Finding God at the movies

LOUISVILLE — God can indeed be found in the movies, says Jeffrey Overstreet, who teaches film and creative writing at Seattle Pacific University and wrote “Lost and Found in the Cathedral of Cinema,” published last week.

Overstreet was the guest of Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe, the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to their 72-minute conversation here.

Overstreet recalled learning Philippians 4:8 by heart in his childhood. It’s helped guide him ever since — especially the part about being just.

“I took the whole verse seriously, and I came to believe that if I was looking for what is just and excellent and worthy of praise, then I was looking for God. That’s God’s territory,” he told the hosts. “I saw beauty and truth and goodness — things worthy of praise — in the art and entertainment happening out there,” outside the confines of the conservative faith in which he was raised. “I was surprisingly moved by the movies I saw. I was captivated by conflicts of good and evil. I saw how the wages of sin and death were being played out. I saw variations of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ I found God in the movies all over the place.”

“I started getting annoyed” with some members of his former faith community, he said. “Why are you saying this is toxic when I see it as an opportunity to engage in dialogue with the rest of the world about what they are clearly interested in: what is good, excellent and worthy of praise?”

“That started to break down the walls for me between what was sacred and what was secular,” he said. “That’s the question where it all started: Can you find God at play in the world outside the vocabularies and traditions of your particular denomination?”

When Catoe mentioned being moved in childhood by “The Wizard of Oz,” Overstreet said movies “can be used to advance all kinds of things, harmful and healing.” To Overstreet, the message of “The Wizard of Oz” is “get out of your bubble and discover the bigger world. Also, Dorothy is on a quest to help these incomplete characters become more complete.”

“Ultimately, we will face this idea of power, which is an illusion,” he said. “Who’s back there pulling the strings? A movie like that can be a primer in social justice, in learning to ask the questions that will allow you to speak truth to power — and boy, do we need that right now, not just in the obvious political context but in the church, where so many systems and traditions are being challenged right now. People are realizing these dissonances between what Jesus teaches and how the church has accepted and imitated and perpetuated these damaging hierarchies. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is a great place to start for any of these conversations.”

That film and others “became identity-forming for me,” Overstreet said. “In each one, someone is in their bubble and they reluctantly or otherwise step outside and get their paradigm blown open to realize the world is much bigger and more promising than they thought. They end up engaging rather than hiding from it” in films including the “Star Wars” series, “The Lord of the Rings” series, “Watership Down,” “and, most important for me, ‘The Muppet Movie,’ where Kermit receives a calling to go make millions of people happy.”

The beloved amphibian “leaves his swamp and starts welcoming the outcast, the misunderstood, the weirdos in their community,” Overstreet said. “He sees possibility and creativity there and becomes for me a model of what the church can be — this welcoming place for everyone, this place for flourishing creativity.”

“This movie is the model for how to be rather than what to aspire to,” he said. “Kermit was doing what he loved — appreciating what other people could do and showing the world a model of what an inclusive, loving, creative, fearless community can be.”

The “Avatar” movies and films including “Dances with Wolves” are stories “where someone goes to another world and this person becomes dependent on them, which is what happens to the disciples following the Great Commission,” Overstreet said. “The stereotypes and prejudices fall apart, and they start becoming like these people. What does that sound like? Someone who comes down from above, takes on the form of the people he is now among, loves them and wants them to flourish, and ends up standing up with them as one of them among the powers that be.”

Catoe pointed out that “Pinocchio” is “based on a disturbing book” and the film “Sinners” “made a lot of people ask questions about racism.”

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“Cinema has the power to help us ask these questions,” Catoe said. “It has the power of storytelling.”

Overstreet said he grew up believing that art was produced “to convince other people of your point of view.”

“I don’t go to the movies on Friday night because I want a tidy lesson handed to me,” Overstreet said. “I go to the movies because I want to forget myself and get caught up in something beautiful or something compelling, something that will unlock emotions that have been locked up inside me.”

In making a film, the artist “goes into it having questions and exploring those questions and then inviting other people along on the journey, where they will discover their own glimpses of the truth, if it’s well done,” he said. Author Madeleine L’Engle put it this way: “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe” or by “telling them how wrong they are and how right we are” but by “showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

“Sinners” is “about a community that is suffering. I see the church in those vampires,” Overstreet said. “I see Jesus when I see a character risking their life for somebody else.”

In his creative writing class, Overstreet said it can be difficult to convince students that “specificity is the secret sauce of art. The more personal, particular and specific the piece of art, the more people will see the world in it. If you try to make it more general and more accessible, you’re actually diluting the power of the art and making it less memorable.”

While Overstreet “may not have a lot in common with a puppet playing a banjo in a swamp, boy do I relate somehow, because I’m paying attention to what’s different and I come away realizing we’re the same.”

Overstreet said he was privileged to be among a group of journalists who review films for faith-based audiences to interview Peter Jackson about “The Lord of the Rings” series. When “The Return of the King” came out in 2003, Overstreet told Jackson he was “pretty audacious” for changing the climactic scene in “The Lord of the Rings.” In the books by J.R.R. Tolkien, Frodo fails and the monster takes the ring. In the movie, Frodo and Gollum fight for the ring, “and we see familiar heroic things happening,” Overstreet pointed out.

Jackson told him, “That’s the one thing in the books that doesn’t work. Audiences need a hero, someone they believe can save the world.” Jackson, who directed the film series, told the actor Elijah Wood, who played Frodo, “I want you to fight Gollum for the ring and win.”

Wood said he disagreed, reasoning that Frodo had been overcome by the power of the ring, Jackson told the journalists.

“If I go fight Gollum for the ring,” he told Jackson, “that’s not a hero fighting a villain. That’s two monsters fighting for power.” Jackson told Wood just to play the scene “ambiguously” because “a lot of the audience needs to look at Frodo and say, ‘that’s me and I can be the hero. I can fix this. I can beat the bad guys.’”

“When I watch that scene, I think Elijah Wood wins that argument,” Overstreet said. “When I look at Frodo, I see a psychopath. I see two devils fighting for power. It’s so interesting that Jackson’s mind goes to, what does the audience want? That’s what we have to give them.”

In films like “Pinocchio,” Overstreet sees themes of the Prodigal Son “running away and the father running out to bring him home.”

“Pinocchio taught me about the dangers of moralism as a child,” Overstreet said. “I was a judgmental kid. God liked kids like me who followed the rules. ‘Pinocchio’ changed that for me.”

The final chapter of Overstreet’s book “is about transcendent films” that allow us to “engage people of other faiths and cultures to discover that God is busy over there, too, and that my faith can be enriched by engaging with them and opening opportunities to share with others.” Among those films are “Do the Right Thing,” “Blade Runner,” Nomadland,” “Wings of Desire,” “The Tree of Life,” and, in Overstreet’s mind, the “most sacred film ever made,” “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.”

In addition to selling well, Overstreet said he hopes the book helps him “to hear from people.”

“I’ve loved this conversation,” he told the podcast hosts. “I want to hear their experiences, too.”

New installments of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.