Recently, my REEL FAITH co-host, Steven Greydanus, wrote an article in response to a question posed by Joe Queenan in The Wall Street Journal: Was 2010 “The Worst Movie Year Ever?”
Opinions may vary, but the question got me thinking. How did 2010 rank from a faith perspective? Was it a particularly awful year at the movies for believers, specifically for Catholics?
Well, a first step in making that determination is defining what constitutes a “good” movie from a Catholic point of view – no easy task given the difficulty involved in getting most modern Catholics to agree on anything.
In 1955, Pope Pius XII, addressed the topic, when, speaking to members of the Italian film industry, he outlined some general criteria for distinguishing an “ideal” film; paramount among them that it “strengthens and uplifts man in the consciousness of his dignity.”
REEL FAITH’s resident film scholar Father Robert Lauder, who runs the popular Friday Film Festival at the Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston, boils it down further, “I think that any film that deals intelligently and beautifully with mysterious activities such as love, faith, hope, and commitment, can be looked at as ‘good’ from a Catholic perspective.”
Using those yardsticks, how did 2010 rate?
At first blush, the impression would be, not well.
But like most years, it was a mixed bag. Yes, much of it was a slog through a standard wasteland of mindless action films that glamorized violence, crude or mean-spirited comedies and morally vacant adolescent romps proselytizing promiscuity. But along the way there were also triumphs like “Get Low” and “The King’s Speech.”
Sure, there was the usual smattering of disposable, soul-numbing fare, but on the positive side of the ledger were dramas like “Rabbit Hole,” “The Fighter,” “127 Hours” and “Never Let Me Go,” that despite containing problematic content and mature subject matter, thoughtfully explored themes of grief, redemption, community and the dignity of the human person, respectively.
Five of the top ten movies of 2010 were family-friendly hits, including “Toy Story 3,” “Tangled” and “Despicable Me,” and all but two (“The Kids Are All Right” and “Black Swan”) of the ten Academy Award-nominated “Best Pictures” reflect an overall moral vision compatible with a Catholic worldview.
Amid a banal brew of remakes and sequels, discerning viewers willing to sift through the dross were also able to find smaller gems such as “Winter’s Bone.”
And while films like “The Expendables” added to what conservative critic Michael Medved has called “the glorification of ugliness,” on the flipside were offerings like the charming coming-of-age tale “Flipped” and the documentary “Babies,” a welcome ode to life in our culture of death.
Even a summer movie season that collectively tanked, managed a few bright spots, including “Inception” that provided audiences some moral grist to chew on along with their popcorn.
“Last year was no worse than most years,” says Father James Martin, S.J., Culture Editor for America Magazine. “[It] featured several movies that spoke to Catholic themes. “The Social Network” [for example] spoke to the morality of friendship and the immorality of lying; “True Grit” to the morality of self-sacrifice and the immorality of murder. But 2010 also featured the normal serving of movies that were just plain dumb and without any redeeming spiritual or religious qualities. In other words: “Sex and the City 2.”
There have been banner years. The most often cited being 1939, the cinematic equivalent of the 1927 New York Yankees, that boasted a murders’ row of classics such as “Gone With The Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” But even a relatively “good” year like 2004 in which “The Passion of the Christ” put religious movies back on Hollywood’s radar, was also the year that gave us the sadistic “Saw” franchise, “Kill Bill 2” and the morally murky “Million Dollar Baby.”
“You might think that 2010 was a complete bust for Catholic moviegoers,” says Tom Allen, film producer and partner of the marketing group Allied Faith & Family. “But for every vapid “Eat, Pray, Love” and spiritually ignorant film like “Legion” or “The Last Exorcism,” there was a treasure like “The Secret of Kells,” “Secretariat,” “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and “The King’s Speech,” each of which serves to restore one’s faith in the cinema as a vehicle for communicating spiritually affirming Christian truths.”
I guess you can say, 2010 was, to quote Charles Dickens, “the best of times and the worst of times”… that is until we do this exercise again next year.
