Last week, I answered the question “Why watch movies?” Today I will explain why we should risk exposure to art originating from outside the Church. Here, I can turn to an Orthodox source for my answer, and not just any Orthodox source, but His Beatitude Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware). When I first became Orthodox, I wasn’t sure what to do with the cheap prints of my favorite paintings that had followed my wife and me, as they had many a pair of pseudo-intellectuals before us, from one shoddy apartment to the next. I didn’t know whether it was permissible to hang these glorified posters alongside the beautiful icons we had recently received as chrismation gifts, competing for attention. In our case, the artworks in question were Henri Matisse’s The Dance and Gustav Klimpt’s The Kiss. These paintings had brought us so much joy that I was reluctant to relinquish them. Thus I searched far and wide for some kind of Orthodox statement regarding secular works of art. What I found was an article that His Beatitude had composed many, many years ago for Sobornost magazine.

An abstract composition by Kandinsky or van Gogh’s landscape of the cornfield with birds… (he writes) is a real instance of divine transfiguration, in which we see matter rendered spiritual and entering into the “glorious liberty of the children of God.” ... Provided he is an artist of integrity, he is a genuine servant of the glory which he does not recognize, and unknown to himself there is “something divine” about his work. We may rest confident that at the Last Judgment the angels will produce his works of art as testimony on his behalf.

Whoa, right? Now this made complete sense to me at the time, and it still does today. A creative act must resonate in some way with the ultimate act of creation, that of heaven and earth, and if it emerges honestly from the artist’s humanity, which was crafted in the image of God, then surely it will bear witness, at least in some respect, to God’s unapproachable glory, whether the artist intended this or not.

In revisiting the Metropolitan’s words, I am reminded of a statement made by the late Madeleine L’Engle, the Christian author of A Wrinkle in Time among many other fine books, in her book, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. She argued that even when one denies God, to serve music or painting or words is a religious activity, whether or not the conscious mind is willing to accept that fact. Basically, there can be no category such as religious art and secular art, because all true art is incarnational and therefore religious.

So you see, L’Engle, like Metropolitan Ware, believes that truth can be revealed by those who won’t even acknowledge that truth itself exists. I believe this, too, but what’s more, I’ve experienced it myself many times, and in the most unlikely places, such as in the novels of David Foster Wallace and Philip K. Dick, in the music of the rock bands Willco and Bright Eyes and Radiohead, in television shows such as The Sopranos and the new Battlestar Galactica, and in the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson, Abel Ferrara, Ang Lee, Win Wenders, and Werner Herzog.

I say “unlikely” because it’s not as though these artists always, or even routinely, hit the mark. For example, Paul Thomas Anderson made Boogie Nights, a film that glorifies the pornographic film industry. And Ang Lee made Brokeback Mountain, which may have turned me off of Westerns forever. But when these individuals set aside their politics and their agendas and their animal appetites and chose simply to serve the film medium instead, their talent permitted them, in some cases only one time thus far in their careers, to transcend themselves and their unbelief. How does this happen? Well, I’m of the opinion that the story of Christianity, from Genesis through Revelation, is a master narrative, is in fact the master narrative, the greatest story ever told. So that when the artist truly creates, when he puts himself aside and decides to serve the work, he is in reality serving God and tapping into this remarkable master story—sin, sacrifice, redemption—that he authored.

As I said previously, we watch movies to acquire wisdom, and as Orthodox Christians, we know that the only wisdom worth acquiring is that which draws us closer to God. What type of movie, then, is most likely to accomplish both of these goals, to so involve us that we don’t just learn from the circumstances that it portrays, but also perhaps progress a bit in our strivings for theosis?

First off, the film must exhibit excellence in each of its technical aspects. The screenplay must be fresh and real and true. The acting should make us forget that we are watching performances, should make us forget our situatedness within the theater or our living rooms. The cinematography must be executed in an expert fashion, conveying a concrete sense of place, as well as palpable moods that are appropriate to where they appear in the overall story. The editing should be inventive but never flashy. It should enhance the action rather that detract from it. The soundtrack must do the same, and it should do so subtly, such that we barely register it in its attempts to manipulate us emotionally. I could go on, but you get the point. To qualify as great, a movie must demonstrate the filmmaker’s complete mastery over the art form.

