In keeping with the Italian neorealist precept of casting non-professional actors in suitable roles, Roberto Rossellini went to the Franciscan friars of the Nocere Inferiore monastery in Rome to cast St. Francis and his followers in this delightful cinematic meditation on the Little Flowers of St. Read More …
Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply: Create silence! The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. Read More …
Some of the most intriguing artistic tributes to faith and religion come from nonbelievers. A Man For All Seasons, the great drama of the life and martyrdom of St. Thomas More, was written for the stage and screen by the non-Christian Robert Bolt. The story of The Read More …
The Miracle Maker is a singular achievement: a Jesus movie simple enough for children, sophisticated enough for scripture scholars and theologians, and artful enough for discerning cinephiles. A joint project of Welsh and Russian animation houses, the film was co-directed by Derek W. Hayes and Stanislav Read More …
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world. What can be shown, cannot be said. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” –Ludwig Wittgenstein In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus the great twentieth century philosophy Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted to define the limits Read More …
At the beginning of Paul Schrader’s elegant take on contemporary Christian spirituality in the mode of classic transcendental cinema, a very faint white cross appears in the title card between First and Reformed. As the sun rises over the shot, the cross resolves glimmering on the steeple of Read More …
“Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.” The cinema of Robert Bresson is difficult to crystallize, but the great director himself came close with these words. The rhythm of a Bresson film has one purpose—to uncover, layer by layer, the effervescent connections Read More …
Across the 16 years that Arts & Faith has been making Top 100 lists, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) has always been well-represented. This film has made every list, while earlier iterations have included Rashomon, Dersu Uzala, and/or Ran. Had we not imposed a “one film per director” rule, Read More …
“Do the right thing” is a simple phrase that can be easier said than done at times. As a child, my parents would tell me to “do the right thing”. They’d also ask me “what’s the right thing to do?”, in order to guide me Read More …
Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne—popularly known as “the Dardenne brothers”—make genuine cinematic parables. By “parable” I mean films about ordinary or mundane circumstances which have no ostensible religious or sacred element, yet prove to provoke a sense of the transcendent, what philosopher Paul Ricoeur Read More …