Scathing without being scandalous, Women Talking keeps the gaze on the titular women and avoids any attention to the men who have victimized them. The women of a small enclosed religious community are the victims of repeated sexual assaults, while the men who commit these crimes go Read More …
In his most recent film, director Pawel Pawlikowski grapples with belief, loss, and religious ambiguity in 1960s Communist Poland. The story’s protagonist, a novitiate nun named Anna, is suddenly faced with a crisis of faith when she learns of her family’s dark history. Submersion in Read More …
In 2011, voters at Arts & Faith updated its list of Top 100 “Spiritually Significant” films. This was the fifth iteration of the list. It excluded short films and limited the list to no more than three films by the same director. This list included Read More …
The first thing to understand about The Muppet Christmas Carol is that it is—as Ethan Warren brilliantly argues in a classic thinkpiece at Bright Wall/Dark Room—the best adaptation of Dickens’ classic short story. The second thing to understand is that the film is a product of a serendipitous Read More …
The “Disney Renaissance” of the late 1980s and early 1990s pushed the boundaries of animation by taking the formulas of Broadway musicals, applying them to fairy tales, and selling the results to grown-ups who might never have considered going to a Disney cartoon. So when Read More …
Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari is a quietly spiritual film that gives voice to the immigrant experience in pursuit of the American Dream. The writer-director channels deeply personal sentiments in a story of vast Biblical undertones. The central metaphor of the minari plant embodies hardy resilience Read More …
This film’s Anatoly is a priest who lives among a remote monastic community as prophet and provocateur. Director Pavel Lungin’s story about him is of course a film, but it seems to be of a piece with the great Russian literary tradition. Anatoly’s actions toward Read More …
The Dardenne brothers craft cinematic parables that evoke an ethical imagination within the viewer through subverting expectations. At first glance, The Son may feel like a typical revenge thriller as a carpenter (Olivier Gourmet) takes a young man as an apprentice with the knowledge that this troubled Read More …
The Elephant Man dramatizes the true story of Joseph Merrick, named John in the film, a man suffering from a to-this-day undiagnosed combination of shocking physical deformities. Lynch’s film, his second feature following Eraserhead, tells of Merrick’s (John Hurt) discovery in a freak show by Dr. Frederick Read More …
After more than 40 years, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist retains a visceral power its numerous successors and imitators have not sustained. Its reputation as one of the scariest movies ever made can perhaps overshadow its qualities as an examination of the mystery of faith. At Read More …