One of the questions I have as a filmmaker is, ‘how does one film spiritual realities in an effective and realistic manner?’ Film is a notoriously physical medium, one that dominates two of our five senses to the exclusion of everything else. Since, by definition, spiritual things cannot be seen or heard, how exactly do we show the spiritual? I’m not talking about showing spiritual beings such as angels or demons: for years film has used actors or computer graphics to represent these characters; but this is more fictional than real. The average person has never seen a demon or angel, and so knows there is something unrealistic when they are used in film. Rather, I’m interested in understanding how to film daily spirituality in a realistic manner without it seeming forced or fake. How does one show the influence of the Spirit? How does one reveal the personal relationship between God and man? How does one show love between the creature and his Creator?
One of my favorite books is The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. I come back to it regularly, and, when I do, I am always struck with his insistence on the centrality of a living, personal relationship between God and man. He reminds me of the passionate love and affection that so many of the Biblical writers have for God Himself. “David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ.” And “Moses used the the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better.” (If you are not familiar with this book, I highly recommend reading it. You can buy a copy at Amazon or find free versions at Project Gutenburg.)
What does Tozer have to say about filming the spiritual? Nothing directly. But his chapter “Apprehending God” says some things that seem to suggest possible avenues: “A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it…. God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say here) inviting our attention and challenging our trust. Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of the other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.” He goes on to say, “Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real; but actually no such contrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere: between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real, never. The spiritual is real.”
What if a film were to be built around situations in which real Christians interacted regularly with this spiritual realm in the same way that we know we do with God? We talk to God; we listen to God in His word and in our hearts; we are moved by His Spirit in our daily actions; we receive grace through various means. But these things do not happen in a vacuum; they are imbedded in the world of work and relationships and play in which we all daily live, and through which we also engage God regularly. Those who know God better spend more time with Him; in Tozer’s words, they are pursuing God. Perhaps, therefore, it is the men and women who are actively pursuing God who would be the best subjects for filming the spiritual. This is not to suggest a series of patinaed hagiographies, but rather stories that reveal the light of the spiritual world shining through the honest actions of dim-eyed sinners who are “following hard after God.”
Of course, this may not make any sense at all. But I feel that one direction (out of many) in which Christian cinema could move is the establishment of a tradition of Christian realism. I mean by this something that uses the intimacy of film to explore the intimacy of a relationship with God. I would assume it would appeal to both Christians and non-Christians alike, since it would seek to answer the real questions of life in a realistic way.
But with all that said, there still remain many questions as to how exactly it could be done with the most effectiveness. And is it even possible at all?
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I enjoyed this post so much, Thomas. Your question about how to convey spiritual realities through storytelling is a question I’ve given quite a lot of thought, throughout my college English classes and my time as an editor. Part of the problem is that in the last hundred or so years, stories have gone from classical kinds of storytelling (i.e. books or plays) with lots of dialogue and room for deep thought, to a more visual form. That is to say, with the move toward realism, storytelling has emphasized the five senses of characters and narrators verses. While this makes for really crisp, grab-you-by-the-collar kinds of entertainment, there is also a loss. Reading someone like Dostoevesky or Shakespeare, you begin to see the difference in older forms of storytelling and newer stories that draw more on the senses. This emphasis on the senses isn’t bad per se, but it does put Reformed Christianity at a disadvantage to philosophies like pure existentialism and even Catholocism, which has so many icons to draw on.
That said, I really enjoyed the Christian references in The Last Days of Sophie Scholl, a German film about a girl who resisted the Nazis. There were so many things I liked about the film, but I thought they did about as good as could be expected in conveying the spiritual reality of her life. The movie has a wonderful scene of a prayer–just about as good as I could imagine a secular movie doing.
This is an excellent post, Thomas. It strikes at such a deeply problematic place in the matrix of Christian thought, since, by all rights, only God is allowed to incarnate the invisible so that it what is unseen may be seen. How can one pursue a theology of the cross and film at the same time? And can film avoid the reduction of Christian confession to ethics which was the error of classic liberalism? One thought experiment which may suggest a way would be to ask how a moment looks if the pressure of death is removed in the light of resurrection? Every moment of our cinema today–and especially the realistic stuff–is so saturated with existentialist meaninglessness and the void. I’m just throwing stuff against the wall. Please keep blogging on this topic.
Thomas – You have highlighted my favorite piece of Christian writing. Tozer’s Pursuit of God, in my humble opinion, possesses a pure and unadulterated passion for the essence of our relationship with the God of the Universe and he presents the possibilities in a clear but profound manner. Blessings in your pursuit – TJS