Filmgoer’s Guide to God

THE FILMGOER’S GUIDE TO GOD, by Tim Cawkwell. Darton, Longman & Todd, London. 2004. 170pp. R139.

Reviewed by Gunther Simmermacher

The author of this thoroughly fascinating book will kick himself for publishing it before the success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. In his final note, Cawkwell calls for a film of the Passion story “on an epic scale”. One may wonder what this astute observer would have made of Gibson’s film (my guess is that he would have awarded it qualified praise).

Contrary to the expectation raised in the title, The Filmgoer’s Guide to God is not a reference work to the repository of religious movies. Instead Cawkwell selects films that either have a strictly Christian focus or that deal with Christian qualities, some of them inadvertently so.

He then analyses the selected films within the framework of a particular Christian theme. These themes include grace (for example Diary of a Country Priest), faith (Andrei Rublev), salvation (The Night of the Hunter), violence (Brighton Rock), sin (American Gigolo), oppression (Rome, Open City), mercy (Mouth Agape), crucifixion (The Passion of Joan of Arc), resurrection (Babette’s Feast), and heaven (Francis, God’s Jester).

The final chapter, titled “Images of Christ”, looks at more popular movies, such as Ben Hur; King of Kings; The Gospel According to Matthew; The Greatest Story Ever Told; and The Last Temptation of Christ.

It matters little that the average reader is unlikely to have seen many of these films. Cawkwell deconstructs these works with clarity and in detail, allowing the reader to follow his critique.

Books of this nature inevitably will exclude films one might have liked to see treated (for example an analysis of Luis Bueuel’s Nazarin against the recent The Crimes of Father Amaro). The alternatives are inexhaustible, and the author has to set limits. In any case, Cawkwell’s methodology is quite simple to follow and apply.

As the preceding list shows, Cawkwell’s choice of films is versatile and unpredictable. Thus the likes of Preston Sturges, whose films were not overtly Christian, is represented here (with Sullivan’s Travels), while the devout Catholic Frank Capra, classic Hollywood’s great purveyor of Christian virtue, is mentioned only in passing.

Of course, some of the films discussed are the works of believers, but others were made by agnostics or even militant atheists. Ironically, some of the best religious films have been the product of atheists, as evidenced by the Vatican’s list of 45 greatest movies issued in 1995, which included works by the likes of Bueuel and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Just as Cawkwell does not opt for the obvious movies, he tends to surprise with unexpected conclusions. Often his deconstruction is more interesting than the film itself.

Cawkwell evidently has little time for conventional pieties. Discussing Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped which charts a daring and ingenious escape from a Nazi jail in Francehe writes: “The drama of our lives is not in the fact of our salvation, but the means of it.”

As he shows, film has the power to capture that drama.