Tags: Vatican Film List: Religion
The pope’s remarks were both forward looking, speaking to the potential of cinema to become “a more and more positive factor in the development of individuals and a stimulus for the conscience of society as a whole,” and also historically minded, speaking positively of the praiseworthy contributions of “many worthwhile productions during the first hundred years of [the cinema’s] existence.”
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F |
0 |
-3|
Adults
How is it, then, that Cavani succeeds in making Francesco neither an attractive hero of secular virtues nor an off-putting champion of spiritual ones? How does she come to make her protagonist off-putting without being otherworldly, earthbound without being attractive? By what mysterious process has this vibrant human firebrand,
this unpredictable, leaping, shouting zealot, been transformed into the sheepish, subdued, self-deprecating cipher we see here played by sighing, shyly grinning Mickey Rourke?
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
Ordet means "the word," but what
is the word? What is Carl Dreyer’s somber, ponderous masterpiece, adapted from the stage play by Lutheran clergyman Kaj Munk, really about?
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
Rossellini doesn’t cater to contemporary sensibilities by reinventing Francis as a mere eccentric free spirit, a medieval flower child, such as we find in Zefferelli’s
Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Francis remains challenging to modern audiences here, his childlike spirit joined to insistence on strict religious obligation and ultimately to zeal for evangelization.
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B- |
**** |
+1-3|
Adults
Buñuel makes his case against faith, not by attacking its foolish or corrupt practitioners, but by arguing that the thing itself, even when lived almost to perfection by a near saint, is moot, even harmful. It may be the most breathtaking cinematic cross-examination of faith I have ever seen.
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B |
***½ |
+2-2|
Adults
To “rip open the inconsolable secret,” to
awaken the spiritual hunger for something beyond the
materialistic scope of our fragmented, desacrilized modern
existence, was the burden of Andrei Tarkovsky, cinematic poet
laureate of the Russian soul.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
The notion of art as a "religious
experience" is sometimes bandied about too freely. Tarkovsky is
one of a handful of filmmakers for whom this ideal was no cheap
or desanctified metaphor, but literal truth.
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B+ |
***½ |
+3-2|
Teens & Up*
Alain Cavalier’s stark, austere reflection on the mystery of the little saint of Lisieux’s romance with Jesus… is a reverie rather than a meditation, built of fleeting minimalist vignettes, almost snapshots, glimpses of its subject rather than an integral portrait. There is no sense of judgment, of approval or disapproval of its subject’s life, or even, finally, of real understanding. His Thérèse is a riddle, and we must make of her what we can.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
In the end, perhaps the most enduring achievement of
The Gospel According to Matthew is an ironic one, given Pasolini’s Marxism: No other life-of-Christ film is so contemplative, inviting the viewer simply to meditate on the life and teaching of Jesus.
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A |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
The grandest of Hollywood’s classic biblical
epics, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur doesn’t transcend its
genre, with its emphasis on spectacle and melodrama, but it does
these things about as well as they could possibly be done.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ is a remarkable relic from the very dawn of cinema.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The film is more than a dramatization, more than a biopic, more than a documentary: It is a spiritual portrait, almost a mystical portrait, of a Christ-like soul sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The screenplay, well adapted by Robert Bolt from his own stage play, is fiercely intelligent, deeply affecting, resonant with verbal beauty and grace. Scofield, who for years starred in the stage play before making the film, gives an effortlessly rich and layered performance as Sir Thomas More, saint and martyr, the man whose determined silence spoke more forcefully than words, and who then spoke even more forcefully by breaking it.
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A- |
***½ |
+4|
Teens & Up*
From the unforgettable opening sequence, with its stunning depiction of the martyrdom of a silent Jesuit missionary at the hands of equally silent South American natives, the film is shot through with piercing, haunting imagery, pictures of enduring imaginative force.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
In the end,
Babette’s Feast is a quiet celebration of
the divine grace that meets us at every turn, and even redeems
our ways not taken, our sacrifices and losses. Whatever we think
has been given up or lost, God gives back in greater abundance,
one way or another. It may not be till heaven that we truly
become all that he intends; but his grace is here and now,
whatever our circumstances, and with him all things are possible.
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