS would serve me well. So, dear readers, what do you suggest in terms of films and articles?
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 9:43 am
It depends how far back you want to go. Groundhog Day or Flatliners both have interesting explorations of values and redemption. And you could teach the whole course without leaving the genre of sci-fi: The Matrix, Star Wars, The 6th Day, Gattaca…
Are there particular themes you hope to explore? That might help narrow things down!
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 9:54 am
If you’re looking to keep the enrollment down, but keep your own personal interest, i would suggest some Tarkovsky. Both Nostalgia and Sacrifice not only deal pretty directly with such notions as faith,redemption and the transcendental but also remain open to interpretation which should lead to interesting dialogue and discussion. Also Tarkovsky himself is quite eloquent on the spiritual underpinings of his view of art in both his writings and interviews.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 10:06 am
James,
Well the general idea I had for the whole course was to consider the question of how films do theology in a distinctive way. Rather than using film to stand in for examples of theology, the students should ask how a film both does theology and how it challenges theology as normally conceived. As for themes, I suppose then the usual should be covered (redemption, faith) but also doctrinal questions like incarnation, pneumatology, ecclesiology, etc. I’m just beginning to think about all of this though, so I’m very open to suggestions about structure even.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 10:51 am
Anthony,
Just last night I watched Jesus of Montreal, and was pleasantly surprised. I think this film portrays how film “does theology in a distinctive way,” in the way you are suggesting in your comment to James. I think the film is a depiction of how a play performs theology so as to invite the performers to join the story, until the play and the lives of the performers bleed into one. So, again, though the film is about a play, I think it kind of turns on itself and shows how media does theology in a distinct way. It may or may not be useful for your purposes.
Peace,
Thomas
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 11:15 am
Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 11:22 am
I think probably the classic example of a filmmaker who does theology in a specifically cinematographic way is Robert Bresson. The standard reference points are Diary of a Country Priest and Au Hasard Balthazar, but I’d recommend A Man Escaped. It gave me with pretty much the most visceral experience of the reality of redemption through faith I’ve felt in my adult life.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Jewett’s Saint Paul at the Movies is Interesting. Also try Johnson’s Reel Spirituality. There is also a good podcast I think called Theology at the Movies which you can access free through iTunes.
I have used Dogma as one. The liner notes on the special edition DVD are really good. I have also used Life of Brian. I also use different films to explore this world redemption (Vanilla Sky – which has a nice Kierkegaardian metaphor for redemption and its relationship to the absurd at the end) and afterlife (What Dreams May Come). Also 21 Grams has so much depth to it with theological motifs that you could spend a unit on it. Schindler’s List is a no-brainer, Mulholland Dr. which can be read through Kierkegaard’s Diary of the Seducer, The Apostle is a fascinating one, the Village for its explicit sectarianism or Signs and the issue of determinism and fate. I could probably go on. What I would do is find a conceptual thread to tie things together (i.e., fall, conversion, sanctitifcation, redemption) and structure the class like a spiritual narrative or something like that. Any discussion of the apocalypse opens up a library of dystopic narrative and a lot of awesome films.
Cheers.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 5:03 pm
One way of avoiding the obvious and banal trap (’theological themes can be found in seemingly secular films!’) would be to use explicitly theological films – a whole course could easily be taught just using Jesus films. By restricting your students’ focus to one basic plot, you could more easily get them to think about the relationship of the medium to theology.
And you wouldn’t have to be very pious about this: Jesus of Montreal, Pasolini’s Gospel according to St Matthew, and Godspell are three which adhere to basically un-Christian pieties (too reductively: liberalism, Marxism, Broadway-clownism). And that’s avoiding Gibson and Scorsese altogether (both of which really should be discussed, if only as cultural artifacts).
