Preface: I mean no disrespect to those who made, or those who enjoy, God’s Not Dead or others like it. I more so mean to inspire and encourage Christ-following artists and art-appreciators to not settle for the low standard that the world of media at large has set for works of faith. Enjoy.
-
With great exceptions, Christian art is considered by many to have a low bar. There are great Christian artists who earn renown outside of their faith (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis) and some who are the greatest of their craft, arguably of all time (Michelangelo, T.S. Elliot), but the popular consensus seems to be that people don’t expect much from modern Christian artists. This opinion is especially clear in the world of film where strictly Christian works like God’s Not Dead are seen solely by youth groups or other Christians, and more or less roasted by critics.
There is a term often used when people talk about movies that I find pretentious, but it has no synonym that I know of and at its worst it is still useful shorthand. The term is “auteur,” and it refers to a director who most people consider an artist. Someone who isn’t just doing Hollywood cash grabs, but who creates art and, most of the time, whose work is distinctly theirs. This word pops up when talking about the greats: Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Francis Ford Coppola, basically any director whose film you can tell is theirs without seeing the credits. It applies also to those more divisive like S. Craig Zahler or, the director who comes to my mind on this topic, Terrence Malick, whose work includes the 2011 Best Picture nominated The Tree of Life.
The Tree of Life is, in a word, non-traditional. It strives to tell the story of a family coping with loss and reconciling that loss with God, but does so through a scope big enough to include the creation of the universe and eternity. It jumps throughout time and space at random, with little indication when or where the scene takes place apart from context, and uses character narration over wordless scenes as its primary means of plot progression. It is also beautifully shot and edited, and similar in atmosphere to 2001: A Space Odyssey (which doesn’t seem to be an accident as Malick hired 2001 special effects guru Douglass Trumbull for the film), save for where that film comes from a perspective of secular humanism, this one is deeply rooted in Christian theology. To stop short of analyzing this movie, my point is that The Tree of Life is beautiful, very challenging, and deeply respected in the world of film snobs, as divisive as it is.
This can be seen as the opposite of movies like God’s Not Dead even though both are built on the same beliefs. They certainly have different goals in mind; The Tree of Life is more of an exploration of God’s part in our pain, while God’s Not Dead is telling a narrative for its own sake. But my point here (and thank you for reading this far) is that our God and our faith are content-rich topics. Even the blandest part of the God story is so thematically rich that it should be able to inspire wonderful things. And we Christ followers who feel so inclined should aspire to those wonderful things.
Don’t try to be the “Christian Stephen King,” try to be the next Stephen King. Don’t dream of being the “Christian James Cameron,” dream of being the next James Cameron. Our God, the first Creator, is a greater inspiration to his children than anyone who does not know Him should be able to find. Let His excellence inspire your own.