Religion on Film

Religion on Film

Someone once said, atheists make the best religious films, and there may be some truth to that. The problem with most religious films made by the faithful is that they are either church-lady style “fast track” to heaven films where the filmmaker lionizes some religious figure, totally whitewashing any possible misdeeds and creates a boring, one dimensional, 3 hour sermon on celluloid. Or, they create a film made to appeal to a religious market with all the edicts of that market – anything controversial avoided (safe for the kiddies) – and/or based on religious tenets that make no sense to outsiders.

Here are a couple religious films that I think do a good job.




The Jesus of Montreal

A group of actors put on a Passion Play in Montreal. But not being religious himself, the director relies on historical sources and archaeological data for his script. The play grows enormously in popularity, but also angers church and city officials. Ultimately, through his play and through his life, he does a better job of representing Christ’s teachings that the hypocritical powers-that-be.





The Message

This film about the birth of Islam is a grand epic in the vein of The Ten Commandments. It was made in accordance with Islamic law, so Mohammad is never shown – but the filmmakers do a very good job of telling the story without showing the prophet.

Anthony Quinn does a great job as Hamza, one of the leaders of the new sect. It also features some of the best large-scale desert battle scenes since Lawrence of Arabia.

Japan's Edo Period - on film!

Kwaidan



Kwaidan (sometimes Kaidan) literally means “ghost story”. Given the generic term, there have been several movies that have had this title, but the one we are referring to is Masaki Kobayashi's Kaidan from 1964.

Basically this film is something like a Japanese Tales From the Crypt, containing four horror stories in vibrant color Tohoscope, all set in Japan’s Edo Period.

The first story, ‘The Black Hair’, is reminiscent of Ugetsu, wherein a man leaves his wife to attain social status, only to encounter supernatural ruin. The second story, ‘The Woman in the Snow’ is a haunting ghost story of the kind that is universally familiar. The third story, ‘Hoichi the Earless’, is the longest, but perhaps the best, including a historical recreation of a Japanese naval battle. The final story, ‘In a Bowl of Tea’, is probably the weakest, but it does have some of the best martial arts.

Overall, Kwaidan is full of beautiful set pieces and costumes. The sparse, haunting Japanese music is a stark contrast to American film scores, and really works to give these stories an eerie feel. Winner of a Special Jury prize at Cannes, it’s a cultural experience recommended to everyone, but particularly to American audiences who’ve been turned on to Japanese horror in the last decade thanks to imports like The Ring and The Grudge.




Kagemusha

When talking about Japanese cinema, one sooner or later, inevitably runs into Akira Kurosawa. While Kurosawa needs no introduction, I am constantly astounded at how many people never went to see Ran in its initial release. To read the reviews on the web, it seems like the majority of Americans never saw this film until the re-release in the 2000s! What did they think the rest of us had been gushing over for the past 25 years?

Well, if there are any new converts to that epic Kurosawa masterpiece, I encourage them to seek out Kagemusha (literally ‘Shadow Warrior’), the film Kurosawa made just prior to Ran.

The story concerns petty thief who is hired to masquerade as a deceased Clan Lord, and who turns out to be more true to the spirit of the Clan's Lord than the actual generals who are his handlers.

There is no doubt that this is a flawed gem. The subtitles are verbose, and having to read them takes away from appreciating the cinematography – which is gorgeous. There is also an overabundance of long takes that contributes to the film’s extensive 2 hour and 40 minute run time. But by far the biggest flaw is the music score, which is annoying and repetitious, with a reliance on brass instrumentation, giving it a distinctly un-Japanese (or at least un-Edo Period) flavor.

Still, with all it’s flaws, it’s still excellent, and comes across like a rough draft for Ran.

Kids Picks

I often get recommendations for good kids movies. For very young children, you’re on your own, but for kids above about age 6 these should do fine…

Holes



The problem with most kids movies is they feel they have to talk down to kids. Everyone thinks their child is smart and exceptional. But everyone tolerates kids movies that insult the intelligence of even preschoolers.

This is not the case with Holes. Holes is an intelligent, complex story for kids that has a nice easy flow. Yes, the characters are slight caricatures, but they are believable ones. Yes, like so many kids films, there is a “message” here, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with it, it’s deftly interwoven into the story.

