Top 10 Treatments of Spirituality in Modern Film

This haunting adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitizer Prizer-winning play introduces us to a sharp, by-the-book nun (Streep) who is suspicious of a progressive and charismatic young priest (Hoffman) who has just taken office at a parish day school in the middle of 1960s Irish-Catholic Brooklyn.

She's a law-and-order, Old Testament kind of gal who believes in the virtues of purity, austere living and strict obedience to church law. He's a forebearer of the Godspell-style progressive Christian movement towards emphasizing unconditional love, open-minded acceptance and forgiveness, and encouraging social programs.
The two clash on several key issues concerning discipline of students and other daily school operations, but come to serious blows over allegations put forth by Streep that Hoffman's priest was sexually involved with a young underpriveleged black boy who plays on the school basketball team he coaches.

The conflict is never resolved and Truth is never found by the audience or the characters, but Doubt abounds, doubt which causes some incredibly inspired sermons on truth, gossip and doubt and eventual resignation by the priest and lead the nun to question beliefs she long held as absolute truths. With no clear hero or villain, it leaves the viewer with more questions than answers, which may be the best way to discuss the most truly Unanswerable Question.

2. The Hypochondriac's Spiritual Search in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters

In my opinion Woody Allen has never been better than as The Hypochondriac in his 1973 film Hannah and Her Sisters. Most of the film centers on adultery and broken relationships, but The Hypochrondriac, convinced his death is imminent, experiences a broken relationship the Jewish tradition of his family and spends the film on a detached, isolated search for something with meaning, meaning he goes on a crash course of just about every religion he can find.

Along the way, Allen's Hypochrondriac talks himself and local church leaders in dizzying and hilarious circles while exploring Catholicism, Buddhism, Hare Krishna and more...in his furious search for something to save his cynical soul, The Hypochondriac exhibits the human condition in its most hilarious and pathetic form: desperation. In desperation cynicism goes out the window, and, to use the title of a later Allen film, it's all about Whatever Works.

3. The Na'vis and Eywah's Special Connection in Avatar

Science Fiction presents the opportunity to explore unique interpretations of the physics and metaphysics of the supernatural and spiritual realm; that is, how it actually works.

James Cameron uses the distant moon Pandora, its tribal people the Na'vi and their deity Eywah to offer a unique take on the the Christian concept that God is omni-present, in all things. Eywah is contained in all things Pandora, the landscape, the foliage, the creatures, the Na'Vi people themselves. Eywah is described as a physical electromagnetic field arranged as a network across the planet -- everything is linked, much like cyberspace. Therefore, Na'vi or any other living beings on the planet have the ability to 'link in' to the deity and upload information about what is going on throughout the planet.

They do this through silica-like fibers in the end of their tails that fuse with similar fibers located on every living being. They use this to connect to their animal soulmates -- like horse-type creatures and a pteradactyl-like birds who they bond with at their coming-of-age initiations and maintain monogomous working relationships with for their entire live.

Jake, the mercenary Earth soldier in a takeover plan, becomes a freedom fighter for the Na'Vis against his own kind in his avatar body, and when that body dies in battle, they are able to use Eywah's knowledge and power of the beauty of his human soul to transfer it back into the Na'Vi body so he can truly become one of their own. Avatar is not only visually stunning, but offers a unique way of thinking about the supernatural: perfectly linked to, rather than competing with, science.

4. A Sibling's Spiritual Intervention in Kenneth Lonergen's You Can Count on Me

I've been a fan of Kenneth Lonergen's since I stumbled through a stage production of This Is Our Youth in college, and one of the original stars of that play truly shines in his critically acclaimed drama You Can Count on Me is Mark Ruffalo.

When portraying a tortured burnout, it's easy to fall into mythical treatment or heavy-handed comic dismissal. But Ruffalo shines as a long-time screwup and rambler temporarily back in his small New England town to visit his sister Sammy (Laura Linney, nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress). He exudes a broken spirit but a strong will and a higher order of consciousness than many around him. He has addictions, habits and psychological hangups he may not always be able to control, but he does take the time to understand them and come to peace with them in a way that seamlessly fuses drunken fistfighting and public breakdowns with a Zen-like inner spirit and ability to connect to people.

The key scene is when Linney, despite years of articulate resistance from her openly atheistic younger brother, arranges an intervention with their high school friend (who is now a priest at the local church), hoping to give him the gift of faith to help him turn his life around.

Ruffalo's reaction is complexly beautiful: he's furious that he's trying to be helped along a path he clearly left long ago, he feels intellectually insulted and hurt that his sister sees him as that inept in handling his own life, yet towards the end of the conversation, through his honesty and opneness he accepts the love through which she did it and agrees that, if not Christianity, a return to some sort of search for purpose or meaning may be in order.

The priest gives him perhaps the turning-point-of-the-movie moment when he tells him, in effect, that he can call or not call it anything he wants to if the names are what bother him so much, but that, for his own sanity, he has to let himeself believe in something.

5.Duality of Man in the Chilling Climax of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather

A christening and faithful religious oaths by a devoted father as the cold-blooded mob massacre he ordered takes place outside in the city streets. The shocking display of man's dual nature speaks for itself here, and if you haven't seen this film you probably don't live a country that has television.

