As “one of the oldest film markets in the world”, Japan’s cinematic story is a fascinating, always exciting, and often inspiring narrative to unpack. It is ripe with the expected markers that tend to be shared by cinema worldwide- the arrival of the Cinematograph, the shift from social commentary to propaganda during the World War, the usual struggle to overcome international pressures, the onset of television, and a decline in theater going. But peek behind the curtain of this shared narrative and the story of film in Japan is bursting with socio-political intrigue, history and unexpected twists that have allowed it to carve its own path in the midst of these things.

Two of the biggest characteristics that have defined Japanese Cinema are
a) history and
b) uniqueness.

Finding It’s History and It’s Uniqueness
Japan’s history and its uniqueness are really two parts of the same coin that help to define its particular style of filmmaking. I don’t mean that in the way of uniformity. The richness of Japan’s cinematic landscape is diverse. I mean that in the way of distinctives, which have allowed Japan to constantly innovate, create, and recreate over the last 100 years. And there is little doubt that Japan’s history, and its awareness of this history, played a significant role in defining and shaping this trajectory.

Being Canadian, one of the unique facets of living in North America is that, given our more recent development, we lack the same history of those Countries and Nations and territories in the East (including Europe in the West). It wasn’t until the onset of the American Western that America was able to establish a recognizable history of its own, and in Canada it is even less established because our film industry carries far less of an international presence.

Japanese cinema, in contrast, grew out of its ability to tell the stories of its past, a genre of film called jidai-geki that focused mainly on the Edo Period. One of the ways this benefited Japanese film is that as the idea of moving pictures was coming into focus, Japan had a clear and given narrative/ethos to pull from in developing its early films.

As its film industry developed, it was able to then reimagine how these stories could be told and retold early on in the forms development, allowing it to forge its own path rather than being influenced from abroad. This also saw the quick adaptation from the Japanese historical drama to the modern drama as the Country began to learn how to apply film to Japan’s modern context. And while Japan would to explore these modern contexts over the 100 plus year development of its industry, the power of its formation as an independent and unique cinematic landscape would come from its ability to connect its present to its past.

Japan’s rich history is of course present in films about Samurai and conquest, and as well in the spiritual themes that are present in its heritage, but it might be most apparent in its indebtedness to its storytelling past. There has been much written about the Japanese Benshi, but one of the things that sets the Country’s early development apart is the use of these oral storytellers to enhance the experience of the silent film era. This gave their films a theatrical presence that connected the visual to their tradition and heritage.

More interesting yet though is how the Benshi contributed to the development of these early films.

In addition to the great influence that benshi had at the performance level, many famous benshi had strong input at the film making level. At cinemas managed by large film production and distribution companies, it was common for benshi to be shown film scripts before production began, and they often demanded a rewrite if they disagreed with any part. Thus, at this point in the development of cinema, it was the performance side that held greater influence than the production side. In order to maintain his or her position among great competition, each benshi developed an individual style.

As Japan developed a cinematic industry, with its first film company emerging in 1909, the rise of its own form of film criticism (The Pure Film Movement) in 1910 would eventually lead the industry away from the Benshi and towards more concrete developments of particular cinematic styles. But there is no question that the Benshi had a lasting effect on how Japanese film would develop, with many of the styles and genres retaining these influences, including the thriving of silent film well into the 1930’s (long after the West had abandoned them), such as An Inn in Tokyo (1935).

Film and Politics
Beyond this history though, Japan’s modern political landscape, wars, tragedies, and natural disasters continued to play a key role in how its film industry would develop and in the kind of styles and genres that would emerge. Reaching back to the arrival of the Lumiere Brothers Cinematograph in 1897, Japan’s conquest of Taiwan around the same time, along with its lengthy war with China and the American Occupation, all gave definition to its cultural development, be it an eventual focus on Empire and expansion, the tragic genocide of Beijing and the Chinese capital of Nanking (of which the harrowing City of Life and Death, 2009, captures in a powerful way), or its relationship to America.

Both expansion and the events of World War 2 (Chinese Genocide and American Occupation) gave clear definition to the films of the 1930’s and 1940’s, which is still recognized as a time of ongoing innovation and social development. Themes of Empire and propaganda films under Government control come to shape the landscape leading up to the war and through the war, while the shift from Empire into what is now considered Japan’s first Golden Age (1950’s-1960’s) under American control led to a whole new kind of filmmaking altogether.

“In the years following the war, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was tasked with revising the Japanese constitution and demilitarizing the nation. Japan was ordered to abolish the Meiji Constitution, thus ending the Empire of Japan. On May 3, 1947, the country adopted the Constitution of Japan and formally became Japan.”
– Japans Influence on Cinema After WW2

American Occupation and The Japanese Identity
One of the key factors at play in the American Occupation following World War 2 was the SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers), which oversaw the redevelopment of the film industry at this time (1945-1952). Most relevant is the fact that this was a foreign institution (the branch which oversaw the film industry was called the CIE: Civil Information Education Section), which affected the industry in two major ways- it paved the way for an influx of American films into the Japanese landscape, and worked to reshape the Japanese industry according to American idealism, making Japanese film accessible abroad. This would forever alter the Japanese landscape going forward.

“During the occupation, MacArthur sought a way to combat the propaganda of Japanese cinema. An enlightenment campaign was launched, in which Hollywood studios would screen American films throughout Japan. Over 600 films were distributed, each showcasing the American way of life. The goal was to introduce America as a political, social, and cultural model for the Japanese population.”

Under the American Occupation, and in the period following the American Occupation, Japan saw a period of real innovation and creativity, both in the development of studios and in the rise of influential Directors. Leading the way during this time was Japan’s most popular and well known Director, Kurosawa, who navigated the international relationship with great success, or Kenji Mizoguchi, who made the impressive and influential Ugetsu (1953), and the monumental effort that is Tokyo Story (1953), Directed by Yasujirō Ozu. This era also included the first color film (Carmen Comes Home, 1951), and at its peak the Human Condition Trilogy.

On Rashomon.

“Rashomon showcased Kurosawa’s skill as a director. He had embraced Western filmmaking, the works of Shakespeare, and American pulp novels. By combining those elements with traditional Eastern culture, Kurosawa’s films would break away from the traditional Japanese style of directors like Ozu and Mizoguchi. His work would find an international audience, cementing him as a legendary director.”

The epic Seven Samurai (1954), one of the first films to really establish and navigate this American-Japanese distinctive with immense success, is a key example of a film that protects Japanese identity but was made with American influences and equally for American audiences. It’s success, and its notoriety comes from Japan’s ability to navigate this terrain well.

Since American Occupation was interested in demilitarization, the outflow of this directive (the flip side of of the censorship that defined Japan’s propaganda films) was an increased focus on social concern (such as we saw with the Leftist influences in the 1930’s in shomin-geki films, films about the common people) and a critique of Empire (and the Emperor).

“By displacing the recent war onto the more distant past, the films could be made palatable to both domestic and international audiences. But no displacement, no tricks, no hidden meanings were required to appreciate the obvious artistry on view.”(http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Japan-THE-SECOND-GOLDEN-AGE.html#ixzz6Iw0zcGjD)

What is important to note here, and which plays into the uniqueness and history of Japanese Cinema, is that not unlike its ability to navigate previous periods of censorship, war, and natural disaster (including the great earthquake and Bombing of Tokyo that destroyed a good chunk of Japan’s early film), Japan’s response to the developments of its more modern age, whether tragic or prosperous, led to both a decisive and intentional incorporation of these events into their ethos through the art of cinema, along with a return again and again to their lengthy history and roots and values. When you look at international influence in other Countries, it often represents a serious point of struggle and contention. To see it in Japan is to encounter a sense of confidence that works to retain their identity over and against it, and often alongside it.

Consider the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is through cinema that this event became a means of introspection and identity (Godzilla, 1954), going on to inspire an entire genre of film that is distinctly and recognizably Japanese. Or consider the later emergence of Anime in the 2000’s, reaching back to films like the incredible Millennium Actress (2001) and establishing the famous Studio Ghibli. Following a series of challenging events through the 1970’s and beyond (all of which gave their own distinctive voice to Japanese cinema), not the least of which was the economic crash (the demise of the Bubble Economy), the Aum Shinrikyo massacre, and the great Kubo earthquake, Anime (along with an increased focus on Indie films thanks to the development of the Japan Film Commission Promotion Council) took the Country by storm, using the newly developed multiplexes to stake their claim as a key part of the Japanese ethos, representing over 60 percent of Japanese film development in 2000 and beyond. Interestingly, one of the key embraces of the Anime industry was being distinctly cultural but also internationally accessible, a distinctive of Japanese cinema and a mark of its strength of identity.

Japanese Identity and the Future
With the modern success of a Director like Hirokazu Kore-eda, who made the popular Shoplifters (2018), and powerful and emotional films like I Wish (2011) and Like Father, Like Son (2013), and the success of my personal favorite more recent Japanese film by Yojiro Takita, Departures (2009), it is clear that Japan has had a lengthy and complicated history that has seen it develop to where it is today, one that pushes and pulls the industry through the last 120 years of cinematic development, but one that also reaches much beyond this into a long and illustrious past that gave Japanese film its identity and ethos. This helped give Japanese film that ability to retain a sense of inventiveness and creativity that was distinctly and uniquely Japanese, even when things threatened their identity.