But mastery is not enough. On the contrary, if the sum of a movie’s parts, no matter how flawless each of those parts may be, is merely a replication of the world in all its fallenness, depravity, and decay, it is bad art and unworthy of our time. L’Engle puts it this way: Some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos—on canvas, in music, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art nor is it Christian. My friend, Barbara Nicolosi, states the matter differently, but she means the same thing. “A film should also be judged according to its message,” she has often told me, “what does the movie want you to believe? Is what it’s telling you the truth or a lie? If the latter, then it’s a bad film, no matter how good the technique may be.” Mastery and truth: without both, a movie’s impact will either be negligible or destructive.

So what films do such criteria eliminate? Well, you can go ahead and cross out Bella, Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and any other well-meaning Christian or crypto-Christian movie that is packed to the gills with truth, morality, and goodwill but that has the artistic heft of an after-school special. Flannery O’Connor writes that the sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. This is doubly true of religious films. There is nothing worse than a sorry Christian movie, one drenched in sentimentality and preachiness, but as dry as a bone in the creative department. Such are inauthentic re-creations of reality, and thus cheap imitations of God’s own creative acts. “What is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God,” writes O’Connor. I would argue that the reverse is also true: what is not done well artistically, regardless of the intentions behind it, actually does a disservice to God and the furtherance of his kingdom.

I agree with L’Engle when she writes that “some of those soppy pictures of Jesus looking like a tubercular, fair-haired, blue-eyed goy are far more secular than a Picasso mother-and-child.” I agree, in other words that films intent upon forcing Christianity down viewers’ throats as opposed to simply presenting good stories, which by their very nature honor God, and in a way that will draw seekers to him, do just as much damage to the reputation and inherent allure of Christianity as those that condemn Christianity in an outright fashion.

And what of films that are technical masterpieces but that trade in lies? Such recent white-washed tunes as No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Milk, to name just a few. Yes, our criteria eliminate these as well, for their embodiment of chaos constitutes an artistic violation in its own right, using the medium to obscure truth, which is the very thing that artists are meant to protect and illuminate. Unfortunately, there are more films of this type than any other. If asked to list the top ten, I’d probably include The Graduate, The Big Chill, Pleasantville, The Hours, American Beauty, Vera Drake, Million-Dollar Baby, Boys Don’t Cry, The Cider House Rules, and Thelma and Louise, but there are countless others. These movies are dangerous because their technical merits disguise the falsehoods that they seek to shill. They make sin palatable, and should be avoided at all cost.

We are left, then, with what? Well, that’s the purpose of this podcast: to identify films that find cosmos in chaos, that tell the truth and tell it well. When I mentioned to a friend that I was doing this podcast and what it was called, he asked, “So what are you going to do? Just keep reviewing the Orthodox wedding scene in Deerhunter?” He was, of course, joking, but I understand his point. What in the wide world of sports does it mean to be an Orthodox moviegoer? I can’t say that I know. Does it mean that you watch a film and then wait 50 years or so to decide what you think of it? Well, that just won’t do for our purposes. Instead, I hope to find the answer to this question along with you as we make our ways through movies from which I have personally benefited.

On last week’s program I said the discovery of a phenomenal film almost compensates for all of the garbage through which you had to sift to find it. I would like to emphasize that word: “almost.” See a John Waters movie, and you may never recover. Such fare could haunt your spiritual life forever. There are films that I have seen, among them Larry Clark’s Kids and Harmony Korine’s Gummo, that I cannot expunge from my mind, no matter how hard I try. And I have a feeling that on Judgment Day I’m going to have to account for my decision to expose myself to these works, however long before becoming Orthodox that I did so. One of my goals is to help you avoid making similar mistakes.

In subsequent episodes of this podcast, I will examine individual movies, one at a time, of course, both old and new, foreign and domestic, independent and studio-produced. And I’m not going to attempt to order the films that I choose, whether chronologically or otherwise. Indeed, the only rhyme or reason to my choices is that they will all be movies that I have found enriching. No pans here, only picks. I pray that God will guide me in these selections and that my analysis of them will prove spiritually uplifting to all involved, including myself. First up, Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm. See you next week.