Seeing Is Believing: The Revelation of God Through Film

Fuller Theological Seminary professor Goodwin debuts with a dense investigation into what causes some films to “elicit claims of religious experience.” Analyzing dozens of movies, the author suggests those most conducive to “revelatory experiences” that resemble the feeling of communing with the divine share “a minimalist approach, employing plain unflashy production values” with an “austere look and feel” and a focus on the “quotidian.” He notes that the overwrought bombast of such religious epics as The Ten Commandments makes them, ironically, unlikely to induce transcendent experiences. The author holds up Magnolia, Ordet, Silent Light, and 2001: A Space Odyssey as prime examples of film’s power to evoke the divine, noting that the last one conjures sublimity through its minimalism and depictions of immense timescales that span the prehuman past through the distant future. Goodwin’s assertion that secular films can “usher viewers into a state of heightened awareness of the divine” intrigues, but the stilted academic prose will likely only appeal to Christian scholars. For those willing to untangle the jargon, this offers sharp insights into the intersection of cinema and theology. (July)