Review
Culture
Easter
Resurrection
6 min read

Cinematic Passions

Gibson, Darbont, Pasolini, Eastwood and Scorsese all feature in priest Yaroslav Walker’s top five Good Friday movies.
A haggard Jesus is looks ahead during the night.
Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ.
Newmarket Films.

Good Friday is a tough day for a Christian. It is a day of weeping and mourning; of venerating the Cross and meditating on the terrible reality of Christ’s tortuous death. It is an annual memorial service for a loved one, and the pain and grief is never made any easier because the reality of the Cross is fresh and relevant and immediate in the life of the believer: it is a moment that transcends time and space and is as real this year as it was in the thirty-third and final year of Christ’s life. It is also traditionally a day of intentional and serious fasting - mainly a diet of water and weeping for me. So, by the evening you’re wiped out and just want a bit of rest, perhaps relaxing in front of a film; that is certainly how I feel. Yet every Christian wants to spend the day focused on the Passion of Jesus, so not just any old film will do - it ought to be a film that allows us to keep Jesus’s sacrifice in mind. Below are my top five tips for a Good Friday evening watch… popcorn to be eaten plain, or salted with tears if you must! 

5 - The Passion of the Christ

The obvious choice. Controversial upon release for its depiction of the Temple hierarchy and the bloody violence with which it depicts Christ’s scourging and Crucifixion, it lives now in a certain ignominy. I would argue it deserves a reappraisal. Gibson is a solid director, takes the work seriously, and gives us a good-looking film. Jim Caviezel gives a terrific central performance (that makes you think he deserved a better career for the last twenty years), and all the cast put in good turns. However, it's the interpretation of the meaning of the death of Christ that intrigues me. When it first hit the screens, some saw it as a bloody expression of the view that Jesus dies to appease God’s wrath. Yet Gibson carefully intersperses scenes of the Last Supper with the scenes of torture, makes Satan a demonic inversion of the Madonna and Child, and constantly makes clear that it is the power of love and not anger or cruelty that is conquering the world. It is brutal and horrific (and so in fifth place) - but so is capital punishment… so maybe we need to endure it. In this film you can find many nuances of the Christian idea of love and redemption and salvation etched upon the screen. 

4 - The Shawshank Redemption 

An man stands in the rain, topless, with face and arms raised in celebration.
Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption.

A less obvious choice, and a film in which there is no vicarious death, but bear with me. Frank Darabont's epic drama sees Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) locked up for a crime he did not commit. Over the decades he learns how to navigate the dangers of prison life, makes friends and enemies, and becomes implicated in a great web of corruption. His great supporter and confidant is ‘Red’ (Morgan Freeman), who is the only man in Shawshank Prison who will admit his murderous guilt. This is one of those films that it's hard not to love, and you’ve probably seen it so many times before that it is the cinematic equivalent of a comforting takeaway. Under the surface of some terrific performances, masterful direction, and a heart-tugging score, the film is full of Christian themes. The innocent man punished for the sins of another, the death of Andy’s ego as he learns to find purpose in improving the lives of his fellow inmates, the dark powers of corruption brought to justice, and a man descending in the very bowels (the right word if you know the escape scene) of hell and emerging clean and reborn. Its aged beautifully, and inaugurated the Freeman voiceover as a staple of cinematic culture. 

3 - The Gospel According to St Matthew 

Jesus carries a cross over his shoulder while Roman soldiers wearing armour look on
Enrique Irazoqui in The Gospel According to Matthew.

Approved by the Vatican and made by a director in his prime wrestling with his faith, Pasolini’s masterpiece is a sumptuous black-and-white exploration of the life of Christ. The entire film is saturated with the sense of living in the poverty of first-century Palestine. Static close ups jump-cutting between one another disorient the viewer and give the impression that the supernatural is taking over the world we are seeing. It is hardly dynamic by the standards of a modern Passion film, but this is to its great benefit. Pasolini lends the film an Italian neo-realist flair that makes it seem almost like one is watching a documentary. The great joy of The Gospel is that it is a telling of the full Gospel, rather than the Passion in isolation. We see Jesus grow into manhood and into ministry, we see the shocking impact of his radical teaching, we see the conspiracy, and so when the Crucifixion of Jesus does happen it is remarkably impactful while also seeming ‘right’. We see how such a Gospel of radical devotion to God and love of neighbour does terrify a world that thinks in terms of power, and we see the great victory that the Cross really is.

