How to Talk to a Movie

Movie-Watching as a Spiritual Exercise

Davidson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532613142
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Watching a movie is more than an opportunity to be entertained. Watching a movie is an opportunity to meet with God. In a few brief chapters, How to Talk to a Movie will forever change the way you watch movies by opening your eyes and ears to what movies are saying, how they are saying it, and how God might be speaking to you through them.

1

Why Talking To A Movie Matters Whether You Agree With The Movie Or Not

Almost everyone watches movies, though people watch movies for different reasons and with different attitudes. Some people watch movies suspiciously, expecting the movie to persuade them to believe something that is not true. Others watch movies mindlessly, expecting only to be entertained, or rather, distracted from whatever is causing them stress in their life. Others watch movies academically, examining the cinematic techniques being utilized by the filmmakers and criticizing how well those techniques have been applied. Still others watch movies devotionally, expecting the Holy Spirit to meet with them in the dark of the theater via the cinematic medium. Many flit from attitude to attitude while watching a single movie, trying to engage with the movie as completely as possible. However you watch movies, you are engaging with what you are watching at some level.

Talking To A Movie Will Help You Enjoy The Movie More

Some like to use the word “engagement” to describe the overall attitude of actually paying attention to cultural objects like movies. Engagement isn’t passive. It is active. It takes work. Engaged viewers learn the language of cinema in order to better understand what a movie is saying. Then the engaged viewer responds to the movie. If you are an engaged viewer, you will benefit from learning to talk to a movie, because talking to a movie will make you more efficient by helping you better understand and respond to movies. Your engaging work will become better and more fulfilling.

People who do not want to do the work of engaging with movies often say they just watch movies to be “entertained.” In this case, engagement is still technically happening. The “entertained” viewer is just letting the movie do all the engaging work. The entertained viewer is going wherever the movie takes her or him. The entertained viewer is in conversation with the movie, because the movie is still talking. The entertained viewer simply isn’t saying anything back. If you are an entertained viewer, you will benefit from what you read here as well. You will learn to better understand the language of cinema. You may decide you want to start talking back to the movie. I’m going to try to persuade you to do that. You may remain committed to being entertained throughout. In either case, your movie watching experience will be enhanced.

Talking To A Movie Will Help You Understand What A Culture Cares About

A good story is fueled by a question. It is a way of exploring “what happens when . . . ” Those questions are sometimes unique to a particular culture—Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables explores what happens when a nation revolts against both political and church authorities, which was a question particular to France in the nineteenth century. Those questions are sometimes more universal—Homer’s The Odyssey explores what happens when a man leaves his family to go fight in a war and tries to come home again, which is a question humanity has been asking for as long as we have been fighting in wars. Of course, a story need not ask a particular or a universal question. A story can ask both at once. Les Miserables also explores universal questions of law and grace; The Odyssey also explores the particular religious beliefs of eighth century BC Peloponnesian warriors.

Movies are the dominant storytelling method of our time. Movies are the way we tell stories, the main way we ask “what happens when. . .” Shane explores what happens when the wilderness begins to be civilized, which was a particularly American question in the first part of the twentieth century; Timbuktu explores what happens when a foreign, radical, Muslim sect takes over an indigenous, moderate Muslim community, which is a particularly North African question in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Those questions reveal what our culture and other cultures care about. Talking to a movie then is a way of listening to the questions a particular culture is asking.

It is important to remember, however, that movies are not always topical. When we start looking for easy analogies to current events in movies, we miss what the movies are saying. Making a movie takes a lot of time, and the hot topics of today likely weren’t the hot topics of the day when the movie was written, financed, and filmed. For example, when Pixar’s WALL•E was released in theaters in 2008, many people saw it as blatant propaganda for the environmental movement. After all, WALL•E’s story centers around saving the planet from over-pollution via a tiny plant growing in a work boot, An Inconvenient Truth had recently won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2007, and the environment was a consistent issue in the 2008 presidential election. However, writer/director Andrew Stanton first conceived of the movie—including the fact that the earth is covered in garbage and that our robot hero finds a single living plant—in 1994, long before the current environmental movement was winning Oscars and being debated by presidential candidates.

Talking to a movie helps us understand what a culture cares about in the broad sense on the thematic and philosophical level. Rarely is a movie talking about current events. Current events might resonate thematically with movies, but it’s the themes that matter, not the events themselves. Both WALL•E and the environmental movement are concerned with how we should best care for what we love, be that a friend, a romantic partner, or the planet.

Talking To A Movie Prepares You To Talk To Other People About Things That Matter

Because movies are concerned with the questions that concern cultures, it is likely that your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers are concerned about those things too. Talking to a movie prepares you to talk to other people about those questions, and talking to each other has the potential to effect real change in our relationships and our world. Movies are a safe subject of conversation that can lead to weightier matters. Here are two examples of this dynamic from my own life.