Not that you’d have to do the whole term on this theme. But you could. And then course-planning would be as easy as typing “Jesus” into IMDB.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I’ll second Bergman and Tarkovsky. The Seventh Seal and Virgin Spring are absolutely essential, and Tarkovsky’s Andre Rublev is quite the theological endeavor as well.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Dogville or Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Nice. That should be a v. fun class to teach. I’m jealous. For what they’re worth, my five suggestions are:
Cool Hand Luke
Unforgiven
F is for Fake
No Country For Old Men
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Also …. because I’m still convinced it has potential to be theologically provocative, The Secretary.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 1:33 am
If you meant the Maggie Gyllenhaal movie, there’s no article. It’s just Secretary
I can see how that could work here. Sort of a modern Ecstasy of St. Theresa.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 5:16 am
Daniel wins for most pedantic comment of the year.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Some interesting ones here.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 6:58 am
You’ll get a ton of suggestions for films. Narrowing them is the hard part. J. just finished up the reader for the course she is teaching on Religion and Film at the University of Toronto, starting in January. So, of course, she has films from a variety of religions. Here’s how her 12 sessions will go in terms of the films:
1. Cinema Paradisio
2. Birth of a Nation/Intolerance
3. The Gospel According to St. Matthew
4. The Last Temptation of Christ
5. The Mission
6. Munich
7. The Fast Runner (an incredible film about a 500 year old Inuit legend, set in the arctic, written directed filmed and acted by Inuit people)
8. Ikiru
9. Bringing Out the Dead
10. The Wind Will Carry Us
11. Water
12. Babette’s Feast
Since it’s theology rather than religion, a lot of the one’s already mentioned are good, especially Tarkovksy, Seventh Seal, No Country for Old Men (add: Oh Brother Where Art Thou), Jesus of Montreal (it’s used by a ton of people in religion and film or theology and film courses). One’s that might be added include In the Name of Rose and a whole lot of the films on the Vatican top 45 (some of which have been mentioned already – it is a surprisingly wide and generous list and can be found online rather easily I believe). From that list, 2001 A Space Odyssey almost made J.’s syllabus. There’s … more later, my son just had an accident …
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 8:00 am
There’s a top 100 list also at http://artsandfaith.com/t100/ that’s got a lot of great films on it. The most authoritative top 10 list of movies is generally considered the Sight and Sound list that has come out every ten years since 1952 (it includes a lot more than just ten). In 2002, Fred Jameson and Zizek were among the critics polled: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics-long.html
The link is screwed up for figuring out how various critics and directors voted, but you can find it here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/voted.php?film=Au%20hasard%20Balthazar%20%28Bresson%29
Of the one’s mentioned thus far, Au Hasard Balthazar makes the Top 20, 2001 is number 6. J. considered having both Seven Samurai (#11) and Ikiru from Kurosawa, but ended up with just the latter.
I had wanted J. to include something from a Mexican director, if not contemporary, then something from Bunuel such as Nazarin or Viridiana.
Anyway, as I say, the difficult part is narrowing down the films and you’ve got to start by deciding what’s most important to you in terms of a few films at the core and the particular themes or ideas to be wrestled with and then shaping the syllabus from there.
Good luck! I’m jealous of both my wife and you!
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 11:15 am
The dreaded definite article. Yes, Secretary. Lots of good choices. More than anything else, I’d just make sure most of the movies will be enjoyed by most of the students students — versus movies they simply “should” watch (Kurosawa, Herzog, etc.).
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 11:27 am
_Mean Streets_ would be excellent.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 11:49 am
I collect films in this genre, and my favorite remains Bill Murray’s version of The Razor’s Edge. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close to subsuming so many threads from so many philosophies and myths and religions. I’m drawn to it several times a year, and usually experience it back-to-back with Meet Joe Black (where the metaphor of Death as soul-shattering beauty — not merely the physical instantiation of Mr. Pitt but more profoundly the love inspired (breathed) between him and the feminine lead) enfolds every frame and message of the film). Here is the incarnation and the challenge God Herself must have faced at the creation — dare I step into it in physical form and participate from the “inside” in these infinite ineluctable modalities.
There is always a war (whether “out there” or “in here”), and nothing has changed since the mud-filled trenches of 1915 except the frenzy of the participants and the power of our tools to momentarily distract us from the reality always shimmering, shimmering.