Consider that even before the moving picture arrived in Japan, their familiarity with the idea of cinema had already found its expression in gentō (utsushi-e), the magic lantern, a form of visual storytelling that directly impacted and informed how Japan entered the cinematic age with connective purpose. Or the oral, storytelling traditions that gave Japanese film its spiritual core with a key embrace of spirit, ghosts and eternal themes, all of which were evident since Shozo Makino pioneered Japanese film in 1908. You can see Japan’s mark on cinema in its early and revolutionary embrace of woman actresses (Harumi Hanayagi, the first woman actress, in the Glow of Life (1918), and in the development of cinematic forms and filming styles like the initial adoption and development of the close up and cut back (see the Captain’s Daughter). Heck, there is even an argument that can be made that An Inn in Tokyo (1935) paved the way and jump started the neo-realism movement in Europe (and the New Waves). The fact that this was also still a silent film is kind of astonishing.

What stands out about Japan is its ability to survive and to thrive, most importantly within the pressures of international influence. This is an impressive feat that has seen Japan develop parallel to the United States rather than within or beneath its wide spread influence, rewarding the world with a rich cultural footprint and impressive slate of films that is able to reveal and develop the narrative of its national story and its people for their Country and for the world.

Here is a link to the films that I watched on my Film Travels (ranked, rated and reviewed):
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-japan-in-process/

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Japan
What Is Japanese Cinema: A History by YOMOTA INUHIKO
https://www.volta.ie/#!/page/651/a-short-history-of-japanese-cinema
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/film-studies/brief-history-of-japanese-cinema-film-studies-essay.php
https://schoolworkhelper.net/early-japanese-film-cinema/
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Japanese_cinema
https://www.tiff.net/the-review/the-big-five-of-japanese-cinema
https://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/a-brief-but-essential-introduction-to-japanese-cinema/

Click to access japan_history.pdf

http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Japan-THE-SECOND-GOLDEN-AGE.html
A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film by Isolde Standish
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/japans-influence-on-cinema-after-wwii/

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Having been immersed these last few weeks in Fleming Rutledge’s phenomenal and monumental The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus, 40: The Temptation of Christ (a recently released and independent 2020 release available for rent or purchase on most platforms) proved to be a fitting. highly visual, and complimentary addition for understanding and ruminating on Rutledge’s treaties of the nature of the Cross and the work of Salvation.

Central to Rutledge’s understanding of the Gospel and the Christian Witness lies this distinction between capital letter Sin and small letter sin. As Rutledge writes, “The Church has always been tempted to recast the Christian story in terms of individual fault and guilt that can be overcome by a decision to repent.” And this temptation comes from our need to control the narrative of the Cross in particular ways through a misapplication of the idea of “sin” as that which condemns and that which saves.

And yet for Paul, the earliest written witness to the Death and Resurrection of Christ, the dominant understanding, framed by (capital letter) Sin, is that of the “Powers” that hold us bondage, the Powers being Sin (evil and the devil, understood in its rich theological and literary context) and Death. For Paul, “the sequence is not sin-repentance-grace-forgiveness, but grace-sin-deliverance-repentance-grace.” As Rutledge points out, grace derives the sequence from first to last, with both Grace (the Power of God) and Sin and Death (the Power of Evil or the Evil One) precluding this movement from grace to grace.

This might sound like mere semantics, speaking of the same word in both capital and small letter form, but this understanding of God’s saving work is integral to understanding what it is God is doing on the Cross, the Way for which John came to prepare, the moment in which this film begins and opens with, and the powerful imagery of of Lent that we find in its depiction of Christ’s time in the Wilderness.

From the Temptation to the Cross: Finding The Grand Narrative
To understand what Jesus is doing, and what the Temptation Narrative is reconciling, we must understand the declarative and proclamative truth that the Cross declares, which is that “what is wrong (the injustice and suffering that we find in this world) is being made right”, both in the world and in us, both individually and collectively. The Cross, framed in the light of the Resurrection, declares to us that God is not under the power of the Evil One, and that the Powers that hold us bondage can be resisted. “Yeshua means God saves, and Matthews reference makes explicit the connection between the Messiah’s name and salvation from sin.” (Rutledge). As the film so aptly depicts in connecting Jesus’ formative years to His time in the wilderness, who Jesus is (God incarnate) and what Jesus does is one in the same- God’s saving work.

In one of the film’s flashback sequences, we hear a conversation between Joseph and Yeshua, where Joseph tells him, “Sin is the reason that we suffer Yeshua, it is the reason that we die.” This is framed against the visual and symbolic force of the Temptation that drives this film, a depiction the film brings to the forefront in through its grand and sweeping narrative context. It is here that we gain a picture, in its expressive and Mystical Eastern context (something we in the West have become adverse to), of this story of Good and Evil, competing forces that exist and persist outside and above ourselves, a spiritual warfare in which we have (all) become evil’s conscripts. Knowing that the scriptwriter for this film is a big, big fan of the horror genre, it is not surprising to me that this would prove a perfect playing field in which to evoke these very spiritually laden pictures, ideas and truths through tonal expressions befitting the genre. And not unexpectedly, the story is brought to life within some recognizable horror constructs (including the use of score, tension, and camera work that guides this tension between the known and the unknown, the tension and the resistance) able to capture the gravity of this narrative reality in its Scriptural context.

The Temptation, Righteousness and Understanding God’s Saving Work
Paramount to Rutledge’s understanding of the Crucifixion is her understanding of the theological idea of justification, or righteousness. When understood within modern constructs of penal substitution (the common understanding of salvation that sees our small letter sin (action) as the cause of Jesus’ death, and Jesus’ moral goodness (righteousness) as that which saves us from our sin), justification ultimately becomes enslaved to a works based solution that misses the true power of this grand narrative of The Temptation and the Crucifixion to which it points (which the film does through some nice use of flash forwards), and its proclamation that what is wrong is being (and has been) made right.

What is striking to recognize about the temptation narrative is how connected the Powers (capital letter Sin) is to the notion of power (small letter sin). Each of the temptations represents a concern for power, the power to attend to our suffering, our happiness, our benefit. It is through resisting this power that Christ shifts the view from Himself to the needs of the world. It is here that Sin and Death become expressed through the primary concern in scripture for the reality of injustice (and justice, or justification) in the world. This is why Rutledge believes, and often restates, that the Righteousness of Jesus, of God, is not a noun, but a verb. “It is not so much that God is righteous but that he does righteousness (justification).” We know this intuitively, but perhaps no more intimately than in our times of suffering. This is where we the Cross becomes good news. God, in Jesus, sees, identifies and is acting upon the injustice of this world, making this world new, bringing to bear the New Heavens and the New Earth, the new Creation. Therefore, through this proclamation we have hope.

“God did not son to the earth to condemn it, he sent His son to the earth to save it” is the declaration that we hear from Jesus’ definitive proclamation in the films climatic moment, a powerful and poignant depiction of Good and Evil standing face to face, a moment in which life is raised above death (in the powerful imagery of the lamb) as the greater Power.

“Were it not for the mercy of God surrounding us, we would have no perspective from which to view sin, for we would be entirely subject to it. That is the reason for affirming that wherever sin is unmasked and confessed, God’s redemptive power is already present and acting.” (Rutledge). What I really liked about the film is the way it connects this temptation narrative both to these flashbacks and flashforwards. It helps to remind us that the Cross is not retributive in nature, but declarative. It is a present work, not simply a historical reality. Jesus willingly sees a world under the Power of Sin and Death and aligns Himself to it, with it, and within it. He embodies the injustice of the Powers of Sin and Death and in so doing declares God’s justice (our justification) as that which is able to make what is wrong right.

This is why, as the film ultimately declares in its final (and beautiful) sequence, we must continue to walk in faith even when we cannot see. This is the truth of our already-not yet already. We are called as participants in what God is doing on the Cross, guided by the Word, the Word that is Christ, the Word, as Rutledge puts it, that is the Cross. This is the Way forward, not away from the suffering of our present reality but towards it, because in God’s righteousness, in His seeing, identifying and acting on injustice, this world is being made right again within this reality. To walk in the Way is to see this more clearly, is for this truth, the proclamation of the Cross, to be made known in our lives and in the world.

Here’s the link to the film’s info on Letterboxd:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/film/40-the-temptation-of-christ/

I had the great privilege of hearing a recent interview with Fleming Rutledge, the author of The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death Of Jesus (a book I am currently working through and reflecting on), talking about her body of work and what a lifetime of preaching, pastoring, and writing have taught her in terms of big ideas, significant markers, and important themes/focuses (on the On Script Podcast if you were interested).

New to Rutledge’s body of work, I found this interview helpful in offering me a glimpse inside the life, the mind, and the spirit that guided her to pen this particular work that I am reading through now. Of interest to me was hearing her expound on the idea of the “Powers” of Sin and Death that I reflected on in my previous blog. These Powers for her are the third part of three central “agencies” reflected in Paul and the Gospels (and the whole of the apocalyptic tradition that we see throughout the latter part of the Old Testament and the whole of the New) that are active in this world- God, Humanity, and Satan (which in scholarship gains and holds many different names and references).

I wrote in my previous blog about how seeing Sin (and Death) as an agency rather than a matter of works and moral conditioning, an idea I first encountered in N.T. Wright, is necessary for expounding on the different facets of the Christian life in appropriate ways. This is especially necessary when it comes do discussing and approaching the Cross, because beginning with these three essential agencies protects these auxiliary theological ideas (like small letter “sin”) from turning salvation into a works based belief system and ending up with a Cross that is thrown off balance and that symbolizes our ideas of how God works as opposed to the work God is doing on the Cross.

