Flickering Faith: American cinema greets resurgence of spiritual films

A small boy lies dying on an operating table, as the blood is drained from his body. An airborne virus has threatened to bring about mankind’s extinction, and only the pure blood of a couple’s one son can lead to the cure. The boy’s decision to give his life, so that others may live, draws a direct parallel to the story of Christ’s sacrifice. This is a crucial scene from 3:16, the acclaimed short film written and produced by Columbia grad Mike Vanderwyst. It has received numerous accolades from film festivals in Georgia, Ohio, and Colorado, was selected to play at others in Chicago and Oklahoma, and was most recently been chosen as finalist at the Fylmz Festival in Nashville, Tennessee. The film has certainly struck a nerve with contemporary American audiences, and it isn’t by accident.

Since Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ became a box office phenomenon worldwide, spirituality has started to look quite marketable for studios. Although this winter’s Nativity Story flopped at the box office, possibly the result of the film’s not-so-virgin Mary becoming pregnant off-screen, Twentieth Century Fox has decided to launch a distribution label directly targeting a predominantly Christian audience. In the production notes for one of its first features, the faith-based label Fox Faith is claiming to “provide compelling entertainment to the Christian audience as well as those seeking quality, inspirational, and spiritual entertainment.” Two of its more memorable past releases – the narrative feature End of the Spear and the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor – both focused on the true story of Christian missionaries who lived with the Waodani tribe in Ecuador. This year Fox Faith will release several diverse offerings, such as a family drama—The Ultimate Gift; a period piece—The Last Sin Eater; and a thriller about a Se7en-style serial killer aptly named Thr3e.

Elliot Wallach, president of Edify Media, Inc. – which manages the publicity for Fox Faith – states that the target audience for these films are “those people who really long to have quality entertainment without having to sift through or be exposed to content they would otherwise find offensive.” He says that Fox had seen spiritual entertainment as an underserved market even before Gibson’s Passion. “The film didn’t create [the marketplace] so much as illuminate that it was there,” Wallach says, while adding that their “goal is to be a successful business venture, but having said that, the other interest would be to effectively serve this marketplace. And to serve them with good quality entertainment would be a goal as well.” In order to fulfill the criteria for “good quality entertainment,” a Fox Faith film must “be in line with the Christian values system.” Wallach also notes that most of their films have “been based on books by Christian authors.”

Planning the feature-length version of his short film, Vanderwyst—a lifelong Catholic—has considered contacting Fox Faith about the possibility of distribution. He has, however, already formed a production company, Unveiled Pictures, to make films that proclaim his spiritual faith without polarizing audiences. “I’m not out to preach,” Vanderwyst says, while also informing that, “out of the six festivals [3:16] has screened at, only one of them was a Christian festival. We’ve been rejected by some Christian festivals because the violence and brief language was too much for them, I suppose.” His goal was to make a film about Jesus strikingly different from those he had seen, by attempting to view “Christ’s saving action from the perspective of God the Father.” According to him, 3:16 attempts to make the emotional agony of the sacrificial child’s parents resonate on a personal level, devoid of theological boundaries. This may hold the key to the film’s impact on wildly dissimilar sections of the viewing public.

Other Christians have also embraced this recent forging of cinema and religion. In the northern suburb of McHenry, Catholic priest Fr. Robert Sherry has decided to make his homilies at the Church of Holy Apostles more cinematic. He’s installed a PowerPoint machine that displays images behind him, illustrating the content of a given church service. Impressed by spiritual films such as Gibson’s Passion and Fred Zimmerman’s 1967 Best Picture winner A Man for All Seasons, Sherry greatly admires the communicative power of cinema. “Images are embedded in one’s mind far deeper than any words,” he noted. Sherry also includes in his homilies scenes from classic films—such as It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street—to better communicate his spiritual message to the masses.

The general consensus among contemporary Christians is that there is an inherent link between film and spiritual expression. “Church used to be the patron of the arts,” Sherry said, “Now theology is lagging behind film as the more effective form of communication.” Vanderwyst agrees with this statement while adding, “Many [Christians] attribute the characteristic of ‘immoral’ to the film art as a whole, which is a gross misconception. Many kinds of fine arts emerged through the histories of Middle-Aged churches, and it seems that many Christians have forgotten the sanctity that lies within art.” However, he goes on to say, “I don’t want to see my own religion carelessly exploited for an increase in box office receipts.” One has yet to see whether marketing labels like Fox Faith are truly feeling the spirit, or simply the weight of audience demand.