God and Man on Screen: Big Questions as Entertainment
Assuming you are logged in to the NYT, this article on religion in recent film might be of interest to you, even if its ultimate conclusions are somewhat obvious. Here are the first few paragraphs:
“You don’t believe in God?” Tom Hanks’s character asks Audrey Tautou, who plays his partner-in-ciphers in “The Da Vinci Code.”
“Do you believe in God?” Liev Schreiber’s character asks a therapist who doubts that his adopted son, Damien, has devil genes in the new version of “The Omen.”
“Get right with God,” William Hurt preaches in the small, intense film “The King,” but he’s playing an evangelical minister, so he’s a lot more certain.
With echo upon echo of faith-based dialogue, movie theaters today often sound like church. But what seems like a new willingness to explore questions of faith — as if Mel Gibson’s blockbuster “The Passion of the Christ” had made religion safe for Hollywood — has the spiritual depth of the “Daily Show” segment “This Week in God,” with its quiz-show-style “God Machine” that spits out religions to satirize.