Understanding the Cross, and Jesus’ death on the Cross, as something that speaks to a world that is not right and that is being made right is best understood not in the trenches of working out our salvation, but rather from within the larger narrative to which this discussion of salvation belongs. Seeing “Sin” as “Power” allows us to see that a not right world is under bondage to a third agency that holds a real (and active) presence and force, and that the Cross is ultimately Jesus’ declaration/proclamation that this world (including you and I) is no longer under its power because, at is declared, God is not under its power. This is the Cross’ primary, declarative force, and it is the means through which we can begin to make sense of the death of Jesus as necessary, and the means by which we can begin to flesh out the theology that this informs.

The Cross and God’s Justification
It is, then, from here that we can begin to appropriately move from the Cross to matters of what, theologically speaking, we can call justification. What is important to understand about the idea of justification (a word that carries close to mirror relationship to “righteousness”, or the idea of being made right) is that matters of “justice” and “injustice” are its primary concern. For Rutledge, “The all-important connection between the method used to execute Jesus and the meaning of his death cannot be grasped unless we plumb the depths of what is meant by injustice.” (p106) Understanding the unjust death of Jesus as something that is concerned with shedding light on the injustice that we encounter in this world is a two fold awareness, one that begins with that larger narrative of the Powers and flows out into a concern for our (humanities) place in this narrative as the second of these three primary agencies.

A Justice For the World 
Just to dial this back once again to reinforce that connective piece that was so important for me in rediscovering the Cross over these last number of years, if we begin, as many Christians do, with the Cross primarily emphasizing our small letter “sin” (as in, because we were sinners Jesus died for our sins, and on the Cross atones for those sins), what we end up with is a story that moves from us out towards the concerns of the world. And yet the concern of the Cross and the reason for Jesus’ death begins with His concern for the world. As Rutledge writes, The condemnation of Jesus means redemption for the world, and by extension God’s condemnation of the sin of his people is part of his redemptive purpose. (p106)

What we encounter in the Cross is not simply the declaration that our sins have been forgiven, but that the Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated. This is more than simply a matter of semantics. What we are stepping into on the Way of Jesus is the declaration that this world is not right and God, through Jesus, is making it right. This is what we are called to be participants of, is the New Creation, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

And the key marker of this New Creation? God’s justice.

“God’s justice is not vague or amorphous. It is not general or indeterminate. It is specific and particular, showing that God is attentive to the material details of human need.” (p109)

And just to underscore this point, Rutledge goes on to say,

“When we speak of setting right, we are not talking about a little rearrangement here and a little improvement there. From the perspective of the Old and New Testaments, the whole creation has gone drastically awry. The incarnation of the Son of the God should not be understood as the divine benediction on all that is. It was an incarnation unto the cross, and therefore an incarnation that sets a question mark over against the way things are.” (p126)

This is what bears out our hope. Is small letter “sin” part of this? Absolutely. All of us are called to be participants in the work God is doing, and by nature of this work sin is a product or outflow of the Powers that hold this world bondage. But the concern of God’s salvation, Christ’s saving work is much bigger than our sin. It is concerned with seeing all of Creation being made new.

Justification and The Wrath of God
One of the most difficult aspects of the Cross to deal with is the idea of God’s wrath. But if the Cross is about God’s concern for the injustice in this world, it means that God’s wrath must play a role. And one of the biggest obstacles to understanding God’s wrath is the tendency to define the Cross and Jesus’ death according to our small letter sin. When we do this, God’s wrath ends up solely squared on us rather than on the injustice that we find in the world. And we begin to imagine or shape God’s work according to retribution rather than restoration. We are left with some form of salvation that understands God needed to punish us for our sin, and therefore Jesus takes on the punishment in our place so that we can be saved. And it’s only from here that we are then able to reconstruct a Christian idea of a God for the world.

When we begin with the Cross as God’s interest for the whole of creation, a creation in bondage to the Powers, this allows us to then to see the whole work of God as being manifested in our lives rather than the other way around. This is an incredibly freeing thing, because it allows us to then reframe what God’s wrath is directed towards. As Rutledge puts it,

All of us are capable of anger about something. God’s anger, however, is pure. It does not have the maintenance of privilege as its object, but goes out on behalf of those who have no privileges. The wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God had temper tantrums; it is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right. (p129)

And then she goes on to outline a crucial point when it comes to matters of God’s wrath.

To be sure, most people, of whatever color, tend to be intensely interested in justice when it is for themselves. It is the notion of justice for all that is missing from much of our public discourse. (p128)

At least one of the problems that arises with the idea of God’s wrath is that when we see it as God’s anger towards us, we deprive ourselves of the ability to see God’s wrath in the context of God’s saving work. This is why so much of our theology and our theological discourse remains so limited. When we narrow God’s work down to the saving of individual lives according to a works based mindset, we limit our ability to exercise what C.S. Lewis called the “Spiritual Imagination” in the injustice spaces that we encounter in the world. We are forced to find something other than the Powers to attach our anger to, which opens us up to that inevitable practice of creating ins and outs of perpetrators, villains and victims

The real problem, and this is something that Rutledge does an amazing job of unpacking, is that when we narrow salvation down to what God is doing in my life in saving me from my sin, the danger is that we either a) fail to see the injustice in this world, or b) contribute to these acts of injustice through our oppression and condemnation of others. “Righteousness has the character of a verb rather than a noun’ it is not so much that God is righteous but that he does righteousness.” Which plays out into this idea of the Cross as making this world right as opposed to the righteous one making me “righteous”.

But to think of the Cross in this way is messy. We like our formulas. And formulas that can easily define who is in and who is out are even more attractive. The reality of God’s wrath though remains a fluid force. As Rutledge points out, it can be as concerned with an individual as it is with large groups who are either being oppressed or doing the oppressing. It is constantly condemning while at the same time reforming. It attends to at times while in other times responding to in pain and remorse. God’s wrath is both judgment and salvation at the same time. And the truth is that none of us are operating on the same plain at the same time all the time. Sometimes we are doing the oppressing, and sometimes we are the oppressed. And as Rutledge points out, “Even more astonishingly, he (JEsus) underwent helplessness and humiliation not only for the victimized but also for the perpetrators” (p151) all at once. Which in the grander picture of things suggests, “in the final analysis, the crucifixion of Christ for the sin of the world reveals that it is not only the victims of oppression and injustice who are in need of God’s deliverance, but also the victimizers. Each of us is capable, under certain circumstances, of being a victimizer.”

To encounter the Cross is the encounter the messiness of this reality. It exposes what we all share in common- the desire for justice in the unjust places of our lives, but moves us to consider, as God sees, the injustice that we encounter in the world and the injustice that we all partake in. This is shift the Cross forces us to consider, and this shift forces us to move in this direction precisely because this is the work the Cross is interested in and where the Cross points us towards. The good news is, this is where God’s wrath can begin to take shape as a more hopeful and life giving reality.

“We are not likely to be attracted to a righteous God unless we are looking for justice. The meaning of the word righteousness in Hebrew, however, is a world away from our idea of legalism or moralism. When we read in the Old Testament that God is just and righteous, this doesn’t refer to a threatening abstract quality that God has over aginst us. It is much more like a verb than a noun, because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong.” (p133)

The Cross is, as Rutledge puts it, “the movement of God toward us even when our backs are turned away from him.” And once again, this is an uncomfortable idea because it means that we are not in control. “The radical message underlying it, and the one we resist, is that God does this right-making in spite of our resistance. This is the real meaning of Pauls use of dikaiosis, traditionally translated justification, but better translated rectification (rectify from the Latin rectus) or righteousness.” And it is because we are not in control that Jesus’ death calls into the realm of our awareness, into our line of sight the reality of the injustice in our lives and in this world as God’s main concern. The Christian faith does not allow us to remain ignorant about this. It is not static and it is not apathetic towards the Power that Sin holds in this world.

Building A Bridge Between My Salvation and the Salvation of the World
One of the things Rutledge does which I found so helpful in trying to make sense of the messiness of God’s justifying work in my life and in the world is that she creates these inroads between the individual and the collective in matters of injustice. These two things are of equal concern in the eyes of God. He sees us as readily as he sees the death of millions. One is not more or less tragic than the other. One of the things this frees us to do is take what we know and experience personally and apply it to places that we could not and would not be able to understand. And what frees us to do this is our understanding of capital letter Sin as the same Power that holds this whole world in bondage. It recognizes that in the fluidity of God’s saving work, the one place that God’s saving work must make sense is in the injust places, the not right realities of our world. “God’s new creation must be a just one, or the promises of God will seem like mockery to those whose defenselessness has been exploited by the powerful.”

And as Rutledge points out, this truth encompasses the whole of God’s justification (or righteousness), including the spiritual paradigms of forgiveness, restoration, judgment and salvation. “Forgiveness must be understood in its relationship to justice if the Christian gospel is to be allowed its full scope.” 

How can we begin to speak even of forgiveness, let alone transformation, in the worst of the worst situations? The extermination of millions does not cry out for forgiveness. Never mind millions; what about just one baby burned up in a microwave oven by its own father? After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Forgiveness is not enough. There must be justice too. (p126)

And further,

If we think of Christian theology and ethics purely in terms of forgiveness, we will  have neglected a central aspect of God’s own character and will be in no position to understand the cross in its fullest dimension. Furthermore, if we fail to take account of God’s justice, we will miss the extraordinary way in which it is recast in the New Testament as kerygma.