Based on an award winning children’s book, the story deals with Stanley, a city boy who is wrongly convicted of a crime and sent to a juvenile labor camp where he and the other boys are forced to dig holes in the desert “to build character”. But is there really another reason behind this seemingly mindless exercise?

Highly recommended for kids and adults alike.

Bernard and the Genie



Bernard and the Genie isn’t really the most original film ever made. Average guy, Bernard, has the worst day of his life – loses his job, loses his girlfriend, etc. – but happens to rub a magic lamp producing a genie who grants him anything he wishes for. What follows is the standard wishes for money, revenge against the ex-boss, etc. We’ve seen this storyline a million times before – mostly on sitcoms. Still, the film is handled well; its a lightweight romp with an unpretentious charm.

Lenny Henry steals the show in his over-the-top performance as the genie (possibly the inspiration for Robin Williams’ genie in Aladin). Also watch for cameos by Bob Geldof and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

How to go from pretty good to hilariously awful in one sequel...

Disaster films.

The very name conjures up big budget films with 2-3 big budget effects shots and an all star cast generally running around hamming it up. Formulaic to the extreme. And, since the heydey of the disaster film was the late 60s and early 70s (read, before Star Wars), special effects technology wasn’t very advanced, and by today’s standards, often not too special.

Given all that, it’s easy to forget that there were actually a few really good ones made. Case in point, Airport.



Airport may not have been the first, but it was one of the most important of the disaster films, spawning a whole lot of sequels. The problem is it’s easy to dismiss this film given how thoroughly it was skewered in the spoof Airplane! (a film which Entertainment Weekly ranked as the #1 comedy film of all time).

But Airport, actually is a pretty good little film when judged on it’s own merits. It isn’t a horribly improbably incident (like most disaster films), and is often likened to a version of Grand Hotel on a plane. Yes, it’s a soap opera, but an engaging one.

The stand out here is George Kennedy as ground crew chief mechanic. He’s the kind of blue collar hero today’s movies are sorely lacking – a guy who knows his job and can save the day from all the other people who don’t know theirs.

Probably the most amazing thing about Airport, is that it was made over 30 years before 9/11 (which now is most of a decade behind us), but the issues it deals with – terrorists, over crowded airways, overworked air traffic controllers, airports not expanding to meet demand – all these things are still just as problematic, indeed more problematic, today as they were in 1970.

Let’s get one thing straight, Airport may not be art, but it is a fun ride.

Airport 1975



The sequel to Airport is a different matter. Here we have a bigger budget film connected to the first only by Kennedy who is back as Petroni.

This movie is bad.

Really bad.

But it too is fun to watch in the ‘so bad it’s good’ sort of ways. Enjoyed with a six pack, this film might even be funnier than Airplane! the film that spoofs it. I mean just look at this cast: Charlton Heston, Karen Black, Gloria Swanson, Helen Reddy, Erik Estrada, Dana Anrews, Sid Caesar, Linda Blair – it’s like a best of Hollywood Squares crossed with a B-movie marathon! And (as a stretch), there’s Conrad Janis, Norman Fell and Jerry Stiller as 3 drunken old farts (in 1975! – were these guys ever young?). Definitely a good movie to have friends over and see who can hurl the best Rocky Horror style one liners at the screen.

An Early Herzog Work That Not Enough People Have Seen

Every Man for Himself & God Against All
AKA The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
AKA The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

Many people in the U.S. only know him for his more recent work like Grizzly Man, but
Werner Herzog has pretty much been doing character studies on odd, interesting and provocative people for over 25 years.

Herzog cast Bruno S., (a real life mystery man whose own life parallels the story) as foundling Kaspar Hauser, the young man without a past who showed up in a Nuremberg one day in the late 19th Century.

The film is stark in it’s portrayal of alienation, but with a life and humanity all it’s own. The look of the film is one distinctive to films of the 1970s a time when beautiful technical advancements in color film had been made over just a few years earlier – and Herzog takes full advantage of this to show the quaint, picturesque German landscape.

While I think it fall short of achieving the heights the best Herzog film have, many critics disagree with me, ranking it as his best, and on many top 10 lists. The film has been remarkably influential, influencing movies as diverse as Julien Donkey Boy, and Castle Freak.