Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

1More Film Blog

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
Feel “Better” Movies — What to Watch When the News is Bleak

Feel “Better” Movies — What to Watch When the News is Bleak

Last updated on: November 15, 2015 at 9:26 am by Kenneth R. Morefield

Feel “Better” Movies — What to Watch When the News is Bleak 2015-11-15T09:26:33-05:00 Kenneth R. Morefield

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The news has not been good this week.

I’d contextualize that statement, but I realized that in a month or two or six, today’s senseless horrors will probably have given way to others and that such a statement may be equally apt, even if it has a different antecedent.

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is a cynical but seemingly indisputable description of how media (mainstream and social) gets our attention. The psychological effects of being constantly asked to focus on the world’s problems is paradoxically well documented and perhaps only peripherally understood. (I recommend The Culture of Fear for a better articulation of those costs than I can give here.)

I wanted to write a post about films I turn to when I just can’t take the bad news any more, when I’m fed up with human nature, or when my capacity to respond productively to the “real” world is exahausted. Here’s the thing, though: I dislike the term “feel good” as a label for grand art. For me, it connotes something chippy, chirpy, maybe even facile. The films that help me most in such times are seldom cheerful, never superficial. They do, however, remind me that while we as a race are capable of great evil, a catalog of our worst atrocities is not a sufficient description of who we are.

Here are five films that make me feel better when I’m feeling bad about…everything else.

5) The Silence of the Lambs

The most counter-intuitive film on my list, Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’s violent-crime novel is about an admittedly dark subject: serial murder. It’s also spawned a host of imitators that have cluttered our movie screens and television sets with violent images, predominantly of horrors perpetrated against women. And yet…Clarice Starling and Jack Crawford never fail to inspire me in the way they pursue saving victims of monsters no matter the personal cost. I also tend to think–and in this I realize I am both politically incorrect and in the minority in this view–that the monster, Buffalo Bill, engenders just the tiniest sliver of compassion. Not in a politicized “they made him” kinda way. Not really in any way that suggests there is any viable option other than putting him down. But his actions seem to come from a place of pain, and self-loathing, and confusion that even he does not understand. In the years that followed, all of us (including Harris himself I think) fell in love with the character of Hannibal Lecter, forgetting Crawford’s admonition to not let him in your head. Finally there is Clarice who chooses to identify with the victim–who chooses a share of suffering for a chance to alleviate that of others. That her suffering is psychological rather than physical makes her sacrifice no less moving. Rare are the heroes who win by having the strength to be vulnerable rather than by stifling the best parts of themselves.

4) The Shop Around the Corner

I introduced my essay on Tom Tykwer in Volume II of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema by quoting the German director trying to define the famous “Lubitsch touch.” He says: “To me, the most distinctive aspect of the Lubitsch touch is always the principle of hope. After watching his films, I felt optimistic. As if I could go through life and smile about the insanity that rains down on us. That’s why the films have a medicinal effect” (212) . In what is arguably Lubitsch’s best known film, the hope is that two people who love each other and are well suited for one another will break out of their painful habits long enough to receive the happiness the universe would just assume give them. The backdrop against which the domestic drama plays is admittedly smaller than that of To Be or Not to Be, but there are strands of larger sociological conflicts weaved into the personal story. The Shop Around the Corner ends on Christmas Eve, a setting, perhaps, that subtly reminds us that most of the good things in life are gifts we’ve been given rather than wages we have earned. Give every man what he deserves, Hamlet once said, and none of us would escape whipping. Or to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the true generosity of God is that He so often gives us what we really want rather than what we have demanded or asked for.

3) The Silence of the Sea

Of the making of World War II films there is no end. Because Nazis are such an easy metaphor for absolute evil, every generation finds in them a type of its own figures of depravity. The Silence of the Sea is about resistance. A Frenchman and his niece, forced to house a German officer, capitulate, but they refuse to speak. The psychological effects, both on the German and on the protesters, is profound. It is customary to describe the powerless as voiceless, and by making that metaphor literal the film invites us to meditate on how much we use words as weapons and more words as armor. Like The Silence of the Lambs, this film has a sadness about it that I ultimately find more palliative than the exuberance of more triumphant heroes. Plus the scope of evil often makes us feel as though there is nothing we can do; films about normal people responding to impossible demands are always more gripping than ones about alien superheroes or costumed mutants. Here as well we have an antagonist who, while not sympathetic enough to change our allegiances, reminds us that the deepest divides sometimes separate people on both sides who haven’t yet stopped questioning. If a Frenchman could admit this much about a German in 1949, is it really impossible for us to believe today that there might yet be those we fight whose consciences have not yet been extinguished?