What can redemption or faith possibly mean when you’ve glimpsed the world from a foxhole (”out there” or “in here”) and learn you can’t change or fix it, you can only live it — for an eternal moment — like a cherry blossom in a spring breeze.
Then I have a tall beer, watch The Family Man, imagine I’m Tea Leoni’s favorite tire salesman in New Jersey, and feel better.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 12:12 pm
No one has mentioned Titanic yet. You can’t forget Titanic!
Or Run Lola Run.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 12:12 pm
You should also take a look at Barry Taylor’s “Entertainment Theology”. More about spirituality in general but some good sections on film.
I think you can never go wrong with Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”, Kieslowski’s “The Decalogue”, Bergman’s “Through a Glass Darkly”, Pasolini’s “Gospel of St. Matthew”, anything by Lars von Trier (I’m fond of Dogville and Manderlay, but Breaking the Waves is great).
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Not having read the great works of Deleuze on this, I can’t come with much theory, but check out Gerard Loughlin’s take on Film and Religion (different project, but interesting nonetheless) on p50 of http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/theology.religion/undergrad/UndergraduateHandbook.pdf
I’ve used Groundhog Day, Speed, Da Vinci Code, and the Matrix to illustrate points in a lecture, but never as the topic. But note they don’t have to be good films. Let’s not be snobs.
My concrete suggestion would have to be Fight Club (which could perhaps be treated as a Jesus film). I’ve got some pages on this as relating to ecclesiology and asceticism that I can send you if you’re interested. I had to chuck them out of my thesis though: Mr Goodchild made the rash claim that the 5th century holy fools may not have seen the film. I reminded him that this was a Brad Pitt movie, but he stuck to his guns…
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 2:10 pm
V. good call on Mean Streets.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I would be sure to include films that do not have overt theological import, such as the modern non-musical version of Les Miserables, with Liam Neeson. I might also include The Doctor with William Hurt, on repentance.
I agree with an above poster that “The Mission” would be very good, perhaps even essential, as it might be the most explicit cinematic engagement with liberation theology.
Also, Tender Mercies.
Also, why not include:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Robert Duvall is excellent in the Apostle. I can’t offer much in the way of analysis as far as how you’d use it for a course, but it’s a great film.
I echo the sentiments about The Mission, but only via a reliable secondhand source.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 6:21 pm
If you’re more interested in films that “do theology”, opposed to films about explicitly theological subjects, I would recommend the “Final Destination” trilogy.
In the first one, the better of the three, a group of teens escape death after one of them has a vision that foresees their death on the plane they are about to board (-which then promptly crashes). So, for the rest of the film, death – realized as an anonymous, meticulous causality – attempts to take their lives through other means.
What is unusual about the film, and what makes it worth teaching (which I plan to do), is its collapsing of scientific and spiritual registers: a sort of material, causal logic everywhere intervenes, turning mundane objects and situations into surrealist pretexts for death’s elaborate machinations – which are restricted, in this world, only by the laws of physics.
It’s obviously not an explicitly theological film, but in my opinion it succinctly expresses a more contemporary, scientific variation of the Christian God, one that is the product of, rather than accomplice to, our age of digital technology and the logics that come with it. Watching the film, you can even see how film language – fast cutting, trick shots, elaborate causal sequences, etc. – finds a kind of freedom in the film’s premise.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 7:39 am
So, yes, sixty or seventy films recommended in short order. When J. finishes her syllabus on Monday or Tuesday, I’ll send that to you since you also requested readings (most of them, outside the first week, however, are picked with the specific films in mind).
