Religion in film pushes boundaries, finds receptive market_11005

Posted: 1/07/05

Religion in film pushes boundaries, finds receptive market

By David Briggs

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)–2004 was an extraordinary year for religion in film because:

A. A film about the last hours of Jesus made in two dead languages–Aramaic and Latin–is the third-highest grossing movie of the year.

B. Religious filmmakers broke traditional artistic boundaries to tell their stories in R-rated movies that pushed the Jesus-film envelope in depictions of violence, drug use and sexuality.

C. In some markets, filmgoers could walk into a commercial movie theater this past year and view a retelling of the Passion by a major Hollywood filmmaker, a drama centered on an evangelical revival, and biographies of the Catholic saint Therese of Lisieux and the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

The answer most longtime observers of religion and film would give, of course, is D: All of the above.

And with the Hollywood Hills alive with the sound of box-office registers ringing to the tune of $370 million for “The Passion of the Christ” in domestic release alone, many people expect to see a lot more movies with explicit religious themes in 2005.

The 2004 movies raised numerous concerns–that “The Passion” would promote anti-Semitism, that the films would be either too reverent or not reverent enough and that religious movies would have no staying power at the box office. Yet one point of consensus emerged: The movies got people talking in Los Angeles and around the country about questions of art and faith.

In the end, the film did not provoke riots in the streets. But it did make for an unusual twist in the culture wars, with liberals talking about the moral limits of artistic freedom and conservatives saying it would be unfair to censor films because they have the potential to inflame anti-Semitism by sticking close to biblical texts.

“There is a sense people of faith feel under attack, under assault,” said William Blizek, editor of the journal Religion and Film at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

So even if the film recently was snubbed by the Golden Globes, the breakout box-office success of “The Passion” was an important affirmation in the marketplace, Blizek said.

Movies such as “The Passion” and “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” also showed filmmakers could break out of the

G-rated costume drama approach and be embraced by religious audiences even as they pushed back artistic boundaries.

One immediate beneficiary of Gibson's groundbreaking effort was the television evangelist T.D. Jakes, who promoted the movie “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” based on his best-selling book in private showings for pastors across the country.

The gritty screen adaptation included scenes of child rape, drug use, domestic violence and murder in telling the story of a young woman searching for hope after a lifetime of abuse, poverty and addiction.

His pitch was that while “The Passion” told how Jesus was crucified, his film told why Jesus was crucified, to offer hope to people suffering today. The low-budget film has taken in $7 million.

Evangelicals were not the only group in this breakout year for religion and film to emerge from church, synagogue or mosque halls or basements to see religious films. “Therese,” a film about the life of St. Therese of Lisieux, and the animated film “Mohammed: The Last Prophet” also drew audiences.

What about the future for religion in film?

“Next year is going to be even more interesting,” Blizek said. “It really is going to open up a lot of things.

“If this is making money, you've got to figure lots of people are going to be making movies of this sort.”