Kerygma simply means “proclamation.” And the proclamation is this. That God is making this world right. That God sees, identifies (the two primary starting points for Rutledge) and acts towards injustice. And we can trust that He is because Jesus, through His death on the Cross, saw, identified and acted towards the injustice that holds this world in bondage by taking on the oppression of this world.

“Who would have thought that the same God who passed judgment, calling down woe upon the religious establishment (Matt. 23; Luke 11), would come under his own judgment and woe? This is a shockingly immoral and un-religious idea; as we shall see over and over again, however, the crucifixion reveals God placing himself under his own sentence. The wrath of God has lodged in God’s own self. Perfect justice is wrought in the self offering of the Son, who alone of all human beings was perfectly righteous. Therefore no one, neither victim nor victimizer, can claim any exemption from judgment on one’s own merits, but only the merits of the Son.”

And Jesus does this by way of giving us a picture of His wrath over and against His mercy. “The wrath of God, which plays such a large role in both the Old and New Testaments, can be embraced because it comes wrapped in God’s mercy. To appropriate the inspired misstatement of Shakespeares Dogberry, the cross shows us how we, in Christ, are condemned into redemption. ” And it is because of this that we can see the fuller picture of what Jesus is doing in dying on the Cross. “The goal is restoration and renewal”, a truth that has the power to reframe our perspective of God’s relationship to us and to this world, and open up the Christian Imagination to the immense and incredible picture and possibility of a world renewed.

“Thus the whole area of God’s justice and righteousness has been relocated from the usual tit-for-tat scheme of crime and punishment into a completely new sphere where the righteousness of God (dikaiosyne), understood as power to grant what it requires, has dismantled the old system of righteousness by-the-law and incorporated us into the new-world-creating righteousness of God. When this is enacted in our world by faith, however imperfectly, we know that God is on the move.”

The Cross is offensive to everyone, religious people (“Jews”) and secular people (“Greeks”) alike. It is this radical undercutting of who is in and who is out that makes the cross so deeply threatening to many. All human achievement, especially religious achievement, is called into question by the godlessness of Jesus’ death. If God in three persons is most fully revealed to us by the Son’s accursed death outside the community of the godly, this means a complete rethinking of what is usually called religion.” (p105)

I have spent a lot of time, far too much to count, reading the Bible over my lifetime. Over that time I have found inspiration, challenge, a bolstering of my belief, and a reoccuring call to step out in confidence with faith and action. All good things that are meant to come out of my daily devotional life and the teachings of the Church.

What I didn’t always understand, and still don’t fully do if I am being honest, is that this inspiration, this bolstering, this call to step out, they all formed the basis by which I was to be a Christian and live out my Christian life as one who is “saved” according to a specific doctrine. They were truths given to me to help declare myself as an insider, one of the faithful within this doctrinal system. These teachings helped to form a line in my mind between who was in and who was out, thus providing me with the tools I needed to judge the world accordingly against God’s good grace afforded to me in His saving work and from my privileged position being one of the saved.

I think the moment my life was really turned upside down in my understanding of this connection between my Christian life and my salvation is when I began to recognize just how much of scripture actually stands as a condemnation of these privileged positions. The Gospel arrives from the places that least expect, condemning the safety and piety of our religious positions. It is really quite striking and unsettling when this hits for the first time, and it also revealed to me how convoluted and dangerous my ideas of salvation had unkwoingly become in the process of missing this reality.

The reason scripture was inspiring and comforting and bolstering of my beliefs is because it tells me how and why I am on the “inside”. It tells me why I am on the right side of the truth. And yet, scripture, by nature of its coming to us from those outside places, exposes this way of thinking as dangerous, not just for us but for the world. And all of the grand theories and belief structures and formulas that I had spent so much time constructing and holding near and dear suddenly became sign markers of this condemnation.

The more I thought about this the more it made sense though. The very things that seemed to assure me of my salvation were the things that also seemed to continuously leave me in fear of it. Back and forth this would go, even though I didn’t realize this was pendulum was swinging or even why I felt the things it was making me feel. The more I tried to find confidence and assurance in my salvation, the harder I would crash when scripture threw this off balance, because the words I thought were bolstering my beliefs were actually condemning my privileged position.

At the core of this struggle sits the Cross. There is no other symbol in Christianity that so directly implies and reflects the idea of salvation in its essence. And at the root of my understanding of the Cross sat this idea that it was my sin that killed Jesus, and that the reason Jesus had to die in my place was because, as God, He was the one who had committed no sin.

The real problem with this way of thinking about the Cross is that it turns Jesus into the very thing that scripture, and His ministry, condemns. If, as I had so often been taught, the law cannot save us, but Jesus in turn does save us from the law, how can it be that Jesus salvation then comes by way of the law? To make the Cross synonymous with this way of thinking holds salvation in bondage to the very thing the Cross is meant to deconstruct. It sets Jesus under the law and makes salvation a works based endeavor,  creating a conundrum that is difficult to ignore. I would eventually come to discover that nearly every modern denomination was born from a desire to address this problem innately particular way and with a particular motivation, but in the meantime my own emotional state was certainly affected by this conundrum in a very real way.

Sin As Sin, Sin as Power
It was through N.T. Wright that I first encountered a way of seeing God and seeing Christianity that freed me from this way of thinking, and subsequently this awful pendulum of fear and anxiety that it induces. And it all comes down to the way we understand this tricky and precarious word “sin”.

As I mentioned in my previous reflections, my enslavement to fear and anxiety over my salvation had never been more heightened than when I walked into a particular belief system that elevated the notion of sin to the highest of levels to . In the idea of penal substitution, the cornerstone of this particular belief system that I had inherited, sin causes us to be removed the from equation entirely. Salvation comes by way of Christ’s ability to not sin, it comes through the death of the one who committed no sin, and it is given to us in the fact that God can now see Christ (Himself) in our place rather than us because of the sacrifice He endured. This is how we then are saved.

And yet, in the modern, highly evangelical way of thinking which holds this kind of penal substitutionary thought captive, the way we know that we are one of the saved is through our lives imitating Christ and being a witness to our salvation by echoing this same sinless nature. The fear that I had remains, only it is now heightened within this more concrete understanding that Christ chooses some to be saved and some to perish, which by nature, according to this approach, is what makes God sovereign and supposedly gives us the confidence we need to trust in our salvation.

Ironically, the immediate effect it had on me personally was that it made me even more piously protective of that insider position (I am the chosen one), and made the crashes on the other side of that never ending pendulum that much harder every time I encountered scripture and it caused me to question whether my life was doing enough to prove that I was in fact one of the chosen at all. Again, it is striking how much grace scripture gives to those on the outside and how condemning it is of those on the inside of these protective, theological structures.

What really offered me freedom though was this. The idea of “Sin” in the Bible is not primarily seen as human activity, a list of rights and wrongs that define whether we are saved or not, but rather denotes the idea of “Power.” Sin is the “Powers” that hold this world and us in bondage. It is the state of being in which the world sits. In the second chapter of her book The Crucifixion, the book that has been inspiring these personal reflections on the Cross, Fleming Rutledge writes this.

“He knew no sin; he was made sin. Note that Paul does not say “Jesus never sinned” or “Jesus did not commit sin.” That is because Sin in Paul is not something that one commits; it is a Power by which one is held helplessly in thrall.” (p101)

Rutledge shares much in common with N.T. Wright here, recognizing that before we arrive at any sort of attempt to unpack ideas of “justification” (the means by which we are made right through salvation), we must make sure to see Sin in the light of its Pauline, and very Judeo-Christian centric understanding. Because if we don’t we are very likely to end up somewhere lost in the endless systems of theology (systemic theology) that try to wedge it into some corner of Christendom and turn it into an idol, the danger of course being that we then miss the Jesus and the Cross that was so central to the Pauline witness.

“For Paul, it is not God, but the curse of the law that condemned Jesus. In his death, Paul declares, Jesus was giving himself over to the Enemy- to Sin, to its ally the Law, and to its wage, Death (Rom. 6:23; 7:8-11). This was his warfare.” (p101)

There is a reason why Rutledge spends time outlining in her introduction some of the terms she feels needs qualification. Sin is one of the most apparent of those terms, because it is the word upon which we find so much division within our religious systems. And it is the single word through which we find so many in the New Testament scripture building their case against Jesus, simultaneously being condemned by their own desire to position their piety over and against Jesus’ ministry, undercutting the reality of the “Word of the Cross”, or the Way of the Cross as the Way of Christ into the world.

What is being condemned in scripture over and over again is the act of the religious using religious theories and constructs to identity the nature of what it means to be on the inside or the outside of God’s saving work. And not surprisingly, the measure of these religious constructs come by way of the “Law”, the very thing many modern Christians like to condemn while working to recreate a new Law in the likeness of their new life in Christ.

Sin and the Law
What I really like about what Rutledge does in Chapter 2 is that she uses our understanding of Sin as a way to then expose our understanding of the “Law”, both in what it is and what it does. Many of us, as Christians, are taught that the Law is what condemns us and that Jesus is the one who saves us from the Law. It’s in how we understand the Law to function that this gets tricky. Once we interpret it as a list of to do’s and to don’ts, we are then able to place the Law back within the its Jewish context as the key measure of their judgment and their salvation. The Law is what they must follow in order to be saved, and yet their reliance on the Law is also what condemns them. We are left once again with a conundrum.

