BAGUIO CITY (PHILIPPINES)
Ordinary Days
May 14, 2020
By Fritz Melodi
In an earlier blog post, I wrote a piece that tried to give a theology of beauty applied to films. I cited theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology to indicate how the beautiful is objective in the way that film as art, skillfully embodies the True (reality), the Good (ethics/morality), and the Beautiful (aesthetics/fittingness).
Here I’ll try to list my favorite films that explicitly explore the Christian faith as a main theme or subject. Thus I am necessarily avoiding those films that are interpreted to have latent Christian theological meanings, such as “The Matrix” (Neo as Christ-figure) or “The Lord of the Rings” (Gandalf as Prophet, Frodo as Priest, Aragorn as King). These films are good examples of popular art, but for this blog post, my concern are films that deal directly with the Christian faith.
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2. Calvary (2014) Director: John Michael McDonagh; Starring: Brendan Gleeson. In Ireland, an unknown voice inside the confessional tells Father James (Gleeson) that he will be killed in one week. The person “confesses” to him that at 7 years old, he was sexually abused by a priest for 5 years. For this reason, Fr. James, as a good priest will have to die for the sins of other abusive priests. Despite the threat, Fr. James, continues to go about his parish visiting and counseling the all too messy lives of his parishioners portrayed in black comedy. As the title suggests, the film parallels Christ’s final week leading to his sacrificial death at Calvary. It is a picture of a Church that is now wrecked with sexual and financial abuses, but is contrasted by its faithful pastors, who imitate Christ and continue to mediate grace to a broken world.
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