2 - Gran Torino 

An older man kneels over in anguish, a window casts light and shadow over him.
Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

Clint Eastwood playing a role of a lifetime, and teaching us what loving one’s neighbour really looks like… what more could you want. Eastwood plays Walt: a widower, and veteran, a retired blue-collar worker, and an inveterate racist and tobacco user. Walt is embittered and alone, disgusted by the state of his Detroit neighbourhood, which has morphed from an all-white working-class community to a mainly Asian community blighted by gang violence. One night Walt saves his young neighbour from a forced gang initiation, and grudgingly becomes a mentor and quasi-father-figure to the boy, and soon his sister. Walt has no desire to connect with the world outside, but does so out of a sense of discipline and duty, and this is an excellent corrective to modern sentimental notions of love. On the Cross, Christ performs the most perfect act of love, offering forgiveness even to his executioners… it is unlikely that in that moment Jesus liked them. In the Gospel narratives Jesus is often frustrated to the point of anger, with the stubbornness of his hearers, and the lack of understanding of his disciples. Jesus doesn’t always like them, but he does love them. In the climactic scene of the film Walt resolves to make a great sacrifice to protect his community - a community he doesn’t really like anymore. This is real love, the love of the Cross. It does not emanate from fleeting and flighty emotionalism, but from a tremendous act of dedication and will. Eastwood gives us a great Good Friday lesson in love, and his performance is superb. 

1 - The Last Temptation of the Christ 

Jesus, scared and wearing a crown of thorns, looks directly into the camera.
Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ.

My number one pick is a mammoth of visual spectacle and a roller-coaster of emotions. Martin Scorsese has always been fascinated with the Catholic faith that he can’t quite embrace, and many of his most interesting and personal films have had the Christian narrative of redemption woven through. In 'Temptation' he tackles the subject head on, and gives us a religious epic to rival any Charlton Heston flick. Willem Defoe is a lean, wild eyed, and manic Jesus - plagued by doubt and anxiety and horrific migraines that could be demonic…or they could be God. Scorsese and Defoe work together to present the ministry of Jesus in very human terms. Christ is a psychologically complex man who is struggling to cope with his mission in a world that is so very broken. Much like Pasolini’s Gospel, this is a film that takes the supernatural seriously. Nothing is ever just what it is. There is no weather event or vision or animal encounter that is not suffused with eternal meaning. The film touches on every emotion: from furious anger, to heart-rending sadness, to uproarious laughter (to this day I can’t see a priest friend of mine without shouting ‘Judith’ and bursting into laughter). The closing acts of the film allow us to see just what Christ was sacrificing on the Cross - not just the life he had led, but the life he could have led. Christ is tempted to the very end, with the worst psychological torment possible, and still he remains faithful to the end. Scorsese may not know exactly where he stands before God, but he was graced with the talent to give the world a remarkably evocative take on the Passion of Jesus. 

Article
Belief
Culture
Music
5 min read

How Mumford and friends explore life's instability

Communing on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A bassist hauls a double bass of its base as he plays it.
Daniel Boud/x.com/mumfordandsons.

“Serve God, love me, and mend” must rank as one of the more unexpected openings to a hugely popular album in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. A quote from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, it introduces us to the potent mix of Shakespearean and Biblical allusion and imagery to be found on Mumford and Sons debut album Sign No More.  

Sigh No More, both as song and album, begins with confident assertions of faith then moves into acknowledgement of human fallibility and prevarication summed up in the Shakespearean phrase that “Man is a giddy thing” before asserting that love does not enslave but is freeing, enabling those who know it to become the people they were meant to be. The song ends with a prayer to see the beauty which will come when the protagonist’s heart is truly aligned with love. Throughout the album, the overriding concern is that personal fallibilities and fears – the darkness within – will prevent grace from having its full effect and the beauty of alignment with love from being fully realised. 