And in truth, it doesn’t take long in the New Testament, be it in Paul’s writings or later in the Gospels, for us to see this is precisely what the religious elite were preaching as well.

The problem comes when we try to re-apply this and reframe this against the Cross.  In the arrival of Jesus the Law now holds no power. Jesus has fulfilled it in His sacrifice and thus we ar no longer underneath it. And yet Jesus is seen to do this by following the law perfectly in a way that se could not do for ourselves. The truth that emerges in this train of thought though is that the Law, then, still holds power. And it still holds power because it remains the measure of the salvation we hold near and dear. The Cross becomes a symbol of a salvation dependent on dos and don’ts.

Here is where the understanding of Sin’s relationship to the Law becomes important. Rutledge writes, “Paul shows that Sin and the Law are partners in a conspiracy involving a third partner, Death.” (p100) She goes on to say, “In Romans 7:11, Paul depicts Sin using the Law as an instrument to deal Death to humanity, almost as though Sin were using the Law as a lethal club. And indeed that is more or less what Paul is saying.” (p101)

According to Rutledge (and Wright), the Law in scripture is not the measure of our salvation, rather it is the natural (and necessary) measure of our reality. It is the thing that declares the Powers that holds this world bondage to be real and active. And it reveals Sin as the Power that wields it. The Law signifies the great spiritual war that is waging between Life and Death around us, in which injustice, suffering, hurt and struggle find their way.

The Cross and Spiritual Warfare
One of the most glorious things about encountering both Wright and Rutledge is the way in which they seem free to tap into a long lost aspect of the Christian faith we find in the West- the idea of spiritual warfare. In the West, the idea of Spiritual Warfare has been either ignored or abused. Both writers appear to have a connection with and a value for more Eastern ways of thinking, a tradition and practice which retains closer ties with the ancient world and more ancient ways of understanding our faith. In their perspectives, the idea that the Cross must be placed directly in the context of the “Powers”, if it is to be properly understood, is as natural as saying in the evangelical, Western world “Jesus Saves.” Further, this is precisely why they can declare that Jesus Saves so readily, is because of what the Cross declares to us about this great spiritual war.

And I know, to speak in a Western context using such seemingly supernatural terminology is to sound ludicrous and foolish. But to borrow from Wright, to distinguish between the natural and the supernatural is the first sign that our thinking might be off track. As Rutledge writes, “It (the cross) is foolishness to secular people not only because of its intrinsic nature but also because of its affront to the educated, sophisticated mind.” (p85) More surprising sometimes though is how foolish it sounds to Christians who feel like using this language somehow poses a threat to rational and systematic thought. We much prefer the language of sin, as it is something that we can control, manage and locate in the rational world.

And yet, to understand such grand ideas as Law and Sin in this light is to be freed from that never ending pendulum that our addiction to these rational and systemic enslaves us to. It is, in the end, the very thing that brings us to where many of our theologies believe and declare we already are- freed from the constraints of the law, and freed from our own abilities to save ourselves.

Finding My Way Back to the Cross
Let me be clear here. This is not to do away with Christian ideas such as sanctification, forgiveness, and small letter “sin”. These are still relevant aspects of our Christian lives. It is simply to say that if we cannot approach these ideas theologically without seeing the Cross first in light of the Sin (Powers) that hold us bondage, we stand in danger of elevating any of those ideas to prominence over and above the Cross as the means of our salvation. And that is dangerous territory to tread.

Most importantly though, beginning with the idea of the Powers as that which Jesus is engaged with on the Cross freed me to look again in wonder and marvel at the Cross as the source of Christ’s saving work in this world and my life. Rutledge writes, “It has always been difficult for the Church to hold on to the cross at its center.” (p82) This is true for both secular and the religious, if one can be so bold as to resurrect those problematic terms. And it is true for so many reasons, not the least because of its intellectual affront. As Rutledge has pointed out, the Cross has been scrutinized in light of its most valued source of witness in both its ancient and modern context, including the Women who first declared it to be, the Pauline traditions that bear its earliest witness, the seemingly contradictory Gospel writings, the offensiveness of trying to read God as a human and a human as God, and the affront it presents to our rational and progressive way of thinking.

By and large, by breaking into our world from the outside in, from the margins to the inner circles, from the perceived sin soaked places to the pious faithful, “the cross is irreligious because no human being individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes, wishes, longings, and needs onto a crucified man.” (p75) And yet, somehow and in someway the Cross still holds immense power in this world, in our lives and in our theologies. It remains today as seemingly absurd as it was for the ancient world, even if for slightly different reasons. But, when seen in the light of what God was and is doing, it has the power to free us and bring us hope in the most hopeless of places.

This is what it means to discover and rediscover the Cross over and over again. It’s a reminder that where this world is not right, we can know that it is being made right. And to re-engage the stories of those who first encountered it is to know that it is in the ability of the Cross to reorient our way of seeing this world, our faith, God, Salvation, and even ourselves, that remains the most alluring aspect of it. As Rutledge writes,

“.. the early church was threatened by far worse consequences than the contempt of the fastidious. During the first three centuries, the cross was not the sign in which the emperor conquered. It did not adorn medals and honors. It was not bejeweled, enameled, or worked in precious metal. It was a sign of contradiction and scandal, which quite often meant exile or death for those who adhered to the way of the crucified One.” (p82)

The Cross might be scandalous and foolishness, even to the religious and religious elite, but it is its declarative presence that can tell us that the Powers that hold us bondage need not hold sway over us anymore. And that is a great hope indeed.

“The way ahead is found in the tension itself. This is not the same thing as having it both ways by seeking a bland, safe position in the center between the poles. Christian theology and the Christian life are best found on the frontiers, where our thinking and doing are engaged by the dynamic tension between two seemingly contradictory truths.”
-Rutledge

In both the introduction and in the first chapter of her book “The Crucifixion: Understanding The Death of Jesus Christ”, Rutledge recognizes the existence of contradictory feelings, ideas and truths as necessary constructs for understanding what it is that faith desires to do within the context of Christian theology and the Christian life. Both faith and science hold equal interest in exploring the tension that our questions, the source of these contradictions, are able to bring forth, but where faith differs from science is in its greater interest in exploring the intersection of theology and a life lived in relationship to this God we are wondering about.

The Christian faith, then, shapes the way we live particularly according to the ministry and witness of Christ, and it is Rutledge’s conviction that the Cross, and the idea of the Cross, remains its greatest and most important source of tension. This is true for a variety of reasons, but Rutledge does an amazing job in her first chapter of outlining the relevance both of our common resistance to the (idea of the) Cross and the primacy of the Cross in the Gospel of Jesus.

If faith is about hope, the Cross is often the thing that feels the least hopeful, while at the same time being declared as the most vital part of hope’s emergence in the story of the Christian faith. As she writes, “The Gospels are designed, each according to its own perspective, to show, after the fact, how Jesus’ sacrificial life led to his sacrificial death.” And yet, as she goes on to point out, history has marked itself by a familiar resistance to the Cross and its imposition. The Cross has long been considered and described as an “offense”, a contradictory roadblock in our attempts to understand a loving God.

What underscores this resistance is the ability of the Cross to “reorient” our lives in ways that make us uncomfortable. That is what makes the cross an offence, is its imposition. And yet that is also the power the cross holds as a “contradictory” statement. What makes contradiction necessary and vital is its ability to protect an idea or truth from becoming a product of our own making. It helps us to know that what informs our lives, our questions, comes from something outside of ourselves, which is what we are able to trust. This is true for scientific method and theory. This is even more true for the process of faith.

The Offense of the Cross and A Cross of Offense: Facing a Contradiction
I wrote in my earlier blog that part of the tension that I carry with me into my reading of this book is the way I had been taught to view the Cross. To see the Cross was to hear the singular message that God despises me because of my sin, and that the only way for God to see me was to see Christ in my place. This was, as they said, an act of love. And despite coming to this view by way of a desire to find a more intellectually aware and robust faith, this way of thinking led to an incredible struggle with depression, a devaluing of not only myself but others, and a constant state of fear and anxiety.

One of the things that I had to do was confront and recognize this apparent tension or contradiction within the confines of my faith. I questioned this view of the Cross, but at the same time I also recognized that without the Cross my Christian faith had lost its relevance. This became apparent when I abandoned my faith for a while, and even more apparent when I came back to the idea of faith in God later on. Only now I knew that I needed to rediscover the Cross with this tension in tow, a journey I still find myself on.

So much of what Rutledge writes keeps poking at the source of this tension for me. As she points out, it is human nature to want to spin out and away from the offense of the cross when confronted by it. Despite the challenges I had and have in reconciling the way I was taught to see the Cross with the Cross I was rediscovering, the even greater problem was rediscovering a Cross that was perhaps even more offensive than the one I left behind. Only it is a different kind of offense. To open myself up to what the Cross wants to do in my life can be a frightening prospect precisely because of the ways it wants to reorient my life in unexpected directions. It turned me from being offended by the Cross to understanding the offence of the Cross.

