Oscar Meets God

Experts say that the United States is growing ever-more secular. Studies and polls back that up. About 18 percent of us claim no religious affiliation these days, up from 15 percent in 2009.

But those numbers don't tell the whole story. Many of those non-affiliated Americans (colloquially called "nones") believe in God. They pray, sometimes daily. Evidence of a stubborn sense of faith and religion is found everywhere in our society--including in our entertainment. And when I look at the films nominated for the Academy Awards Best Picture, I have to wonder: If we Americans are growing less spiritual, why are our films growing more?

Pi, from Life of Pi, might be forced to call himself a "none" if asked--only because there's no box to check for "all." He claims to be a Hindu-Christian-Muslim, seeing God everywhere. He is, I think, a more accurate reflection of where American faith is moving. And it makes sense--if not theologically, at least culturally. We Americans like to think of ourselves as having no boundaries, no restrictions. We've been taught from the cradle we can do anything we set our minds to. So why restrict ourselves to  one religion? Why follow one path when we can follow all?

As a pretty traditional Christian, I can think of lots of reasons why one path is better ... but that's not really the point here. Pi still manages to express, I think, both the beauty and power of spirituality--something most of us feel at times, regardless of  belief. We've been born with a desire to reach for God. God gave us that desire. And Pi conveys that desire better than perhaps any movie I've ever seen.

I think that Beasts of the Southern Wild is another manifestation of "none" spirituality. Its worldview is very much secular. The main characters consider themselves--even pride themselves--on being "beasts." They're survivors in a beast-eat-beast world, in marvelous union with each other and the world around them. There's no talk of God, no consideration of heaven. Heaven for them is in the rural backwoods "bathtub" that 6-year-old Hushpuppy and the adults around her call home.

And yet, the movie is still deeply spiritual--full of cosmic portent and divine energy. This is myth on a grand scale, full of morals and monsters and universal force. It suggests that even those who don't pay homage to God, any god, still feel that spiritual tug. Says Hushpuppy:

When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me lying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I'm a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they're gonna find it all. They gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy, and she live with her daddy in the Bathtub. 

In almost every movie nominated for a best picture Oscar this year, God is somewhere in the picture. Sometimes you can feel His presence only at the edges. But sometimes He fills the screen. In Zero Dark Thirty, our hero, Maya, seems as hardened a secularist as there is. And yet she confesses that she feels as though she was "meant' to track down Osama bin Laden--a sacred calling from an unknown source. In Lincoln, our title character believes that slavery is our nation's greatest sin and he means to expunge it once and for all--even as others suggest that keeping other people in bondage is somehow God's will. In Django Unchained, there's an implicit understanding that slavery is evil--a true evil that transcends and supersedes cultural, societal purely human-based whims.

And then we have Les Miserables--an explicitly Christian parable from beginning to end. We see the conflict between the Pharisaical Inspector Javert and the grace-filled reality of Jean Valjean--along with perhaps revolutionary France's version of the "nones" in Mr. and Madame Thénardier. As Javert and Valjean joust over what's right or true, the Thénardiers are more concerned with what's in it for them--a worldview that while not at all attractive in Les Mis, has some unapologetic adherents today.

As a Christian movie reviewer, sometimes I hear readers talk about how "godless" Hollywood is. And it's true that the entertainment industry doesn't produce many films that cater to conservative evangelical Christians. But truth be told, Hollywood is far from godless. It seems to me that filmmakers are searching--and sometimes finding--God all the time.

Les Misérables: Justice and Grace

I wasn't quite prepared for Les Misérables.

I'd never read Victor Hugo's book, never saw a production of the play. Sure, I knew the story was set in France sometime after the revolution but sometime before Francois Mitterrand. I knew the 2012 film was directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech). I knew it had some singing.

I wasn't ready for the level of spirituality found here.

Keep in mind, spirituality's not hard for me to find (or, at least, for me to think I find). I'm a guy who tries to pull spiritual meaning out of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and The Expendables 2, the guy who wrote a whole book about Christian themes and metaphors in a comic-book hero. But here's the thing: I'm not used to watching films that just sorta drop the big "G" word right in your lap without even blinking

Les Mis does so—and so explicitly that it feels as much like a Christian fable as a Broadway musical. While Hooper's directing is great and the singing is nice and Anne Hathaway should win Best Supporting Actress for her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" alone, I was most struck by the core story—the story of two souls in the hands of God.

Those two souls reside in (respectively) Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a parole-jumping criminal, and Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who vows to capture Valjean and bring him to justice.

Javert thinks he's doing God's work. "He knows his way in the dark," Javert says of his nemesis. "Mine is the way of the Lord/And those who follow the path of the righteous/Shall have their reward." To find God, Javert believes, you must follow the rules. Stray, as Valjean did, and "you fall in flame."

And Valjean might've done just that, the movie tells us. Embittered from years of unjust imprisonment, he had (as he sings) "come to hate this world/This world which had always hated me." He's a bad man—so bad that, when a kindly bishop takes him in, Valjean absconds with the guy's silver. When Valjean is captured, silver still in hand, he lies and claims the priest gave it to him.

Yeah, right. Most Christians—me included—would've let the law drag Valjean off for his lack of courtesy. "That's how you repay my kindness?!" I might've called after him, shaking my fist.

But the bishop tells the constables that he did give Valjean the silver—handing him a pair of candlesticks to take with him as well. "You must use this precious silver/To become an honest man," the bishop tells him. "God has raised you out of darkness: I have bought your soul for God."

And so Valjean is given a second chance he truly did not earn and does not deserve, just as we all have been given.

I guess Les Mis could be characterized as a showdown between religious legalism and God’s grace, and we all know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, here. Javert, in the end, can’t accept the true nature of God’s grace. Our God is a God of second chances, but the words “second chance” ain’t in Javert’s vocabulary.

But Valjean does some pretty incredible things with his second chance. The bishop exhorted Valjean to become an honest man, and so he does—saving the lives of a handful of people along the way.

It’s a beautiful story beautifully told (though it’s not exactly family friendly). And clearly we’re all supposed to root for and sympathize with the heroic Jean Valjean. But frankly, I don’t think I often measure up to the guy. Often, I make poor use of the second chances I’ve been given to make a difference in the world. And I’m sure that there are times when I’m far more like Javert than I’d care to admit. Get me talking about people cutting in line, and I’m liable to launch into a Les Mis-like soliloquy.

Faith, in one form or another, has been a big part of this year’s Oscar hopefuls—from politicians in Lincoln enlisting the Heavenly Father for their own cause to The Life of Pi’s strange, inspiring spiritual ruminations. But Les Mis may be the closest we’ll get to an overtly “Christian” movie at the Academy Awards this year.