In many Mumford and Sons songs such personal instability is the problem to be resolved; “Man is a giddy thing”, “Why do I keep falling?”. Their search is often for the relationship or place that will provide stability:  

I can't say, "I'm sorry," if I'm always on the run 

From the anchor (‘Anchor’) 

‘Roll Away Your Stone’ describes the darkness within as a God-shaped hole filled with false gods: 

See you told me that I would find a hole 

Within the fragile substance of my soul 

And I have filled this void with things unreal 

And all the while my character it steals 

but this is not how life has to be: 

It seems that all my bridges have been burned 

But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works 

It's not the long walk home 

That will change this heart 

But the welcome I receive with the restart 

Lead singer and songwriter Marcus Mumford knows how this grace thing works because, on the one hand, his parents founded the Vineyard Church UK and Ireland meaning he grew up in the context of grace and, on the other, he seems to have experienced grace personally in relation to the sexual abuse he suffered as a child (which was not experienced in his family or his church). In ‘Grace’ from his self-titled solo album he contrasts grace, flowing like a river, with the experience of acknowledging the abuse he endured and the healing for which he prays. 

Such biblical allusions and references abound in the songs of Mumford and Sons, as is also the case with some of those with whom they performed, supported or inspired. The Nu-folk movement of which the Mumford’s were part, began at a club called Bosun’s Locker in Fulham. There, with the likes of Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale, and others, their musical journey commenced. Noah and the Whale’s first album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down featured philosophical rumination on a par with that of Sigh No More including lines such as: 

Oh, there is no endless devotion 

That is free from the force of erosion 

Oh, if you don't believe in God 

How can you believe in love?          

Following the closure of Bosun’s Locker, Ben Lovett from Mumford and Sons, with others, set up Communion Records, a network of musicians, songwriters, industry and music fans who all share a common philosophy and set of ideals. Among the artists supported by Communion have been Bear’s Den and Michael Kiwanuka. 

Bear’s Den is one of several bands, which also included Dry the River, that have used religious and spiritual symbols in their songs. Andrew Davie from Bear’s Den has said: “I wouldn't say I'm particularly religious, but I was brought up going to church every Sunday, I studied a bit of religion in school and just from going to Sunday school, it's almost that I know the stories so well, that I find it a cool way of telling more modern and more nuanced stories about my own life. As a backdrop to that I find it just constantly helpful and it's quite a powerful way to talk about things. It adds weight to me.” Similarly, Matthew Taylor of Dry the River said of the theological imagery in lead singer Peter Liddle’s songs: “It’s always been a tool for Peter I think, to use the imagery you’re talking about, to add weight to what he’s writing about. It’s rich imagery, and the ideas are ones that people can relate to easily, if there’s that familiarity there.” Both recognise, as do Mumford and Sons, the continuing power of Christian ideas and imagery and their resonance for young people. 

Michael Kiwanuka was surprised that his early song about faith ‘I’m Getting Ready’ was enthusiastically released first as the title song of an EP from Communion Records and then by Polydor as a single from his debut album Home Again. Kiwanuka, who is married to Christian singer Charlotte, has consistently expressed aspects of his faith through songs like ‘Love and Hate’, ‘One More Night’, ‘Solid Ground’, and ‘Floating Parade’. Alexis Petridis has noted that Kiwanuka sees more people searching for a belief system: “Having a faith in things now is, I think, a lot more acceptable, whatever faith it is. There’s no dogma, necessarily. We’re connected by the struggles we have and I think that’s what I’m singing about – being a human being and trying to overcome, which is what we’re all doing in a way.” 

Whether opening up space for bands to utilise the power of Christian imagery in their songs or enabling singers with a Christian faith to be heard on mainstream labels, Mumford and Sons, by example and support, have created opportunities for faith to be explored and appreciated. The response to their music, its themes, and those of artists with whom they connect, seems to reflect a growing openness to spirituality and faith. As they sang, together with Pharrell Williams, on ‘Good People’, “Welcome to the revelation”. 

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