Rediscovering The Cross: A New Found Freedom
What I have found in this space though and on this journey is a greater degree of freedom and hope. And what I have found particularly helpful in reading this book is the way Rutledge seems to have given definition to this freedom and hope as, to use her term, the “Word of the Cross”. The Cross is a revelatory, life shaping, spirit forming reality that wants to shape the way I live according to the Way of Jesus. This is the offense, and this is also the freedom and hope that we find in it.

Further, perhaps one of the most informing things about this is the way Rutledge has helped me (re)frame the Cross the Resurrection together as the singular work of God in my life and in this world. Tension often arises when we see the Cross as the less than hopeful part of the Christian story and the Resurrection as the source of our hope, and thus compartmentalize them, separate them, and isolate them as separate parts of the same story. And yet,

“The Resurrection, being a transhistorical event planted within history, does not cancel out the contradiction and shame of the cross in this present life; rather, the resurrection ratifies the cross as the way “until he comes.”

What she goes on to define in chapter 1 is that the ways in which the Resurrection vindicates the Cross. In other words, we approach the Cross in light of the resurrection. That is what gives the Cross its shape. This is the idea of “redemptive suffering”, that we are called as Christians to travel in the Way of Jesus not away from it, and the reason this distinctive is so important is because of the relationship between faith, hope and love.

The reason redemptive suffering is a necessary idea in light of this relationship is because it is still the reality that we find in this not yet but already reality that frames the Cross and the Resurrection as a whole. This points us back to what God is doing and what God desires to do in the midst of this suffering as participants not observers, a people of God attentive to the suffering of others.

Rutledge does such an amazing job at helping to unpack how this was and is the great tragedy of Gnosticism, is that it pulls us out of suffering for the sake of ourselves rather than pushing us into it for the sake of others. Not in the sense of looking for suffering, but rather in recognizing that the work of God is to attend to this suffering. This is why she can say something so bold as, “The Christian gospel- when proclaimed in its radical New Testament form- is more truly inclusive of every human being, spiritually proficient or not, than any of the world’s religious systems have ever been, precisely because of the godlessness of Jesus’ death.” And this becomes our witness because, borrowing from Bonhoeffer, she writes, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross (Bonhoeffer).” 

The Cross as Signposts For Our Lives
I love this image that Rutledge paints- resurrection life must always be marked by the signs of the cross. In reflecting on my own story and what the spirit is looking to teach and show me as I journey through this book, I am struck by how the Cross, despite my inability to understand it, my resistance to it, and even its problematic place at points in my life, has been shaping me and molding me according to its hopeful purpose even in my ignorance. There is a point in chapter 1 where she speaks about how people tend to look back on classical Christendom and classical Christian teaching with less than favourable eyes because they see “creed” as synonymous with outdated and dangerous. It’s interesting then to consider that in my own journey I found myself eventually drawn into a liturgical and confessional Church environment that gives classical Christianity a presence and a place. I think I was drawn here because I had come to understand that a faith without lived without tension was not much of a faith, and that to live in a way that ignored the Cross or with no faith at all was to live in a world of my own making. A world made in my own image.

I need a faith that is able to reorient me out of my places of self interest, a self interest that can be located firmly within the realm of Gnostic (and modern) teaching. If Gnosticism, as Rutledge helps us to understand, is the great rival to Christianity precisely because of the ways it sees “privileged spiritual knowledge” as the way to salvation or enlightenment (thus creating a natural hierarchy with people on the top and people on the bottom), it is in the way that the Cross is able to place us all on equal ground that love as an idea both lavished and imparted on us can emerge.

“In gnosticism”s portrayal of salvation, the power to redeem (God’s power) has been subsumed into our capacity for being redeemed. Therefore the crucifixion becomes unnecessary.”

These signposts, these Cross markers in my life become the story God is telling as I, and we, anticipate the New Heavens and the New earth being made new. It is this cruciform pattern of life that must mark our communities as self giving and sacrificial as we anticipate this reality. This is the love that we find at the Cross. To live in the resurrection without the cross is to neglect the “now” for the not yet, and “to believe that we can do this without the cross.” The Eucharist declares itself as food for the journey not because it frees us from suffering but because, when seen in the light of Resurrection hope it can reveal to us through the Cross that this world is being redeemed, that we are being made new, and that we are being made whole. 

I still remember the day I picked up my first John Piper book, the popular preacher, teacher, theologian, and resident spokesperson for many in the ultra conservative brand of the Reformed Calvinist camp. The book was called “Desiring God”, and at the time it represented a major shift for me in how I understood my faith. It was an effort to return to scripture and a more intellectually concerned and robust way of being a practicing Christian.

Piper represented a movement of fellow disgruntled Christians, long caught up in popular forms of what called Church “lite”, towards a worship that could better reflect good and proper theology. I bought into it and even craved it, reading one, and then another, and then another yet. The well was deep, and there were many impassioned voices willing travel deep into the well along with me. I even passed along his name (and books) to skeptical friends, thinking they need to read this with me and be enlightened to its wonders.

The irony was, at the time I had no idea what “Reformed” actually meant, or the difference between a Calvinist and a Methodist or a Lutheran and Arminian. All I knew was that I was attracted to the promise of greater, intellectual engagement.

Calvinism, The Cross and A Growing Disillusionment
It would be a number of years later (and a good number of Seminary years later) that I would gain a better understanding both on what I was craving at the time (and still do) and the ways in which this movement, rather than satisfy this craving, actually left me greatly unsettled and kind of dead inside.

Which is not to belabour my spiritual journey since this point. I have written about that in this space at length already. Rather, the reason I bring this up is because one of the areas in which I was left greatly unsettled was in the way this movement had taught me to understand the work of Jesus on the Cross. The essential belief of popular Calvinism is what you would call “penal substitution”, and it is this belief that John Piper preached and wrote about on a daily basis (along with others in his camp). To borrow from a very simplified definition, penal substitution choses to see Christ as taking the punishment for our sins on our behalf in order to appease God’s anger. When one applies the layers that go along with this, which are written and expressed all over the Desiring God series, what you then discover is a God who not only cannot look at us because of our sin, but a God who when he does look at us sees not us but rather Jesus in our place.

This way of thinking about the Cross, and Jesus’ work on the Cross, has led me through years of crisis and self doubt. It not only came to seem strange to me, particularly as I began to engage more with scripture itself, it seemed incredibly harmful and misplaced. If sin is an idea that we find in the Christian story, and I believe it is, it was as if this understanding had reached in, extracted it from the Gospel story and turned it into some form of an idol meant to glorify God at the expense of His creation. And what’s interesting to note about this idea is that most of what I had been taught and experienced up to this point was a form of Penal Substitution. It was simply filtered through a different theological expression, and articulated in a way that failed to narrow down (intellectually speaking) to such a pointed and expression theoretical position.

Rediscovering The Cross
Although I had long since distanced myself from Calvinist teaching, it was perhaps fitting that both Piper and N.T. Wright, someone who would become an invaluable source on my journey out of that Calvinist bubble, would go on to pen two complimentary conversational pieces regarding their competing views on the “justification” of God, which is simply a theological term that describes the specific “act” of God removing our guilt and our sin and claiming us as righteous in its place. In any case, what has become important for me over the years, and necessary as I continue to wrestle with these theological ideas, is a continued reconciling and meditating on what Jesus’ work on the Cross means for my life, for the life of others and for the world. It seems necessary to me, because if I cannot reconcile this confession (and for me it is confessional), it seems that my Christian faith loses much of its relevance.

Not unlike the topic of prayer, the idea of Jesus’ death and resurrection is something I find I need to return to over and over again in order to reconcile that tension that still exists within me, between the oppressiveness of what I felt and the freedom that I know Jesus’ death and resurrection declares as a Gospel reality. While this reconciliation certainly happens through the liturgy of our weekly Sunday Worship, thanks to a book recommend, along with the reality of this current Easter season, I have found yet another opportunity to come back to this Gospel reality over the coming weeks by engaging with a book by Fleming Rutledge, an “American Episcopal priest, author, theologian and preacher”, called The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ.  

Here is a link to the author: https://generousorthodoxy.org/
And a link to the book, which is currently available for $3 on Amazon for the Kindle version. Can’t turn that down :): https://www.amazon.ca/Crucifixion-Understanding-Death-Jesus-Christ-ebook/dp/B01AJ5P014/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Crucifixion&qid=1586114618&sr=8-1

A Process of Self Reflection in Self Isolation
My hope in the coming weeks is to be able to use some of this global self isolation time we all find ourselves in at the moment to reflect on and think about some of the things that come out of my reading of this book. I’ve only just read the introduction and already I find my highlighter going a bit crazy, so I have high hopes for the journey.

I’ll be honest though, any time I approach a book on the subject with an author I do not know I find myself treading with much trepidation, fear and caution, waiting for the bomb to drop that this individual is going to present an “argument for…” this theory or that theory. She set me at ease on page nine when she took to task our tendency to boil theology down into theories. As she writes,

“Theory is a poor word to choose when seeking to understand the testimony of the Bible. The Old and New Testaments do not present theories at any time. Instead, we find stories, images, metaphors, symbols, sagas, sermons, songs, letters, poems. It would be hard to find writing that is less theoretical.” (Page 9)

Later she goes on to talk about the shifts in modern scholarship and current trends that she identifies as moving towards a more “literary style of interpretation” and rediscovering the “plain meaning of a text.” She sees this as an important facet of conversing about the death and resurrection of Jesus, because this can lead “to a discussion of the Word and a discussion of Jesus not being a reconstruction of the past but a living and breathing reality in the here and now.” 

