Evan Almighty: Safe, but good?
Evan Almighty, the follow-up to 2003’s surprising spiritual hit Bruce Almighty, was heavily promoted to Christian churches and media (in hopes of hitting the Passion/Narnia jackpot). And while I’m inclined to be happy with Hollywood so proactively courting Christian filmgoers, there are still some unfortunate suppositions the film industry holds regarding the Christian audience.
First, why does Hollywood assume that a Noah movie is the type of thing Christians will line up to see, just because it is inspired by a Bible story? When I attended the press junket in Hollywood, director Tom Shadyac (a professed Christian) told a roundtable of Christian journalists that “the Ark story naturally appeals to everyone,” though beneath this statement (and in the minds of the film’s marketers) is the assumption that while it appeals to everyone, it especially appeals to Christians and/or those nostalgic for Sunday-school fables. Sure, on a whole, Christians tend to like uplifting messages in their films, but doesn’t everyone?
There is a widely held view in Hollywood that “R” just doesn’t fly in the Bible Belt (unless, of course, it is The Passion). Box-office statistics for uber-violent horror films and frat-pack gross-out comedies reveal less love in red-state Middle America, so Hollywood jumps to the conclusion that evangelicals are the ones who are not interested. We are, however, supposedly really interested in things like Facing the Giants (or any football movie), Flicka (or any kid-and-a-horse movie) and Charlotte’s Web (or anything animated and/or including barnyard animals). With this in mind, we get Evan Almighty, a barnyard-on-a-boat romp with family values, God AND potty jokes!
Truth be told, Evan is not a bad movie. Steve Carell is his usual fantastic self, and Wanda Sykes’ one-liners are comically terrific. However, the film suffers under its strain to be family-friendly, to “appeal to everybody from a 2-year-old to a grandparent,” as Shadyac said. In trying to please everyone (and when your target audience is something as general as “Christian,” which we must remember includes people as disparate as David Bazan and James Dobson), you can’t have universal appeal. The film is great for families, yes, because if it is anything, it is certainly “family-friendly.”
The problem is that a movie about Noah and the Flood (a tale which is far from family-friendly, when you think about it) feels very suspicious as a light-hearted comedy. The film spins the Noah story as a tale about love, togetherness, good will, community (animals march onto the Ark two by two) and ignores any notion of God’s wrath (i.e., punishing the world for its overwhelming depravity). The Noah story is, in the end, about God’s redeeming love, but without the whole “destroying the earth” element of God’s righteous indignation, any message of “love” is just a pithy platitude. Still, it’s hard to sell “wrath as a means of love” to today’s world—even today’s Christian. We are much more comfortable with tolerance, inclusiveness, etc.
Tom Shadyac’s parting words to us Christian journalists after our interview was that he hoped we would impart one message about the movie to our readers: “It is safe.” And immediately I thought of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in which C.S. Lewis describes Aslan (i.e., God) in this way: “Course he isn't safe. But he's good …”
A Mighty Heart: Refuse to be terrorized
While A Mighty Heart is certainly not trying to be “family-friendly,” it is a film actively seeking to avoid offense and controversy, similar to Evan. In Heart, Angelina Jolie portrays Mariane Pearl, wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who in 2002 was kidnapped and murdered by Al Qaeda terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan. The film follows the drama of Pakistani and U.S. forces as they try to find the missing Pearl before it is too late. Unfortunately their search is in vain, and ends with the gruesome discovery of a video showing the beheading of Daniel Pearl by his terrorist captors.
Significantly, the video of the murder of Daniel Pearl is neither seen nor heard in Heart, nor is it depicted or described in any substantial way. It is a legitimate question to ask why the filmmakers chose not to portray the act that is at the heart of this tragic story. When posed the question by Larry King in an interview, however, Angelina Jolie scoffed at the suggestion that any filmmaker would even consider depicting such a macabre and exploitative scene in a film (well, evidently she hasn’t seen Hostel 2). “That would give the terrorists what they want,” she responded. Plus, she seemed to be implying, showing how “evil” terrorists can be surely won’t help the world come together in peace and harmony, which is what the film is ultimately striving for.
No, A Mighty Heart (based on the book by Mariane Pearl) is not about demonizing terrorism—a point Jolie has overemphasized in publicity for the film, and which the film itself bends over backward to convey. After all, demonizing terrorism is giving the terrorists what they want: a terrifying and powerful mystique that contributes to the drawing up of cross-cultural battle lines.
Near the end of the film, Jolie’s Mariane sits with a group of friends and colleagues who have labored in vain with her to recover Danny. She reassures them that after all that has happened, she “is not terrorized,” and thus the terrorists did not succeed. For me, this is a very disingenuous moment and feels more like a political posture than an honest sentiment from a woman who has just lost her husband to murder by decapitation. In such circumstances, is it not OK to feel terrorized? Is it not human to feel terrorized? Why not acknowledge the horrors in life for what they are, rather than claim their impotence in the face of some pretense of superhuman composure?
After the screening I attended of Heart, there was an “interfaith” panel discussion in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy discussed how the film’s real message is not negative but positive—that love, understanding and dialogue will triumph over fanaticism, labels and hate. “Terrorism is a collective problem,” the Muslim leader said, and its roots are in social injustices, cyclical violence and economic misery—problems “we can help eliminate.”
This is a very nice spin on a very violent, disturbing episode of recent history, just as “the Ark is a story of love and togetherness” is a very nice spin on a rather violent, disturbing episode of ancient history. In both cases there is a naiveté that seems to believe that man is, in the end, a pretty good creature that has no reason to wish ill over his fellow man. The films postulate messages of love, unity and a more humane world, though for some reason both films feel it necessary to remove (or at best vaguely hint at) the very worst of human nature.
I am of the opinion, however, that film is at its most enthralling when it embraces unpleasantness, creates tension and unease and strives for truthfulness prior to any “message” and reality in spite of what the audience might want. Last year’s United 93, for example, portrayed the horrific terrorist acts of Sept. 11 in as visceral and real a way as possible. It did not “protect” us from the nightmare of that day and did not presume the audience would “not be terrorized.” Yet far from dividing us further into fearful camps of hate, the film invoked in the viewer a terrible and beautiful feeling of empathy for all on board that fateful flight—a lamentation of sorts for humanity at large, in all of its desperate alienation and imperfect glory.