Once during dinner at a work function, I began talking to a recent acquaintance about Skyfall, the James Bond movie from 2012. We were discussing the ways Skyfall represents a reset on the James Bond franchise, bringing it back, in many ways, to where it was in 1963. We also discussed the subtle ways it develops the James Bond character, particularly in suggesting that Bond’s sexual history—something essential to the Bond mystique—extends beyond heterosexual norms. This led to a discussion of the ways heterosexuality has been normative throughout Western history and how a more LGBTQ-friendly ethic seems to be spreading throughout contemporary society.

Another time, I was talking to a friend about Space Jam, the Michael Jordan/Bugs Bunny mash-up from 1996. We were mainly talking about how much we loved that movie when we were kids and how bad an actor Michael Jordan is in that movie. Then we started talking about how all the characters in the film, heroes and villains alike, are struggling with their vocations or callings, and that led into a deeper discussion about the ways we too struggle with those same questions.

In both cases, the movie began the conversation and, because both my conversation partner and I were skilled in understanding films, the conversation deepened to something more.

Talking To A Movie Positions You To Hear God Speaking To You

Talking to a movie is not simply a process to figure out what a movie means. We’re not trying to simplify the films we watch. Talking to a movie is an approach to movies that makes us more aware of the many ways a movie is speaking. Talking to a movie makes us more sensitive to the emotional, intuitive affect of the movie. Talking to a movie makes us more open to irrational realities, including the movement of the Spirit of God in our lives.

God’s Spirit often speaks to us through aesthetic experiences such as shared meals, the awesome beauty of nature, or a work of art. Those kinds of experiences go beyond the rational, awakening the intuitive aspects of our being, and the Spirit of God is a being beyond our rational capacities.

Watching a movie passively, suspiciously, or especially with hostility closes you off to these kinds of encounters with God’s Spirit. (Though God might still get to you through a movie! After all, the Spirit of God cannot be corralled.) Being willing to listen to what a movie is saying and responding humbly opens you up to these kinds of experiences.

General Revelation is a theological concept that seeks to explain the ways God speaks to people in other forms besides scripture and Christian tradition. Robert Johnston, in his book God’s Wider Presence: Reevaluating General Revelation, writes:

When five persons see a sunset and only one of the five experiences God, it is not that the other four are sinfully blocking out the divine from their view, but that the one has been graced serendipitously with the Spirit’s revelatory Presence. . . Moreover, when general revelation is described phenomenologically, it is seldom understood as the work chiefly of human reason, but more often as the experience of our imagination. Revelation is something. . . that is primarily located not in reasoning or ethics but in our intuition and feeling. It is not that we by our own effort conclude or project by rational inference that God is a reality, but that we receive God’s revelatory Presence in the midst of our lives.1

Or, as Jesus says to Nicodemus in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Certainly, we cannot command the Spirit of God to speak to us when and where we please. The Spirit moves as the Spirit wills. We can only be sensitive to the Spirit’s movements, like a boy scout feeling for the breeze with a spit-soaked finger. As Johnston writes clearly and as Jesus implies, detecting the Spirit is a matter of feeling more than it is a matter of right-thinking. Even “right-thinking” about a movie cannot guarantee God will speak to you. However, we can “wet our fingers and hold them in the air” to feel for the Spirit’s wind. Aesthetic experiences can be a great way to feel for the breeze.

Johnston’s book is packed with examples of the ways God has spoken to people through films. I, myself, have encountered God many times in a theater and at home while watching a movie. Most recently, I was watching Babette’s Feast, a charming, challenging Swedish film about a French cook who gives a great gift to her pious Danish hosts. I had seen the film before, but this recent time, the Spirit quickened my heart to repent of the ways I’ve squandered my gifts and been ungrateful for the opportunities God has given me to use them. Then, the Spirit extended grace to me, great comfort and forgiveness, and all within the span of a two-hour foreign film about French cooking. This is just one example of a time when God has spoken to me through a movie.

Talking To A Movie Will Make You More Hospitable

Talking to a movie is a more Christian way to watch movies because it is a more hospitable way to watch movies. Hospitality understood most simply is the act of being friendly to strangers—not only to your friends and family—but to people you do not yet know. A work of artistry made by a person is a surrogate for that person. In the case of movies, it is a surrogate for many persons. We should be hospitable to them. The spiritual discipline of hospitality is at the core of what it means to be part of the people of God.

The practice ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Series Foreword
• Foreword by Kutter Callaway
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Why Talking To A Movie Matters Whether You Agree With The Movie Or Not
• Chapter 2: Learn to Listen First and Then Respond
• Chapter 3: When We Don’t Like What We Hear
• Chapter 4: Learning to Listen
• Chapter 5: Basic Story Structure
• Chapter 6: Now, Respond
• Chapter 7: An Exercise—Talk to Toy Story
• Chapter 8: Conclusion—Four Conversations With Four Filmmakers
• Appendix: Talking to Toy Story
• Bibliography
• Filmography