Religion on Film

Religion on Film

Someone once said, atheists make the best religious films, and there may be some truth to that. The problem with most religious films made by the faithful is that they are either church-lady style “fast track” to heaven films where the filmmaker lionizes some religious figure, totally whitewashing any possible misdeeds and creates a boring, one dimensional, 3 hour sermon on celluloid. Or, they create a film made to appeal to a religious market with all the edicts of that market – anything controversial avoided (safe for the kiddies) – and/or based on religious tenets that make no sense to outsiders.

Here are a couple religious films that I think do a good job.




The Jesus of Montreal

A group of actors put on a Passion Play in Montreal. But not being religious himself, the director relies on historical sources and archaeological data for his script. The play grows enormously in popularity, but also angers church and city officials. Ultimately, through his play and through his life, he does a better job of representing Christ’s teachings that the hypocritical powers-that-be.





The Message

This film about the birth of Islam is a grand epic in the vein of The Ten Commandments. It was made in accordance with Islamic law, so Mohammad is never shown – but the filmmakers do a very good job of telling the story without showing the prophet.

Anthony Quinn does a great job as Hamza, one of the leaders of the new sect. It also features some of the best large-scale desert battle scenes since Lawrence of Arabia.

Japan's Edo Period - on film!

Kwaidan



Kwaidan (sometimes Kaidan) literally means “ghost story”. Given the generic term, there have been several movies that have had this title, but the one we are referring to is Masaki Kobayashi's Kaidan from 1964.

Basically this film is something like a Japanese Tales From the Crypt, containing four horror stories in vibrant color Tohoscope, all set in Japan’s Edo Period.

The first story, ‘The Black Hair’, is reminiscent of Ugetsu, wherein a man leaves his wife to attain social status, only to encounter supernatural ruin. The second story, ‘The Woman in the Snow’ is a haunting ghost story of the kind that is universally familiar. The third story, ‘Hoichi the Earless’, is the longest, but perhaps the best, including a historical recreation of a Japanese naval battle. The final story, ‘In a Bowl of Tea’, is probably the weakest, but it does have some of the best martial arts.

Overall, Kwaidan is full of beautiful set pieces and costumes. The sparse, haunting Japanese music is a stark contrast to American film scores, and really works to give these stories an eerie feel. Winner of a Special Jury prize at Cannes, it’s a cultural experience recommended to everyone, but particularly to American audiences who’ve been turned on to Japanese horror in the last decade thanks to imports like The Ring and The Grudge.




Kagemusha

When talking about Japanese cinema, one sooner or later, inevitably runs into Akira Kurosawa. While Kurosawa needs no introduction, I am constantly astounded at how many people never went to see Ran in its initial release. To read the reviews on the web, it seems like the majority of Americans never saw this film until the re-release in the 2000s! What did they think the rest of us had been gushing over for the past 25 years?

Well, if there are any new converts to that epic Kurosawa masterpiece, I encourage them to seek out Kagemusha (literally ‘Shadow Warrior’), the film Kurosawa made just prior to Ran.

The story concerns petty thief who is hired to masquerade as a deceased Clan Lord, and who turns out to be more true to the spirit of the Clan's Lord than the actual generals who are his handlers.

There is no doubt that this is a flawed gem. The subtitles are verbose, and having to read them takes away from appreciating the cinematography – which is gorgeous. There is also an overabundance of long takes that contributes to the film’s extensive 2 hour and 40 minute run time. But by far the biggest flaw is the music score, which is annoying and repetitious, with a reliance on brass instrumentation, giving it a distinctly un-Japanese (or at least un-Edo Period) flavor.

Still, with all it’s flaws, it’s still excellent, and comes across like a rough draft for Ran.