2) Persuasion

Who doesn’t love a good love story? And nobody does a love story better than Jane Austen.

Persuasion is not my favorite Austen novel; that would be Emma. Neither is the Root-Hinds film my favorite adaptation; that would be Pride and Prejudice. What Persuasion does have over those other works, though, is a pair of themes that act as a balm to the heartbroken soul. It is a film about second chances. Sometimes the things we do seem right or necessary at the time but have blow back that makes us wish we could choose differently. Second, the film is about hope. A special kind of hope, actually. The hope strong enough that its very memory sustains us after it has been absent so long that we think it is dead. “It is such a happiness when good people get together,” Austen writes in another novel. “And they always do.” Austen’s world is one in which good things invariably happen for good people. Maybe it’s naive to believe that such is always the moral nature of our own world, but maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s the underlying moral fabric of the universe and we only catch glimpses of it occasionally because we see through a glass, darkly.

1) The Man Who Planted Trees

Canadian animator Frédéric Back created a short film that is every cliche in the superlative dictionary: a timeless masterpiece, a labor of love, and an immersive experience. Based on Jean Giono’s book of the same title, this short film is a consummate example of the marriage of form and style. The story is about a man who salvages a ruined ecosystem through meticulous labor. The film, like the shepherd’s landscape, begins somewhat bare. The drawing are minimal, with little detail. Gradually, as Eleazar Bouffier greens the landscape, the settings are rendered more vibrantly, but the transformation is so gradual that it is often imperceptible. There are many films and stories about heroes who make one big sacrifice or one grand gesture. Because we are impatient in our souls, we look for those grand gestures and so often look past those whose years of diligent, faithful service bear fruit in the tiniest increments.

One of the most encouraging themes of The Man Who Planted Trees is that one person–a shepherd, a beekeeper, a storyteller, an animator–can make a difference. The power of compound interest is as latent in our labor as it is with our money. It is true that sometimes our work is unappreciated and unrecognized. It is true that sometimes the stupidity of war, the blindness of politicians, and the brokenness of our neighbors, hinders and thwarts us in our attempts to promote the public good. But it is also true–and we should never forget–that while the span of a man’s life is as brief as the wind, the good he can do in that span is nothing short of miraculous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7yEPNUXsU

Essays

Reviews

Top 10s and Other Lists

Feel Better Movies

Persuasion

The Man Who Planted Trees

The Shop Around the Corner

The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Sea

Previous Post

November 12, 2015

Spotlight (McCarthy, 2015)

Next Post

November 21, 2015 "Feel Better" Movies -- Evan Cogswell's List

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Years Later 1999 Top 5 2007 Top 10 2008 Favorite Discoveries 2008 Top 10 2009 Favorite Discoveries 2009 Top 10 2010 Favorite Discoveries 2010 Top 10 2011 Top 10 2012 Top Ten 2013 Top Ten 2014 Top Ten Best Picture Winners Christian Spotlight on Entertainment Christianity Today Coming Soon Disclosure Disclosure--AS Disclosure--Book Disclosure--DVDS Disclosure--SEOL Disclosure--Travel Dissenting Opinion Elsewhere Emergenetics Essays Featured Film Fest DC--2014 Film Festivals Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2012 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014 Headline Interviews Laura on the Oscar Winners Podcasts Quick Impressions Reviews RiverRun Film Festival 2014 Television The Criterion Collection The Thin Place To Stream or Not to Stream? Top 10s and Other Lists Toronto International Film Festival 2009 Toronto International Film Festival 2010 Toronto International Film Festival 2011 Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Toronto International Film Festival 2013 Toronto International Film Festival 2014 Uncategorized Video Virginia Film Festival 2011 Virginia Film Festival 2013 Women's Film Festival 2012

Select a Month February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who did God ask to sacrifice his only son as a test?

Select your answer to see how you score.

David Moses Abraham Jacob