c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) There is faith, and there is religion, and Hollywood has never really embraced both.

Movie makers have occasionally paid lip service to the second. The Old Testament remains a sturdy source of spectacle; the rites of the Roman Catholic Church regularly enliven horror movies. Screenwriters in search of a dependable heartwarmer can always bring on a feisty Irish priest, while “The Jazz Singer” is still available for tearjerkers.

Faith, however, is a less popular subject.

That’s because faith is more than the stories learned in religious school. It’s the belief that gives them meaning. Faith is more than an institutional respect for a minister or rabbi. It’s the understanding of the calling that drew them to their work. Faith is not about facts, or the flesh. Faith is purely emotional, fully unconditional belief.

This is not something that translates well into entertainment.

The big-budget “The Da Vinci Code” is in theaters now, and expected to be a summer blockbuster. Like the best-seller on which it’s based, it centers its plot on several literally heretical reinterpretations of the New Testament. For that, it has been condemned by Christian clergy _ and just as avidly read by millions of their congregants.

Whether you find it mildly intriguing or wildly blasphemous, you can’t deny it’s a high-profile treatment of a religious subject.

It is not, however, really about faith. Torn between a desire to be true to the book and yet avoid offending Christian audiences, “The Da Vinci Code” isn’t really about anything. Was Jesus divine? Did he marry, and have children by Mary Magdalene? “The only thing that matters is what you believe,” Tom Hanks’ hero declares _ twice _ but this is a pat credo, at best, and in the long run dangerous.

If all that matters is our fervor, than all convictions are equal. It doesn’t matter what we believe, just as long as we’re passionate.

Yet a burst of other films _ mostly from other countries or smaller companies _ have been taking a more serious look at spirituality. “Mendy,” now in theaters, is a drama about a troubled Hasidic Jew’s confrontation with a sexual, secular world; “Refuge,” a new documentary, tries to describe the allure Buddhism has for Western artists. Recent docudramas such as “The Last Days of Sophie Scholl” and “End of the Spear” are about nothing less than modern Christian martyrdom; half-a-dozen other new and upcoming films center on everything from commercialization of bar mitzvahs to the limits of forgiveness.

None is simply about religion. All are about belief.

Faith has always been a difficult topic for Hollywood.

From its very start, the American movie has been an art form for the masses, designed to reach millions. Yet religion is even more divisive than politics and, to worried studio executives, meant only a confusing array of sometimes warring denominations and a variety of taboo topics. It was safer to ignore the entire subject.

Safer still as most of the early moguls were Jewish. There had already been nativist grumbles about how America’s morals were being corrupted by these non-Christian _ and it was insinuated, un-American _ money men. And so the new studios tried to stay away from Christian stories _ and, for good measure, Jewish ones as well _ while turning out secular epics and romantic comedies.

In the ’20s, however, a long series of movie-star scandals convulsed America. Moralists railed against decadent Hollywood studios and their sexy flapper romances. Then, brilliantly, director Cecil B. DeMille discovered a way he could have his cheesecake, and eat it too. He would tell Bible stories that provided a good, solid Judeo-Christian moral _ after, of course, a good hour or so of pagan depravity.

It would be unfair to simply dismiss DeMille as a hypocrite _ the son of a lay preacher, he seemed genuinely inspired by the thought of moviemakers doubling as missionaries. But he was a showman first, and his spectacles were always more high camp than camp meeting. While the movies pleased believers, there was little in them of belief.

Ironically, it was DeMille’s licentious “The Sign of the Cross,” in 1932, that helped spur the censorious Production Code; directors were not only told to eschew sex and sadism, but forbidden to “throw ridicule on any religious faith” or to portray any member of the clergy “so as to cast disrespect on religion.” The genre faded. When religious epics did finally reappear in the ’50s, they were often remakes of earlier hits like “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben-Hur,” and as much about spectacle as the spirit.

Yet there were other, more serious efforts over the years. Danish filmmaker Carl Dreyer made the truly luminous “The Passion of Joan of Arc”; Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” sympathetically detailed the daily struggles of a naive French cleric. “Black Narcissus” examined the tensions undermining a remote convent while the “The Nun’s Story” caught Audrey Hepburn struggling with doubts over her vocation. But these were exceptions.

By the ’60s, the studio censors were weakening _ enough, at any rate, to tackle once-taboo topics in films like “Inherit the Wind,” “Elmer Gantry” and “Night of the Iguana.” Yet the corrupt or narrow-minded clergyman soon became as much of a cliche as the beaming, benevolent one. Judaism remained nearly invisible, with Hinduism and Islam seen as the preserve of foreign villains. Truly interesting questions _ the line between faith and fanaticism, the debate between reason and belief _ remained unexplored.

That wasn’t surprising. When, in the ’80s, Martin Scorsese tried to make a movie about the mind of Jesus in “The Last Temptation of Christ,” or Kevin Smith decided, a decade later, to try a theological spoof in “Dogma,” both directors found themselves attacked as heretics.

Years later, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” faced anger, too, but from different sources, as studios first shied away from a film shot in a dead language and cast without stars, and many critics wondered if the film wouldn’t revive anti-Semitic libels. To these viewers, Gibson’s film seemed even more controversial than the Smith and Scorsese films, and shockingly different from the Sunday-school stories audiences had become used to.