Since I think I was the first to mention The Mission, but did so with selling it any further, let me add my voice to those who heartily recommend it as perhaps the best mainstream movie engagement with liberation theology (though I have to admit here that I haven’t seen Spielberg’s The Color Purple – hey, since it’s theology in particular, add that to the suggestions, it’s based on a book by Alice Walker by the same title, a book that’s an original, if not the original, source for Womanist theology). The final scenes of The Mission are matchless. Anyone with any kind of anti-lib theo bias who can watch that movie without coming away thoroughly, thoroughly shaken to the core has absolutely no soul. I’ll second the mention of Les Miserables with Liam Neeson as well. Watching that movie was one of three or four key events in my movement leftward. When I first saw the bishop hand over the candlesticks, I think my transition to Christian communism was settled finally and irreversibly.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 7:51 am
Breaking the Waves is terrible theology. Maybe worth discussing for that reason.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 10:35 am
If you do either Dogma or Vanilla Sky, you’re fired from the blog.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 11:51 am
I really dislike Dogma. Never actually saw Vanilla Sky.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 11:51 am
No Dogma or Vanilla Sky? Smile. Agreed. Probably want to avoid End of Days (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Constantine (Keanu Reeves) also (remembering, however, that we are encouraged to seek the Godhead even in a stable).
As an amateur mythologist I offer three suggestions.
One film regarding the Incarnation. The Last Temptation of Christ is a masterpiece based on a masterpiece by the brilliant poet Nikos Kazantzakis. I’m probably preaching to the choir here. I usually have to follow this up with City of Angels (I can’t believe a perfect Creation would have been resistible to God, and in fact there would be no point in resisting such sublime beauty).
One film like Stigmata that asks the question, “Would we even recognize the divine if it appeared now, or would we oppose it?” Mythology says we stone or crucify all our prophets. Why would we imagine we’re more enlightened now? The meta-message of theology is that God is here in every moment and we don’t see it — what an insult to God that we look for what is omnipresent.
And one film with the religious myth of divine visitation, as Dervish or angel or Elijah. The Dervish often offers a “glimpse” of an alternate life (The Family Man, Groundhog Day, Mr. Destiny), angels often mentor and offer miracles (Thee Wishes), and I see Elijah in archetypal representations of profound moral wisdom who simply slip in and out of our lives or worlds (Jeff Bridges in Star Man, Hugh Jackman’s memory of Rachel Weisz in The Fountain). Movies along the line of Heaven Can Wait are about that glimpse of lives better lived. Life or Something Like It is a sweet confection of a basic romance, but it has that strange prophet from the wild that we aren’t sure we should listen to but can’t make ourselves ignore.
The Game is a profoundly moving film that uses people in an elaborate tapestry to confront a financial mogul with a deeper life, as if his life had been lived in a cult and the Game is about an Intervention. The outcome is Transformation, awakening, a second life, what in Christian Mythology is called Rebirth. I find myself pondering, is this what a church is? Is this what people DO to each other in the normal course of simply living? The tapestry never goes away and is always shimmering.
The very best of success with your important effort.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 12:40 pm
P.S. sorry to be so long-winded, but this subject is numinous for me.
Me mum tends to steal my romances (what would you call borrowing DVDs and hoarding for months and months on end?), so I neglected an excellent “Incarnation” flick … Michael.
Directed by the wizardess Nora Ephron, brilliantly conceived and consummately cast, Michael has Mr. Travolta playing a rather scruffy version of the Archangel visiting the Earth for the last time to sample its pleasures, revel in its strange magnificence, and spark the incandescent miracle of love between Andie McDowell and William Hurt.
If God is in the world for anything, it would have to be Love. Movies like The Mission are important, but at the end of the day the Divine mission is this one, so tender and ordinary it is almost invisible.
Just one old man’s opinion.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I think you should strive, as far as possible, to use films that fit the topic but are also actually good.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 2:17 am
I seem to remember the film and theology course in Durham included Wings of Desire and unforgiven although I didn’t take the course myself. Despite what I said about bad films, it would be frivolous to do City of Angels instead of Wings of Desire.
