Most Memorable Religion-Related Film

As a fan of ancient world spectacle, I loved that one, more than the one that it was a sequel to, The Robe. I want to see Roman spectacle, re-imagined by scenery builders in a movie like that.

Frailty -- a campfire story for atheists. What if God was real and the whole universe was MAGA country?!??!



The most terrifying frame of the film is at the very end with Matthew McConaughey dudded up as a sheriff with a pregnant wife sidling up next to him to ask if everything is alright. And it is. The greatest fear of all... ...the epidemiological spread of the "bad thing" (religion?, patriarchy?, traditionalism?, Westernism?) what today has been generalized into the "white supremacy" hysteria that possesses our culture. So much anxiety compressed into one shot. Just a pullback on a street in small town America with Norman Rockwell characters enjoying their day.

Frailty is indeed very memorable, and a great choice for that word, specifically: memorable. Not necessarily good or thoughtful (though I wouldn't say it's bad or thoughtless), but undeniably memorable. Weird and interesting and resonating.

It's also a running joke on this site, in particular, as the answer to at least a half dozen "what was that movie?" threads, because it wasn't that popular, Bill Pullman is maybe easy to mistake for other everymen, and because the title isn't the kind of thing you could guess or surmise from the content. Also, high-concept films seem more likely to tickle people's brains years later.

All that said, my take on it wasn't much like yours, in part because a lot of those concepts were just a glimmer in our collective cultural eyes when it was made. Although "campfire story for atheists" is an interesting summary, notwithstanding the other stuff.

I see what you did there and no that's not me agreeing.

What's great about it, what is thought-provoking about it is the ontology.

Films give three general options

Materialism -- No supernatural gobbledygook.

"The audience knows the truth. The world is simple. It's miserable. Solid... Solid all the way through."

Supernatural-Lite -- Ghosts and spirits and maybe even demons, but not God or religion.

This is a popular option. This was the route that BtVS took and which BLADE took (e.g., Blood-God? Yes. Holy Water? No!). The most notable, is "the force" from Star Wars.

Feel-Good God - God is there and he loves you. It's man against the world, but God is on your side.

So much soft-serve is associated with this one. Movies made for your Boomer relatives. On a Wing and a Prayer is very recent and typical example here.

The ontology we very rarely see, however, is the God-of-Judgment, the God who warns of Hell, the God who calls us to REPENT. The fire-and-brimstone vision is rare. Ain't nobody got time for that, which is why even "the faithful" of the modern era tend to cash out for some version of the "health and wealth" gospel or the laid back God who is like the permissive hippie parent.

Frailty is wonderful, because it takes that ontology seriously as a veiled premise (for most of the film we just think that dad is just plumb crazy), it asks "What if we're wrong?", "What if we've moved to far away from the moorings of our past?" This is Man-Against-God, but God is still the good guy. This is a perfect recipe for terror for secularists with lingering tingles about the religion.
The general sense posed by the threat of "the bad thing" was present enough in our mind to trouble people in 2001 even if "the bad thing" was hard to name, leaving critics like Jez in the Peepshow episode "Mark Makes a Friend." Roger Ebert found voice for the "bad thing" in referring to it as "domestic terror" (this was pre-Trump, but post Waco and post OKC Bombing so there was that fear of traditional America turning rabid). Robert Koehler checked the white supremacy box in the phrase " white Anglo-Saxon serial killers." Stephen Hunter pins it in religion in calling it, "Fenton's rationality vs. Dad and Adam's true belief." It was in the air even if our vocabulary has shifted.

One of the most primal of fears is Old vs. New. There is an uncanny valley of the youth looking into the face of age (that disgust at degeneration, that unflattering reminder that death awaits us all, that thing which is weathered and not quite like us -- and let's face it Grandma smells funny) and of age looking at youth (envious of lost youth, that fear that they're looking to push you onto an ice-flow once you become to burdensome -- and let's face it kids are annoying). Are the oldies out to get you (e.g., Hansel and Gretel)? Are the kiddies out to get you (e.g., Children of the Corn)? Are there hidden Jacobites or Confederates or Nazis looking to "rise again"? Ever notice that so many horror films feature old technology as a source of fear and anxiety (e.g., the reel-to-reel tape deck in Session 9)? And what is more classic in this struggle than the centuries-long struggle between Enlightenment Materialism vs. Religious Supernaturalism? Indeed, Bram Stoker's Dracula (the book not the movie) pits these two in opposition with the scientist Van Helsing fighting Count Dracula's attempt to invade the new world from the old world? Frailty presents the same conflict, but it turns out that the Van Helsings are playing for the wrong team. Dracula is a righteous man in Frailty.

One of my favorites is The Song of Bernadette.

