Article

Belief

Comment

Film & TV

27 January 2025

5 min read

When Faithfuls lack faith, there’s a lot more to lose

Having faith is hard. It can be a costly act of courage.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Four game show contestants and a host stand in the garden of stately home.

The Faithful Four.

And so The Traitors comes to a close once again.

Despite the small matter of it reinforcing my anxieties about our modern predisposition for isolation, I’ve really enjoyed this series. It’s been full of twists, tension, and just the right amount of over-the-top melodrama.

And in this respect, the series finale did not disappoint. Amidst the backstabbing, and the reveals, and the arguments, however, it got me thinking about the nature of faith.

Be warned: there are spoilers ahead for the finale of The Traitors.

As the finale begins, pseudo-Welshwoman Charlotte (I promise that makes sense in context) is the last Traitor standing. However, she is unmasked as a Traitor by Faithful Frankie, who wins the power to reveal one contestant’s identity and picks the right person through a mildly infuriating fluke.

Charlotte is banished and the remaining four Faithfuls enter ‘the endgame’. At this point, if all four agree, the game ends and they split the £94,600 jackpot between them. That is, unless a traitor remains in the game. In that case, the traitor takes the lot.

It was absolutely fascinating and more than a little heartbreaking to watch these four people – all of whom were Faithfuls – work out whether they can trust each other. If all of them agree to end the game, they each walk away with £23,500.

But they don’t.

Initially, all four contestants decide to continue. None of them quite trusts the people around them. And so, the hapless Alexander is voted off next. He was too pure for this game anyway; he would have given his share to charity.

Three remain. All three once again vote to continue.

One contestant, Jake, says

“I’m just not confident that I can trust the people around me.”

And so he, along with the other remaining Faithful Leanne, votes to banish Frankie. The same Frankie who outed Charlotte as a Traitor. The same Frankie who wanted the money so she could surprise her boys back home.

Two remain. And so the game ends by default.

But the doubts don’t end. Jake and Leanne are left wondering if they will leave with £47,300 each, or if they’re just about to be screwed over by the other. The viewer gets the impression that, if each could banish the other, they would.

“Why won’t you look me in the eyes?!” Leanne asks Jake in a panic, now seemingly convinced Jake is a traitor, about to take away all her hard-earned money. About to take away her only chance at IVF, and a baby.

Both are revealed as Faithfuls and the game ends with joy and tears. Jake gets to renovate his house, Leanne gets to try for a baby. All is well. Except for the 23 other contestants who leave with nothing, dreams in tatters.

I’m not saying that Jake, Leanne, Frankie, and Alexander are wrong for being suspicious of others. Having faith is hard. It is an act of courage.

The only way the common good is most fruitfully attained is through the exercising of faith in one another.

It’s easy not to have faith in very much at the moment. Our politicians are a heady mix of inept and corrupt. Our institutions often appear as little more than opaque, faceless entities hell-bent on self-preservation and self-interest, costs be damned.

It’s hard to make a compelling case for why you should trust the state. Or the police. Or even the Church. Or any other number of people or institutions. Each is surrounded by a litany of failure and cover up. In such a context, faith seems an act of foolishness.

And notice, too, that having faith in their fellow Faithfuls would have been a costly decision to make. Leanne and Jake leave The Traitors with £47,300. Had they trusted their fellow Faithfuls, that number would be halved. Still a remarkable amount of money but, when you’re attempting IVF or renovating a house, this can be the difference between getting everything you’ve dreamed of, or not.

That’s exactly what The Traitors finale brings into such sharp relief. It takes courage to have faith. It is not a cop out. To have faith in those around us is to put our neck on the chopping block and hope no-one swings the axe.

To have faith is to risk that which is most dear to us in the hope that others might have what matters most to them. It is a deeply vulnerable act of selflessness. It is not meant to be easy.

And so ultimately, we can forgive the Faithfuls their faithlessness. Would you trust a complete stranger if £47,300 was on the line? When I think of everything that money would mean for my family, I’m not sure I would.

But the only way the common good is most fruitfully attained is through the exercising of faith in one another. Only through faith in the fundamental goodness of humanity can we reach a truly equitable society where Leanne gets her baby, and Jakes gets his house, and Frankie gets to treat her family, and Alexander gets to donate to charity. (Bless that man, but he is slightly undercutting my point with his selflessness here. How selfish of him.)

Having faith is not easy, or fun, or comfortable, or without sacrifice. It is an act of love that costs much. An act of love that places us in a relationship with others that is vulnerable to abuse and deceit and harm. And for those who have had their faith repaid with abuse and deceit and harm, the cost of continuing to live in faith can understandably seem too high.