6. Catholic Bloodlust on display in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ

I know it seems like laziness is setting in, but there's also really not much to say about Passion of the Christ except that it only does more to encourage Catholic guilt and bloodlust. Anyone who has grown up in evangelical Christian culture can attest that there is a tendency among the faithful to want to be as familiar and close to the knowledge of how gruesome Christ's torture and death were in order to feel appropriately guilty and...the blood is the catalyst for mobilizing the repentant spirit and the life that wants to change. This movie definitely succeeds at providing that imagery to the faithful more unflinchingly than ever, and turning off the unfaithful in the most effective way.

7. The Political Intrigue of the Catholic Church in DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons

Riveting, thought-provoking and controversial, Dan Brown's two ultra-best-selling novels on ancient secret societies within and against the Catholic Church bring viewers face-to-face with the age-old relationship between the Church and the economic and governmental rulers of the world. For two hours in each film you're faced with the realities that The Church controlled the World for centuries, that many majors wars were fought over political battles between Church and State, and presented with a lot of What Ifs? concerning the nature of even the religion's sacred texts and traditions.

It's clear which side of the line Brown and his protagonist Robert Langdon reside, but you can tell in each story Langdon comes to an understanding of the passion that might have drawn the misguided villains to their zealotous ways. It's clear Langdon has not a perpetual distaste for those who wish to believe or follow, or even those who do evil thinking they do good --but those cold leaders who wish to manipulate what others consider sacred for power. Some may contend he is trying to kill religion, but it could be argued Brown is one of the strongest voices for saving and bettering it.

8. The Dinnertable Debate on the 'American Prosperity Gospel' in I Heart Huckabees

Jason Scwartzman, Mark Wahlberg, and Richard Jenkins conduct one of the most blatant experiments in double-blind culture clash I've ever seen, and it's both dizzingly heady and insanely hilarious.

Schwartzman's Albert is an idealistic young environmental activist inspired by liberal college culture and artistic spirit and Mark Wahlberg's character is a cynical older anti-oil activist thrown into examining life after fighting fires in 9/11. They meet at an Existential Detective Agency run by a cooky couple of Philosophers (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) who encourage them to explore their thoughts and try to help Albert solve a "coincedence" -- a tall young African immigrant Albert has run into 3 times in the course of a few days.

When they finally find the young man, it is revealed his adopted name is Stephen and he is a war refugee sponsored by an evangelical Christian family in a wealthy suburb, run by a dogmatic electrical engineer who's kids laugh at the fact Stephen was chased by lions and didn't know what a can opener was.

Within minutes of sitting down to dinner with the family it is clear the whole arrangement is a back-patting experience for them, and that they have no real interest in Stephen's culture, just passing mundane American traditions like collecting celebrity autographs, down to him.

Also within minutes Albert brings up his various philosophical quandries, which scare the naive children, prompting one to ask "we don't have to think about those kinds of things, do we Mom?" Mark Wahlberg's disallusioned firefighter quickly gets into a huge fight with Jenkins' electrical engineer over the suburban sprawl his development group creates, calling him "The Destroyer" for driving an SUV and telling him he does not follow Christ's ways at all.

Jenkins responds that if their wasn't sprawl, he wouldn't have a job, and therefore, he reasons, their family would not have been able to take in Stephen, adding "Your ideas HURT Stephen!"

The funniest line of the whole movie though, is when the girl, responding to Wahlberg's harassment, says "but God is never mad at us if we keep him in our hearts."

Wahlberg's deadpan answer? "He is mad at you, he most certainly is."

9. The Relationship Between the Sacred and the Profane in Kevin Smith's Dogma

Though Kevin Smith is a devout Catholic, his films can offer pretty scathing criticism on the topic of religion. In his interpretation of the end of times story, a young abortion clinic worker who finds out she is a descendant of Christ must enlist the help of an unruly band of misfit prophets and disciples to take on bumbling fallen angels bent on destroying the world so they can get back into heaven.

Two of the prophets are the filthly Jay and Silent Bob, one of the disciples is Chris Rock's Rufus, the 13th apostle who was left out of the Bible because he was black. Salma Hayek plays a holy stripper, dirty-mouthed George Carlin a cardinal and so forth.

The point of all this heretic-ing around, it seems, is for Smith to point out how dirty and radical and weird and wrong the church establishment must have seen the group who came to be the basis for the current religious establishment : Jesus and the disciples.

10. "I am a false prophet" in P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood

One of the top movies of the decade, There Will Be Blood offers another example of how the American Christian nation and the international oil industry are inextricably historically linked. It gives concrete examples of how those who seek money and power must go disguised as seekers of faith and duty. They show how one cannot serve two masters, but he who chooses money or power on Earth will be more successful here.

Daniel Day-Lewis is a hedonistic, power-hungry oil speculator out in the badlands and he thinks he's duping an entire small town out of oil-rich land until Paul Danka's brilliant young preaching progidy leads a holy war against him for not giving him a cut of the proceeds, making him submit to public humiliations like denouncing himself as a horrible father and man upon his church alter.

In the end, however, Day-Lewis' character wins out, proving to a pleading Danka that he was more pure all along, for at least he was okay with his own greed. He makes a begging Danka admit that he is a false prophet, and then coldly kills him in his mansion's bowling alley before finishing a milk-shake. Chilling.

Bonus for Funsies:

Wouldn't it be Great if Morgan Freeman was God?