I guess you need to think about how to established a shared database of films, and there I think actual film showings would be indispensable and a brilliant way of getting active students (everyone talks after having recently seen a film). Short summaries are obviously insufficient. And remember, even a difference of 5 years in age (between you and students; amongst the students themselves) will mean a completely different canon. Take Titanic as an example: who under 21 has seen it? They would have been 10 or under when it came out, and it was very much a film of the moment.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 4:30 am
Tarkovsky’s films are among the most transcendental and spiritually moving films I have ever observed. Both Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Nostalghia raise metaphysical and theological themes. The ending of Nostalghia actually made it difficult for me to speak for a good ten minutes afterwards as it was so absolutely and totally beautiful, and was a quasi-religious experience to watch. If a film represented for me the spiritual power of Russian Orthodoxy it would be this one, and I think his work would appeal to your interests in Eastern Christianity and nature – there is a reading of this film that I have that links it directly to Dostoevsky and holy folly. Andrei Tarkovsky also has a proto-Deleuzian theory of film as Sculpture in Time. His films require patience, but they are true works of art.
Obviously The Last Temptation of Christ and Passolini’s Gospel of St. Matthew are incredible and powerful films. The other films of the latter director are open to theological themes, which I wrote about in my uniquely mad Bataille essay. He admits that Teorema is openly and obviously about religion, consumerism and miracles, though its content (seduction, homosexuality) might not go down well with some students, though they would be missing the point to see the film to be about sex, as someone once said at a talk I heard, people forget sometimes that sex is a metaphor too.
Nikos Kazantzakis is, of course, an endless fascinating figure.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 4:39 am
Aguirre: The Wrath of God seconded. Also, I don’t think you should shy away from watching films that are very critical of religion, though weirdly none spring immediately to mind.
If you want to do the inter-religious thing, then obviously Iranian cinema is the place to go.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 4:46 am
For some italian films, because you can then toss around 5 euro phrases like ‘italian neo-realism,’ try:
1) Fellini’s ‘Otto et Mezzo’ for its half-christian, half-nietzschean eschatology.
2) Pasolini’s ‘Il Vangelo secondo Matteo’ for its half-Christian, half-Marxist Christology.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 6:41 am
Being a potential student on the course (is it next semester or next year?) I second Adam’s suggestion that the films should be both theologically relevant but also good (if possible). I can’t say I would be too enthused writing about Stigmata or Final Destination to be frank, despite what deep insights can be gleaned from them.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 8:57 am
Here, here to Adam and Mike. Goood films that are also relevant to the course guided J.’s picks. It’s even more helpful if they are good films the students might otherwise not see and, as Brad pointed out, mostly enjoyable films.
Also agree that it is difficult to think of anti-theological films that are actually good films. Part of the trouble is that films such as the seventh seal and the mission that have withering critiques of the church and theology also tend to have a part of the storyline that valorizes some other part of Christianity. I mean, really, the best out and out anti-God movie I can think of is The Truman Show, and I don’t think that’s going to make anyone’s top 100 list, though it is a reasonably decent film. In the Name of the Rose might actually be the best bet as it is a good enough representation to be named along with the Seventh Seal on Norman Cantor’s list in The Medieval World of worthwhile period pieces. And while the main character is without a doubt a devout priest, there’s no question as to what side is being taken in the portrayal of a nascent scientific discourse emerging out of medieval superstition. It’s not necessarily a film, however, that 18-25 year olds are going to just love.
Another way to go if you want a legendary film that rejects theological values, but does so without even engaging the topic, may be to just go with one that is a thoroughly pagan celebration of life. La Dolce Vita.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 10:23 am
The Truman Show was actually one of the films we looked at when I did this course APS is now teaching.
