The Religious Film: Christianity and the Hagiopic, and: Christians in the Movies (review)

From their earliest days, movies have touched on religious subjects—sometimes directly, by dramatizing the lives of major figures or depicting important events, sometimes more indirectly, by raising questions of faith and morality in a variety of settings. At the same time, theologians, clergy and interested laypersons have not hesitated to evaluate the film industry and its products. As an academic discipline, however, film-and-religion is still rather young. Its maturing process can be examined by perusing the fourteen fascinating annual volumes of the online Journal of Religion and Film, published by the Department of Philosophy and Religion of the University of Nebraska at Omaha (www.unomaha.edu/jrf). Articles published there, as well as the lengthening bibliography of other works, reveal much erudition. Nevertheless, writers have often tended to betray backgrounds in either film studies or theology and religious studies, and to work from those distinct perspectives. It is more unusual to find a scholar as well versed in theology as she is fluent in the concepts of cinema studies.

Pamela Grace is such a scholar—and a clear, straightforward writer as well. The book's title has been carefully chosen to describe a very specific commodity. In using the term "religious film," Grace does not intend the reader to think of one that merely depicts something religious, but rather one that is religious, that functions in a sense as an active religious object, in the same manner as a spinning prayer wheel or a burning votive candle. She intensifies this focus by defining a genre that she labels the "hagiopic," a contraction, obviously, of "hagiographic biopic." A hagiopic, in Grace's schema, is a film that represents "the life, or part of the life of a recognized religious hero" but, unlike a conventional biopic, is concerned mainly with its subject's "relationship to the divine" (p. 1). Beyond merely dramatizing a religious biography, however, the hagiopic is a cinematic sermon that addresses "basic questions about suffering, injustice, a sense of meaninglessness, and a longing for something beyond the world we know" (p. 3). Having defined this genre, Grace points out that it may represent any religious tradition, thus opening an avenue for further interesting investigations. In this study, however, she restricts her attention to Christianity, which enables her to treat relationships between cinema and theology with great specificity. The hagiopic, "like Christianity itself," she asserts, "attempts to turn worldly values upside down, providing comfort for those who are lowly and miserable and a bit of warning to the powerful" (p. 6).

An analysis such as Grace proposes must necessarily traverse the tricky territory between the sometimes exclusive realms of film-as-text and response theory. Although hagiopics may emanate from significant auteurs such as Cecil B. DeMille or Mel Gibson, they are aimed at producing a powerful response in their viewers, one that goes beyond mere entertainment. To discuss this response, Grace introduces a concept she calls "ritualoid entertainment." This expression, like the term hagiopic itself, intentionally evokes other interpretive concepts, especially Victor Turner's "limnoid," that describes the pseudo-liminal feelings we experience through drama or other theatrical occasions. The viewers of a hagiopic, then, interact with the film in ways that may stimulate a variety of religious responses: "One may leave the movie house feeling uplifted, inspired, disgusted, or amused" (p. 13).

The hagiopic is not a simple category, for it has developed for more than a century, has reflected the diverse motivations of filmmakers, and has embraced approaches from forthright evangelism to parody. Following her introduction to the genre, Grace offers a chapter-length historical overview, citing examples from the late-nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. This is followed by a parallel theoretical overview that appropriates critical theories in support of this newly defined genre and also seeks to offer some theological context. The groundwork laid, Grace then analyzes ten films, moving...