But Gibson’s inspiration wasn’t some run-of-DeMille epic, or even the modern Church. An arch-conservative Catholic, Gibson was at war with the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and, indeed, most of the popes since Pius XII. Instead, he looked for inspiration in traditional Passion Plays, and even in an 18th-century German nun who claimed to have had visions of the Crucifixion.

Ultimately, the film became the Gospel According to Mel. Explicit instructions on how to dramatize the story of the Passion (as outlined by a committee of U.S. bishops in 1988) were ignored. The Bible was rewritten. If the evangelists had described the scourging in a line, Gibson would turn it into an epic splatter scene; if they had failed to describe a vengeful God sending a bird to pluck out a convict’s eye, then Gibson would make no such mistake.

This was not a film of nuance, nor one bound to encourage interfaith dialogue. (Nor, probably, intended to _ Gibson has said he believes heaven is pretty much reserved for Roman Catholics anyway). Yet it undeniably moved millions. And while its amazing success failed to convince the studios to start taking belief seriously, it did awaken filmmakers to the fact that there was an audience of believers.

This year’s religious pictures cover a variety of beliefs and take many different approaches. Not surprisingly, most of the American films focus on Christianity.

Some _ like the “Da Vinci Code,” the upcoming Hilary Swank shocker “The Reaping,” and new versions of “The Omen” and “The Wicker Man” _ use it as a hook on which to hang a thriller. Although they touch on religious dogma, they are no more interested in true Christian issues than last year’s “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” (a based-on-fact story that proceeded to ignore many of the facts) and other, endless ripoffs of “The Exorcist” (a novel that had a few intelligent questions about faith but lost more of its intelligence with each new adaptation).

Other, independent filmmakers remain more interested in spiritual questions, although their films don’t always reach this country’s urban coasts. Several films about Mormon heroes and history have opened (and closed) in Utah; an independent adaptation of “The Celestine Prophecy” is slowly making its way across the country. Other pictures, like the apocalyptic “Left Behind” series, continue to fly under the radar, reaching believers without big ad campaigns or national media attention.

More mainstream pictures, less interested in preaching to the choir than reaching new audiences, typically focus on the role that a strong faith can play in times of trouble. It can be handled ham-handedly, as in the proselytizing “The End of the Spear,” the explicitly exploitive “The King” or even the gospel-tinged “Madea” films. It can be approached artistically, as in Germany’s fine “The Last Days of Sophie Scholl,” the story of a devout student who stood up to Hitler, or even metaphorically, as in the fantastical “The Chronicles of Narnia.” But all these films believe in belief and salute the power of faith.

Films about Judaism, meanwhile, tend to focus on family and the difficulty of holding on to ancient beliefs in the modern world. In “Shem,” opening Friday (May 26) in New York, a secularized English Jew finds himself by confronting the history of the Holocaust; in the current “Mendy,” a sheltered Hasid moves gingerly into the world of goyim. Whether the story involves the farcical bar mitzvahs of “Keeping Up With the Steins” or the tragic dislocation of “La Petite Jerusalem,” each film ends on notes of, if not limitless hope, than at least stubborn survival.

American films about Islam, however _ sadly but perhaps inevitably _ are often overwhelmed by themes of vengeance and defeat. The hero of this year’s “Sorry, Haters” tries to lead a godly life in the West, yet remains victimized by Western prejudices. The protagonist of last year’s “The War Within” comes to the West to destroy it and is viewed by his Arab-American relatives with distrust. Their stories are ultimately about the ugly intersection of ancient beliefs and modern violence. They are movies about faith, but they are shot through with despair.

Unless this is going to be the dominant view of Islam, other voices _ brave voices that can speak of the varying strands of thought within its traditions, hopeful voices that can tell stories of Muslims living religious lives even in a secular West _ need to be heard, and quickly. Where are the Muslim versions of films like “Monsoon Wedding,” which used a Hindu ceremony as a chance to reflect on modern families? Or of gorgeous epics like “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring,” in which Buddhist beliefs were expressed as poetic metaphors?

Movies are changing, and ironically many of those modern advances _ low-cost video equipment, Internet marketing, distribution via DVD _ make it easier for filmmakers to give their own perspectives on ancient issues. Rough, home-made films such as “Talking With the Dalai Lama” or “Buddha Wild: The Monk in a Hut” have publicized Buddhist beliefs; even the New Age nostrums of Ramtha have gotten a hearing, in “What the Bleep Do We Know?” Perhaps one day we’ll even see a movie about an atheist who lives a happy, fulfilling and morally exemplary life.

That would be a real breakthrough. Because a belief in nothing is as much a kind of faith as a belief in something. And only when filmmakers feel free to tell every kind of story about every kind of belief _ and fairly treat every kind of believer _ will we be able to move beyond simply thinking about the religions that can divide us, and concentrate instead on the search for something better that unites us all.

(Stephen Whitty is film critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

KRE/PH END WHITTYEditors: To obtain file photos of “The Passion of the Christ,” “Dogma” and “The Omen,” go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

A version of this story is being transmitted by Newhouse News Service.

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