|
|
|
|
The film "Stranger Than Fiction" has the same structure as a parable of
Jesus. There is a hapless, clueless victim (Will Ferrell), a powerful
personage who can destroy him (Emma Thompson, who is writing a novel about
him in which he will die at the end), and a "third man" (Dustin Hoffman) who
urges her to go ahead and kill him, it will be her greatest novel. Once she
finds out that she is God in his life, mercy and affection take control of
her and she acts like God. She sacrifices her novel that he may live and
find happiness.
Think of the story of the Good Samaritan or the vineyard owner who went out to hire workers and paid those whom he hired at the 11th hour a full day's wages. This is not a parable about labor relations, but a story about God. My colleague at the University of Arizona, professor Albert Bergesen and I have compiled a list of some 25 films in which God appears either on camera or just off camera. In all but one case ("The Rapture"), the "God in the Movies," as we call our course, is like the God of the Scriptures: as St. Therese puts it, "nothing but mercy and love." |
||
|
People don't get that theme, you say, and
neither are the filmmakers aware of it. People do get it. Students descended
on Bergesen's office and tell him it belongs in our course. Whether the
filmmakers are aware of it or not is hardly the point. Americans are so
steeped in images of God that those metaphors have a way of creeping, willy
nilly, into films. Emma Thompson as a storyteller God -- what a wonderful
premise! Storytellers, save for those with the most hardened hearts, fall in
love with their characters because, like God, they have created them. All of this is an effort to challenge the notion that America is so secularized that religion has no effect on culture. It is also aimed at the related notion -- heard often from TV babblers -- that Christmas has become so "commercial" that it is no longer religious. The truth is that any really good story about God simply cannot be corrupted no matter how much controversy and paganism may surround it. Most of us know that at Christmastime we are celebrating God's passionate love for us as it is reflected in our love for one another. We wish only that during the rush of the holidays we had more time to ponder this great surprise and live it. |
_ Keep in touch... |
|
 |
It will be
said that, despite the efforts of some evangelicals, religion normally
doesn't have direct influence on public life and culture as it did when the
descendants of pagan Norsemen were erecting Notre Dame du Paris. The
churches don't control life the way they once did in Puritan New England or
medieval France.
I'm inclined to think that the present situation, however messy, is an improvement. Religion is much more powerful when it is forced to tell its stories quietly, implicitly and indirectly instead of imposing them on their members by power and force. If church leaders have artistic or literary talent or are involved in public life, they know that the subtle, subversive effects of the indirect method are likely to last longer than solemn rules or even solemn theology. The subtle understatement of "Stranger Than Fiction" beats most learned and obscure pastoral letters that, unlike the pope's encyclical on "God is Love," are unread and unheard. The churches -- mine especially perhaps -- have a long way to go before they comprehend the insidious and overpowering impact of the indirect method on people's sense of what life really means. That is rather strange, given the fact that for a thousand years and more, the only way we communicated with our mostly illiterate people was through stained glass, sculpture, music and stories, especially stories about the imagery. We no longer can force women and men to be virtuous, we must entice them with beauty and goodness. Some priests and bishops and curial cardinals may think it is almost obscene to assert that their principal task these days no longer is to give orders or to make rules, but rather to tell enticing stories. That, of course, is what Jesus did. Noel! Noel! .
Read Father
Greeley's latest Articles: |
|