But maybe, just maybe, there is truth and goodness and beauty to be found in humanity of those around me. Maybe, just maybe, The Traitors warns us of the dangers of allowing our suspicions to trump our faith in each.

Maybe, just maybe, it invites us to imagine a better alternative.

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Review

Character

Culture

Film & TV

3 January 2025

4 min read

The utter humanity of Wallace and Gromit

Choices in front of and behind the camera tame technology.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A still from a claymantion film shows three characters, Wallace, Gromit and a robot garden gnome marching out a garden shed.

AI: here to help.

Aardman Animations.

In 1993, Aardman Animations released Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers. It follows hapless inventor Wallace and his long-suffering dog Gromit as they rent out their spare room to a penguin, Feathers McGraw, who is subsequently revealed to be a master criminal, narrowly pipping Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter and Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh to the title of cinema’s most sinister villain. (Trust me: you will never look at a red rubber glove the same way after The Wrong Trousers).

At the film’s climax, perpetual good-boy Gromit chases McGraw through the house via a series of increasingly convoluted model railway tracks, even as he has to build the very tracks he’s riding on. There is a strong argument to be made that it is best scene in cinematic history.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2024, and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is shown on BBC One on Christmas Day. It tells the story of Feathers McGraw – who has lost none of his quiet menace – plotting revenge on the eponymous duo, this time by taking over a series of technologically advanced garden gnomes Wallace has invented.

While nothing in Vengeance Most Fowl tops the train chase from The Wrong Trousers – indeed, how can one improve on perfection? – it is another magnificent addition to the Wallace and Gromit oeuvre.

Moreover, it is a remarkably prescient tale about the dangers of technology, and the beauty of humanity. It is the perfect antidote to much of modern cinema and almost single-handedly restored by faith in film as an artistic medium. Vengeance Most Fowl is such a success because it oozes humanity in every single frame. However, this humanity appears most clearly in three distinct ways.

First, in its story. The inciting MacGuffin of Vengeance Most Fowl is the new garden gnomes Wallace has concocted. Feathers McGraw takes control of Wallace’s gnomes by hacking into its software and switching it from ‘good’ mode to 'evil’ mode. (Like everything in life, this is a joke The Simpsons got to first: in 1992’s “Treehouse of Horror III,” Homer accidently buys Bart a Krusty the Clown doll accidently set to ‘evil’ mode rather than ‘good’ mode.)

Vengeance Most Fowl offers a more nuanced take on technology than most. It’s neither straightforwardly good nor straightforwardly bad; it depends entirely on the user. We see the benefits of the gnomes as they help people with their gardening. But put them in the hands of the wrong person – or penguin – and they become tools for evil. Vengeance Most Fowl is not an anti-technology film, then, but is realistic about the fact that some humans – and, indeed, penguins – will inevitably seek to use technology for nefarious ends.

Second, in its voice acting. Vengeance Most Fowl is the first Wallace & Gromit film released following the death of long-standing Wallace voice actor Peter Sallis. It is genuinely remarkable, then, that no AI was used by Aardman to replicate his voice. Instead, this is left to Ben Whitehead and the results are certainly worth it.

Where many film studios or production companies would have used technology to offer a ‘fake’ Sallis performance – think Peter Cushing in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, for example, or even the use of AI to reconstruct John Lennon’s voice for the lost Beatles single “Now and Then” – Aardman did not. Instead, they made a very conscious decision to have Whitehead offer a deeply human performance as Wallace. When (SPOILER ALERT) at the end of the film Wallace tells Gromit that he can live without inventing, but he can’t live without his dog, the emotional pay-off is so genuine because it is real. Because it is a thoroughly human moment.

Third, in its cinematography. Claymation is a medium only adopted by artists who hate themselves. That’s the only reason I can think for making an entire film using such a slow, tedious process. It is also a deeply human art form. It is the result of tens of thousands of hours of painstaking and repetitive work. It is yet another conscious choice by the team at Aardman to create something that is thoroughly and unmistakably human.

All of this, I think, says something about how Wallace & Gromit manages to feel like such a breath of fresh air. It has not been committee-d to death, or market research-ed into beige-ness. It is full of stupid little jokes (like Gromit reading Virginia Woof) and localised references (“Yorkshire Border: Keep Out!” followed by “Lancashire Border: No, Your Keep Out!”).

The cost of making Wallace & Gromit films is too costly for them to be cheap, mass-produced disappointments churned out at an increasing rate of knots. They are lovingly hand-crafted works of art and, given the current state of much cinema and TV, they are nothing short of minor miracles.