I'll put up The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) because it is religion-related as opposed to being purely religious (it is a speculation story about a religious story) and it is most memorable, not just for its artistic qualities, but due to the huge controversy it created.

Never saw it, but last time it was one I was tempted.

I highly recommend it, both as an excellently executed movie and for those with an interest in Christianity.

The only people I wouldn't recommend it for are those who get offended over speculation about religion (in this case Christianity) because it questions the orthodoxy of the scriptures which some interpret as "blasphemy". Apparently, this movie was enough to drive some groups of Christians absolutely wild back in the 80's.

In comic book terms, you've seen this story in at least a half-dozen other movies, but this is like the "What If?" or "Elseworlds" version of Jesus's life, purpose & sacrifice.

In 1956 everyone was knocked out by Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments. It was the highest grossing film of the year, and one of the highest grossing films of all time. It was nominated for 7 Oscars and a boat load of other awards. The cast alone could have drawn crowds to the theater, even if they were sitting in a room reading the phone book.

Charlton Heston was galvanizing as Moses, and the sets and special effects were dazzling for its day. It's a movie that would not be made today, even with the benefit of CGI.

Oh yeah, that one. Having seen it several times, what I recall was how so many scenes were so static, looking like religious paintings, as though DeMille couldn't handle movement by his actors. Unnatural dialog that sounded like captions from a biblical slide show made the movie into a strange experience. It has not aged well. I don't know why anybody would want to remake it unless they could breathe some life into it.

At least Ben Hur seemed to have actors that were actual humans. They moved rather than posed.

[re: The Ten Commandments] Yeah, not many movies made almost 70 years ago will appeal to contemporary audiences. In that era big epics about religious or historical topics were in vogue, especially "toga" films. The fashion continued to pictures like Ben-Hur (1959), the great Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and even Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Funny story: I was in the hospital last year for an extended stay, so I watched a lot of movies and news. Ben-Hur was on, which I had fond memories of, so I tuned in. I haven't been that bored in years! The thing dragged on and on, with only the big chariot race scene standing out. I finally shut it off before the end. The experience was so bad that I was put off from watching ANY movie afterwards...

I agree with this, and I think it's one of the reasons Frailty works and sticks with people.

Reminds me of an Onion headline, something like "Sick child's prayers are answered: 'No,' says God."

As for "the bad thing" stuff, I think it's less that the film was portraying some nascent version of whatever we're all talking about now, and more that portraying fear and threat and sin in a generalized enough fashion will always, if done well, have some modern thing to speak to. I tend to think this is the key difference between the good "political" art and the bad: the good stuff is wide and speaks to constant human challenges that will echo in the future in ways that seem eerily prescient, whereas the bad is specific, tailor-made for the issue of the day, and ages poorly as a result.

Ida
The Diary of a Country Priest
Robocop
Dekalogue

Perhaps it would be more agreeable to say that the "bad thing" is simply that old tug of war between Enlightenment rationalism vs. religious supernaturalism?



History is chaotic and contingent and the threads that would weave themselves into the modern fabric of our culture might've been weaved into other fabrics given different historical surprises, however, I maintain that the threads are still there and that even at this time there was an emerging pattern which we can detect (e.g., as revealed in critical reviews). Again, I agree that if different events had happened after the release Frailty and the world we're in today, the pattern could be much different (e.g., history is not the inevitable result of just a few key variables--at least not on the short term view and on particular trends).

This is a bit unfair. Political art is a corrective to a situation. If the medicine works, the situation is corrected and further doses are not needed. For example, we no longer gasp when Kirk kisses Uhura in "Plato's Stepchildren," because the vast majority of us don't care about interracial intimacy.



Moreover, some art is intended to be ephemeral (e.g., artists creating artworks from materials that degrade and disappear), so this is another challenge to timelessness as the measure of art.



Sometimes good political art is a ticket with no return, rather than a recipe made for the ages. Indeed, sometimes this is needed moreso than the more aphoristic/proverbial medicine of timeless themes which can be realized in various contexts. Sometimes a pill you only take once is just what the doctor ordered.

Don't you mean Bill Paxton?

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Exactly.

Two very good movies are John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt and Bergman’s Winter Light.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

You have to be in the right mood for those sanctimonious epics. It has not happened for me for quite a while.

As for Dr Zhivago, I recall a long-ago girlfriend characterizing that epic as "Snow and Sex", and another wanting to know why I was not more like Yuri instead of Strelnikov. That comparison was not in my favor.

I'd actually love to hear the conversation in the board room of film companies on their attitude about movies with religious content. Between political correctness, marketing considerations and ideological and doctrinal blowback, it seems like it would be much easier to just do something else.