As for La Dolce Vita, it does engage with the topic: remember that whole sequence about those kids say they see the Virgin Mary, but they are simply pretending, and the crowd is going absolutely nuts – quite a critique of religious excitement. See also the opening shot of the film, where the statue of Christ flown by helicopter over the city and Steiner’s angst ridden passion railing against modernity but ultimately collapsing into murderous existentialism. The whole film is partially a critique of a kind of shallow media run materialistic frivolities, and the impossibility of communication between man and man (and man and woman) in hollowness and deadness of the modern world. The title was always meant ironically. Obviously this doesn’t leap one to the solution being religion – but it is certainly a kind of death of God/Man film and believes decadence is the result.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 10:24 am
And of course, one is supposed to read the Virgin Mary “appearances” in the film and the paparazzi obsessions with celebrity and tragedy as two sides of the same search for lost meaning.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 10:32 am
Just to add another thought on La Dolce Vita – I remember watching it and thinking the Virgin Mary scene and thinking “this is the most profound critique of religion I have seen on film”.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Regarding La Dolce Vita, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, but I believe the closing scene, in the morning when the party ends and they go to the beach … isn’t there some sort of Christian symbol there, a fish or whatever, and then he sees the angel longingly. No?
Teorema also would be interesting with regard to the “pagan” religion (as only the housekeeper, who is from the pre-capitalist, and at base pre-Catholic/Christian, South, is capable of making the event of Terence Stamp into a power of life), though probably pretty critical of Christian theology proper.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 1:47 pm
There is a fish at the end of la dolce vita, but it is both monstrous and dead. As for teorora, i thought the point was not so much that she wastn’t capitalist and bourgeiosis and hence was capable, as religious, to be transformed successfully, while the others are incapable of the encounter because of their materialist-consumerist worldview. This seems to be the directors reading in the article i previously linked. So not so much that she is pagan but she has the grammar to understand the revelation she has had and performs a miracle as a result.
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I couldn’t seem to get the link to work, but it sounds like you are referring to a piece with Pasolini that I’m thinking of.
You say she has the “grammar,” ok, but what’s the grammar? Isn’t it precisely a prechristian grammar, and precisely not the consumerist-materialist-capitalist grammar?
Or is grammar something transcendental to these traditions?
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 3:35 am
I just mean quite simply that she has the kinds of mode of understanding to understand the situation, I’m not using grammar in any technical sense.
Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 4:36 am
But a “pagan” (or premodern = precapitalist, prechristian) mode of understanding, form of life, etc., right?
Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 8:31 am
I’m not sure if it is pagan, in the sense that it is pre- or anti-Christian, it is simply generically “religious”. I don’t think it gives us that obvious answers – it could be Dionysus, Pan or Christ.
Are the members of the family in some way improved by their encounter with the visitor? “Only in the sense that a man in a crisis is always better than a man who does not have a problem with his conscience. However, the conclusion of the story is negative because the characters live the experience but are not capable of understanding and resolving it. This is the ‘lesson’ of the movie — the bourgeoisie have lost the sense of the sacred, and so they cannot solve their own lives in a religious way. But the servant is a peasant, really a person from another era, a pre-industrial era. That is why she is the only one who recognizes the visitor as God, why she alone does not rebuke him when he must leave.
“When I say God,” Pasolini quickly adds, “I do not mean a Catholic God. He could belong to any religion, a peasant religion. All religions are really peasant religions. That is why religion is in crisis today. We are passing from a peasant world to an industrial world. But a world does not die, so the peasant civilization lives within us, buried within us. It is buried, along with the sense of the sacred, within the factory owner and his family in ‘Teorema.’ “
Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 11:54 am
I was operating on the assumption that pagan = peasant, which is perhaps unclear, perhaps too indeterminate a use of pagan.
Sunday, January 4, 2009 at 2:17 pm
The Neverending Story (1984)
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 10:57 am
i’m doing my dissertation on theology and film so far my proposal title is -
An exploration of how Christian theological themes can be used in cinema and how ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Shane’ exemplify this.
tutor says i need to redefine the title and im still unsure about using these films though they are my favorite and include a lot of theological themes to talk about, but do the opposite genres of the two films taint the title or add to it. maybe i should include another film, im not sure, what do think?
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 11:15 am
Josh,
I think using the two films sound fine, but what your tutor is probably asking for is a more specific sense of what “theology” will mean. Are you comparing them on Christology? Soteriology? Etc.
Have you looked at the Marsh and Ortiz edited volume Explorations in Theology and Film? It includes one on Shane.