This aspect of our faith feels deeply important to Rutledge, and in fact vital and necessary for the Cross to hold any meaning in our lives at all. As she says, “Christian faith has never- either at the start or now- been based on historical reconstructions of Jesus, even though Christian faith has always involved some historical claims concerning Jesus. Rather, Christian faith (then and now) is based on religious claims concerning the present power of Jesus…” (Page 29).

Which resonates for me as I continue to discover the power that the “Word of the Cross” has, to borrow her descriptive, to reform and transform my life on a daily basis. What I have come to hold onto over the years is that the Cross is less of a statement on my condition and more of an invitation into something new and something healing. I have no problem understanding dissatisfaction and dissolution with the present, be it in my own life or within the present reality of our world. Somehow and in someway the Cross speaks to this in a necessary and life giving way. That is the hope that I have come to cherish, not this idea that God can only see my sin (and even worse then, subsequently the sin of the world), but that the incarnate God continues to pursue me in hopes of inviting me into the work that Jesus is doing in this grand vision for the New Heavens and the New Earth.  After all,

“If God is not truly incarnate in Jesus as he accomplishes his work on the cross, then nothing has really happened from God’s side and we are thrown back on ourselves. If there is no incarnation of the Godhead in Jesus’ sacrifice, then there is no salvation apart from what human nature can contribute.”(Page 31)

and that to me feels hopeless. Thank god that the Gospel brings us good news.

A number of years back I remember listening to a podcast (which I’ve tried to track down but to no avail, my apologies) that was interviewing a native Australian about the differences between the Australian Western and the American Western. According to this individual, while American Westerns tend to be defined by ideas such as expansion, progress, the taming and conquering of the land and American idealism (born out of lawlessness, liberty, and opportunity), Australians see “the west” as symbolic with death, struggle, isolation and natures relationship to man (as opposed to man’s conquering and taming of the natural landscape in the American Western). One of the distinguishing factors of Australian Westerns then is a more melancholic and introspective presence, especially when it comes to dealing with the impact of colonialism on the indigenous peoples of the land. There is a more readily available and recognizable humility present in the way colonialism confronted the wide open spaces, leaving it perhaps more open to conversation and relationship than the larger than life myth that we find in American Westerns, even if Australia’s cinematic and cultural history is mired by some of the issues we see in America in terms of the oppression and silencing of the indigenous peoples.

It was a fascinating and enlightening conversation not just because it opened my eyes to some key and important differences on a cultural and historical level, but because it opened my eyes to Australian Cinema. As a big fan of the Western genre, I was delighted to find a whole new Western culture to engage, but in truth that is proving to be just the tip of the iceberg in what is an impressive cinematic history and slate of films. And as I travel the country in film, if there is one major takeaway of my time in Australian Cinema it is the working paradox of a Country that has invested in true Australian films that Australians simply do not seem interested in and have not made efforts to see, opening up a wealth of conversation and thought about the connection of a people to (and their awareness of) their Country’s working ethos and narrative.

Australian Cinema and its Relationship To Indigenous Cultures
If I can come back to this thought regarding the Australian Western, while Australia’s relationship to the indigenous cultures (namely the Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples, recognized as one of the oldest living populations in the world… talk about a heritage) has had its problems (largely due to colonialism), its cinematic history has played a vital role in keeping an awareness of Australia’s relationship to these cultures at the forefront. And this is because one of the key injustices that occurred beyond their misplacement was the suppression of their language and practices, a vital part of their cultures survival. Given how the earliest films in Australian history documented and captured indigenous culture, it became a viable and valuable source later on.

This fascinating article (https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/history-australian-ethnographic-film) helps to underline the role, even if unintentionally, that early Australian film played in protecting some of this from extinction, and further the role Australia’s golden age of cinema (70’s-90’s and beyond) played in putting the camera “into the hands of the indigenous peoples.” As it writes,

“It was only when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander filmmakers, following Essie Coffey’s example, claimed and got the opportunity to represent themselves and their cultures and stories in film and television that the history of what really happened could come out and restore some balance to the record.”

What I would like to underscore here though is that it can’t be understated how much early Australian cinema afforded the Country a chance to discover and claim a clear and decisive narrative, beginning with The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, to apply to their Country’s story, with good and bad, and the degree to which it helped form an innate awareness of its development, its relationship to the indigenous peoples, the challenges of colonialism, and the importance of investing in and protecting the future of Australian culture.

One of the reasons for this clarity was because of early efforts to unify Australian culture. The fact that this current New Wave of Australian Cinema could see such growth in terms of rediscovering and engaging that narrative is a testament to its consistent cinematic presence and strength of character, and also to the relevance of its early development and Western mythology.

And Yet… The Challenge of Australian Cinema
But even then, the paradox does persist. Australia’s ties to the British (still not quite an independent State, even if they, like Canada, choose to operate as one) and the close connections this created with the U.S. over time has historically proved to be a rather tall and ongoing challenge for establishing Australian Cinema and culture. The early unifying measures, through the establishing of the Australian Films and Union Theaters between 1910 and 1912, led to an unmitigated agreement to secure Australian cinemas for U.S. releases. While this bolstered numbers in the immediate, it is a measure that proved in the long term to run largely antithetical to its vision for building a strong presence of Australian film and domestic filmmakers. It went from a Country that can boast some of the earliest screenings of moving pictures (1896), (arguably) the earliest feature film ever made (The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, or possibly even Soldiers of the Cross in 1899, if you are willing to count that) and the first major Film Studio ever built (Limelight in 1899 through the Salvation Army) to succumbing to the shadow of the powers that be (and even feeding them to a degree) over and over again.

“By 1929 a combination of forces – the introduction of sound films from overseas, an increasing stranglehold on the local market by American and British distributors, and the economic devastation caused by the Depression – signalled a serious downturn in Australian film production from which it would take decades to recover.”
– A. Pike (Australian Cinema)

This relationship would continue through the wars and post war landscape, finding every policy move and government change somehow feeding back into the seemingly necessary temptation to chase after the business of the growing industry domestically and abroad. In the interwar period you see this in the short lived establishing of Efftee Studios (which lasted from 1930 to 1934) and Cinesound Productions (lasted into the 1940’s), which tried to copy the “Hollywood model” under the newly established Cinematograph Films Act and were meant to invest in Australian film but ended up attracting more Hollywood films from America than giving space to Australian voices. According to most of what I read, the complexity of this relationship only grew more problematic once these British and American filmmakers started to film on Australian soil.

Consider this- the American Film Institute, Australian Council for the Arts, the Australian Film Development Corporation , the National Film and Television Training School, the South Australian Film Corporation, and the Australian Film Commission were all created to support Australian film both domestically and abroad, and every single one of these initiatives could not overcome the challenges of the global industry even with adjacent “film tax incentive schemes” and “legislative amendments” such as “The Special Production Fund.” Overcrowding of international features in Australian cinemas, dependence on co-productions, inability to properly advertise Australian films, foreign filmmaking using Australia to film, and increasing risk factors associated with funding Australian projects are all spoken about as part of the ongoing challenge. “Australian cinema, originally stimulated by the desire for cultural and social exploration through film, was becoming an industry predominantly predicated upon business concerns.”

At best, as one source suggested, the Australian film industry had come to depend on the odd Australian film hitting it big in America first, and only then would it find the space it needed to succeed back home. And in more recent years, attempts to invest more in the local film industry has also made it more difficult for Australians to gain access to international releases right away. So much appears behold to seeing what is successful abroad first and then bringing what works over for Australian audiences, which is still more often than not American film.

But ultimately the real problem was this.

“With theatrical production and distribution dominated by foreign companies, a whole generation of Australians were growing up and going to the movies but possibly never seeing an Australian film.”
– David Straton

A Neglected But Developing Cinematic Identity
But here is the upside to the Country’s dedicated approach to its local film industry. Although much of Australian Cinema simply wasn’t being seen, through the 80’s, 90’s and through the New Millennium it was still able to establish a real sense of identity. It was able to diversify Australian genres based on its unique emphasis on the Outback and survival themes, even venturing into niche horror territory (Outback Gothic). It was able to reclaim some of the indigenous focus that its early cinema was able to bring to the forefront, while also pushing ahead into stories that could reflect modern Australian culture and social concern with a real emphasis on Australian born stories and an intentional shift towards “urban and suburban dichotomies.”

“For much of the last half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, Australia was a culture trying to establish and articulate its distinctive characteristics. The bush and the outback provided the iconography and values for this, and the bush-city dichotomy in the pre-1941 rural comedies and rural melodramas reinforced a mythology based on the virtues of mateship, sport, physical labor, and egalitarianism.

In the 1990’s it began to more confidently deal with contemporary Australian culture, with focus on urban and suburban life. As time went on, Australia became more and more diverse, and film was one of the key ways of capturing these changes (it used to be uniformly British).”
(Australian Film and Australian Culture)

Which is to say, the narrative is there, and the confidence to embrace this narrative and explore it already exists within Australian Cinematic culture. And even more so it is arguably thriving just waiting to be discovered. And part of the reason for this is the filmmakers themselves. Recognizing that they were forced to consider the international factor as part of the puzzle for convincing Australians to see Australian films, one author writes,

“For many producers this posed a challenge: how to make films which had an Australian character and flavour, but which also appealed to an international audience, beyond the historical-drama genre which had already proved so popular.

