EXCERPT:
When I visit France annually, I’m always on the lookout for any signs of spiritual life in a “Catholic” country which seems nonetheless content to seek the good life without needing the “good news” of the gospel message.
But one place I never expected to detect a spiritual resurgence was in French movie houses. After all, why would anyone expect film to provide an antidote to secularism?
Whenever I am in France, I am constantly seeking good films to see--my first Parisian purchase is always “Pariscope,” the magazine-style guide to each week’s movies. So one afternoon in November I sat on a café terrace pouring through Pariscope for movies I might want to see. (Even though I average of film a day, selecting a dozen top priorities is a challenge in a city that averages more than 200 movies a week!).
Half way through my search, my mental antenna went on alert before I even knew why. As I kept reading, my awareness caught up to my intuition: it seemed that the list of current movies included a surprising number of “religious” films. Looking closer, I noticed other films which, while not about any particular religion, nonetheless focused on spiritual themes.
In all, I found 14 movies with overt religious or spiritual themes, all playing in one city in a two week span. And the city happens to be one of the great bastions of modern secularism!
For me, this list reflects three significant trends in western culture--trends that help explain why religion may be gaining new public interest.
First, the globalization of cinema. This list includes movies from Mexico, Lebanon, Turkey, and Tunisia--lands where modern secularism is not as dominant as in Europe or even the US. It can be tempting to think that our own experience a shared by everyone--that our struggle with secularism, materialism, and consumerism is the same as theirs. But it just ain’t so--and cinema offers a window on the rest of the world that enables us to see how their experience is unlike ours. Often this means discovering that religion remains a vital dimension of life in most of the world. Unfortunately, few Americans ever see movies from outside America.
Second, the rise of Islam has convinced Europeans (and especially the French) that they were wrong to predict, in the 20th century, that religion was about to disappear. Islam’s vibrance (especially in Paris, the city with the west’s largest Arab population) makes religion in general seem more current and relevant. It is no accident that four of these films were directed by a Muslim, for Islamic views are rapidly establishing themselves in mainstream western art.
Third, the feminization of cinema. Forty years ago, female directors were virtually unknown (aside from the godmother of women directors, Agnes Varda). But 10 of these movies were made in the last 5 years, and women directed four of them. Is it merely coincidence that nearly half these recent spiritually-focused movies come for women? I think not. In a world where 85% of US parish workers are women, where men dominate the statistics on violence, crime, and war, where women continue to shoulder the main burden for nurturing the human race (even as they entered the “productive” sector), where men dominate the statistics on violence, crime, and war, where women and children continue to suffer disproportionately as victims of most social ills--is it really surprising that women would focus on spiritual values in their art? The image from Il Etait Une Fois en Anatolie applies here: picture women working across religious differences to promote their common spiritual values against the prevailing material values of a dominantly male world!
I was lucky enough to see five of these films during my recent stay. They were a source for me of both hope and inspiration, for they suggested to me that, despite all conventional wisdom to the contrary, both movies and religion are alive and well and living in Paris.
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