c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) If “art is the language of the soul,” as Robert Redford said at the Sundance Film Festival this year, I look at the “souls” of most of the Academy Award nominees for best picture and see dead people.

Since the 1960s, film has increasingly been the place where we do our theological work as a society. In film we ask the big questions: Who is God? Who are we? What is our biggest problem? How do we resolve it?

In a nation where the dominant religion is Christianity, one would expect an adequate Christian response to the theological questions raised by today’s films.

So what, then, are the theologies of the five nominees for the best picture award, and is there a compelling Christian response?

All five nominees portray human capacity for evil and fallenness, and explore, in a way, whether there is reason for hope. With one exception, these films reveal a sense of inevitable doom and a pervasive pessimism about the human condition.

Two films are memorable in bringing the extreme embodiment of evil to the screen, as their official studio descriptions plainly state.

“`There Will Be Blood’ forces us to confront Plainville, who seems to be a larger-than-life personification of evil,” reads the description of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s best-picture nominee.

Another nominee, “No Country for Old Men,” is described by the film’s producers this way: “The tension mounts, the body count begins to rise, confirming Sheriff Bell’s inability to battle this new wave of modern brutality. … Chigurh is a freakishly mysterious monster, and is certain to haunt viewers long after the final credit has rolled.”

Three of the films take on the issue of redemption, each reaching a different conclusion.

About “Atonement,” an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s heralded novel, the filmmakers say, “The honey-drizzled look of the first two-thirds of the film contrasts achingly with the tension and seriousness of the action unfolding.” These characters seek forgiveness and atonement, or as some say “at-one-ment,” and find it excruciatingly difficult to attain.

In Michael Clayton, “George Clooney (portrays) a hangdog and haunted man who wants to stay on the side of good, but is a little too skilled at moral margin-walking to make that an easy choice in every situation,” according to the studio. In this throwback to classic filmmaking, we see a man whose career has been devoted to being a “fixer” for the “dark side,” who tries to move into the “light” only to realize how difficult it is to change directions.

If there is a feel-good film this year it is “Juno,” the story of a teen-age pregnancy that ends not with abortion, but with birth. It takes the dilemma of human frailty more lightly, and offers a path to hopefulness.

New York TImes film critic A.O. Scott says Juno’s “underlying theme is a message that is not anti-abortion but rather pro-adulthood. It follows its heroine _ and by the end she has earned that title _ on a twisty path toward responsibility and greater self-understanding.”

If these films reveal the soul of today’s filmmakers, it is clear that their souls are troubled with the pervasiveness of evil. None offers an easy way out; as a matter of fact, only “Juno” really offers any way out at all.

They generally seem to have concluded that darkness has prevailed over light, good over evil, and this pattern is unbreakable.

Based on these films it would be fair to conclude that the human race needs good news.

This should create opportunities for a fresh hearing of the Christian gospel.

Pascal, a brilliant French mathematician and Christian apologist, believed in such situations it was the job of a Christian to: 1) Show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. 2) Make it attractive. 3) Make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.

Art is doing a great job of revealing the desperation of the human condition; now it is up to thoughtful, creative Christians to show how their faith is an attractive and true solution.

I see little evidence that today’s Christians are up to the task.

Today’s dominant Christian movements rely on experience, not reason. Revelations of hypocrisy in televangelists, a cover-up of sexual abuse among Catholic priests and the highly visible fall of evangelicals like Ted Haggard and others make the faith less attractive.

And so today, good men who wish that the faith is true hear no reasonable case advanced and see evidence to the contrary _ so they conclude it is not true and tell the story of evil in a dark, hopeless void.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)

DSB/PH END STAUB

800 words

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