Film makers rose to this challenge by developing diverse styles and narratives as they explored different genres of film making and new presentations of the Australian character, landscape and mythologies.”
– Luke Buckmaster

Reflecting on a historical problem while using this same modern context, Ben Goldsmith wrote an excellent article about the necessity of building relational space rather than geographical space to help bridge this divide. He writes,

“The new geography of international film production is a geography of comparative economic stimuli as governments vigorously compete for production using various policy levers to assist migrating projects. This international turn changes the view of policy. Rather than the inward–focused policy vision that encourages introspection in Australian expression, and which dominated production assistance policies until the 1990s, much policy is now oriented outwards and made for the benefit of incoming international producers”

 

“In 1994, Thomas Elsaesser wrote that the concept of a national cinema only

makes sense ‘as a relation, not as an essence, being dependent on other kinds of filmmaking to which it supplies the other side of the coin.’ Rather than understanding Australian cinema as a territory, Australian international cinema is conceived as a space of relations.”

These are good thoughts for an ever changing and evolving cinematic landscape. While I’m not entirely sure this addresses the problem of how the American ethos and identity can be both protected, built and embraced, it might offer an inroad, at least in a more immediate and proactive sense, for figuring out how to build towards a way to do this more effectively. In truth, current streaming trends, particularly Netflix which tends to dominate abroad, tend to mirror some of the same issues for foreign Countries (to the streaming companies), as they are driven primarily by companies that have no physical presence in those territories and little to no ties to local film communities. The money made from these projects don’t feed back into local economies in the same way an industry does, creating a weird and somewhat ambiguous space for these films to share as opposed to creating the kind of conversation and relationship the article speaks to above that can actually create a uniquely Australian identity and narrative.

In any case, regardless of how this future ends up being navigated, what I do know is that in my travels I have discovered an industry and a culture that is well worth saving, preserving and investing in.

Here is my list of films that I have watched on my journey, rated, ranked and reviewed:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-australia-in-process/edit/

SOURCES:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/26/australian-film-australian-audiences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jz0WNKM9RM
https://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/C83EBE935009D14CCA2569DE0025C18A
https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/industry-trends/historical-admissions/before-1900
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cinema_of_Australia
http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/Australia-AUSTRALIAN-FILM-AND-AUSTRALIAN-CULTURE.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261181091_Outwardlooking_Australian_Cinema
Australian Film: A Bibliography
The last new wave by David Stratton
The Avacado Plantation
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/20/australias-lost-wave-of-film-or-the-renaissance-nobodys-noticed
http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/Australia-AUSTRALIAN-FILM-AND-AUSTRALIAN-CULTURE.html#ixzz6HuMbKxBm
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! A film documentary

In one of Ingmar Bergman’s most reflective and personal works “Wild Strawberries, we find the story of an aging and prosperous man looking back on his life as he struggles to find meaning in his accomplishments. On the cusp of receiving a lifetime achievement award, he struggles with feelings of insignificance and purposeless as he searches for some kind of narrative to which he can feel he belongs. It reminds me of powerful A Man Called Ove, another story about an aging man stuck with feelings of insignificance and purposeless, although his journey is shaped by grief.

It’s a powerful film from one of Sweden’s most celebrated Directors, and in no small way this film captures the spirit of Swedish film history in a significant and powerful fashion, a history that mirrors the story of the Country these films have helped define.

Neutrality, Drama, and Cinematic Storytelling
Perhaps most significant is Sweden’s long history of neutrality. As the rest of world twisted and struggled around it, Sweden managed to remain largely unscathed, finding economic prosperity and stability in times where other Countries were left to rebuild.

This same trajectory follows the Country into the modern age, setting the stage early for the development of a strong social system, a unifying characteristic of Sweden’s national and civic expression. This is a Country that has found “cooperation” between all levels of of class and sector, allowing it to avoid the class divisions that tend to define so much of film worldwide as democracies struggled to emerge. One thing that’s important to recognize here as well is that if you follow Sweden’s cinematic growth, unlike other industrialized nations it remains decidedly unindustrialized, having no real need to get wrapped up in the business of it all because of the way the Country has functioned as a welfare state. This protects it from the trappings of the movie star that we see in many other Countries, as well as distinctions between filmmaker and film viewer. There is much to learn from Sweden in this regard.

Which is simply to say, if film tells the story of a Country’s struggle, often giving voice to the people as they try to make sense of their nations “story” and their role in it, what happens to cinema in a Country where these common human dramas, save for the rare economic struggles that would emerge late in the modern era (perhaps due to their commitment to those same social policies)? What kind of stories do you tell in a landscape that is decidedly undramatic, cinematically speaking?

For Sweden, they tend to turn their stories inwards into self reflective pieces. And they contain a surprising amount of spiritual reflection as well, inspired by Bergman but also reaching back into the fabric of early Swedish film as well. When you aren’t talking about wars and socio-economic instability, it leaves plenty of room to consider those deeper questions, and not unlike the aging man in Wild Strawberries this becomes a means of finding significance in a life that seems and feels methodical and perhaps predetermined. With the lack of outside forces motivating their story in one way or another, they are left to find meaning, and even wrestle it out of their story.

Cinematic Identity, Industry and Invention
In the early 1900’s, Sweden travels a similar path as most of Europe, emerging around 1907 and becoming “organized” between the years of 1910 and 1920, particularly with the development of the “Svensk Filmindustri”.

And while Sweden avoided many of the trappings of industry, most sources recognize its desire to develop Swedish films and bring them to the “world’s stage”. Their unifying social character benefited them to this end, allowing Swedish films to develop a real identity in the silent age, accentuating the Swedish northern landscape and its unique lights, shooting on location and getting creative with exposure. And early on, which you can see in classic films like Sir Arne’s Treasure and the Phantom Carriage, Haxan, there is a dedication to inventive narrative structures emerging as well, bringing to light the sort of introspective, spiritually concerned stories that Bergman would later refine and make ultimately familiar.

Ingmar Bergman and the Evolution of the Swedish New Wave
And it would be impossible not to speak of Sweden and find yourself somewhere in Ingmar Bergman’s extensive filmography. One of my personal favorites is The Seventh Seal, an existential quest to find the spiritual in the everyday, using strong allegory and Biblical imagery to bring its story to life in a powerful way.

As one description I saw described Bergman’s films, they “illustrate the internal struggles of individuals, particularly through such themes as isolation, religious doubt, and insanity while using the landscapes of his country combined with creative composition and editing styles to reflect his ideas.” This is a great article on his aesthetic: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/sweden/articles/bergman-and-the-swedish-aesthetic/_

But what might be worth pointing out even more so, given one could dwell on his filmography for a good length of time and still not exhaust the commentary and perspective available, is just how long Bergman stood as the face of Swedish film, essentially emerging in the post war period, a time of relative stability, opportunity and global reach for neutral Sweden left relatively untouched and unscathed, and defining its trajectory both locally and even more so internationally. Which is great for Swedish film. With his rise after the war, Sweden was able to stay creative and influential as an industry while others were not. However, this also created challenges for Swedish society as the years moved forward, given the long shadow that he cast, particularly in a society that was still largely patriarchal.

So perhaps the most interesting faze to consider in Swedish cinema is its New Wave, a period of filmmaking that would emerge in the wake of Bergman’s peak and into his retirement as we lead into the new millenium.

All a New Wave suggests is a period of time in which we see a burst of fresh creativity and prosperity, new styles of film emerge, and a reinvigorated spirit and potential for filmmakers, much like the one we see in the post war period with Bergman. Leading up to this period would see a host of young filmmakers gradually stepping into the industry, breathing into it certain liberties and social expressions that could push its boundaries and allow it to recreate itself with time. It certainly helped that emerging with this fairly modern new wave in the new millenium were some economic struggles that added to the Swedish story, giving these filmmakers something to comment on on a domestic level. This reinvigorated these films with social interest, new genres and focuses, and more importantly began addressing the lack of female auteurs (Pernille Fischer Christensen’s Becoming Astrid being one of my most recent favorites).

What’s interesting too about this most recent New Wave is that one could see it from the larger perspective of Scandinavian films and Nordic Cinema, something it shares in common with the Scandinavian Nations that surround it. There is a shared story here, one that perhaps gets richer once boundaries have been broken and socialist states and cultures that did get wrecked by the war, civil issues and economic problems can speak to one another more liberally and effectively. Heck, even my home Country of Canada has a real interest in these modern narratives, as they can help shed light on how to navigate certain socio-political ideas on a human level, particularly as we look at our Swedish immigrant roots. It’s in ways like this where film can play a powerful role in helping foster dialogue among cultures, and it is what continues to make Sweden a fascinating Country and narrative to discover and explore on a cinematic level.

Here is the List of Films That I watched for my cinematic travels through Sweden, ranked and reviewed:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-sweden-in-process/

SOURCES
https://swedishsushibeardnets.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/sweden/
http://blogs.studyinsweden.se/2017/03/21/swedish_cinema_history_part1/

https://www.academia.edu/5943663/A_short_history_of_Swedish_cinema
http://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/en/the_golden_age_of_cinema/
a brief history of Swedish film

Click to access experimental_utan_bilder.pdf

https://www.sweden.org.za/sweden-cinema.html
https://books.google.ca/books?id=krlcCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=Did+Swedish+silent+films+use+double+exposure&source=bl&ots=6vXbsMiU9Z&sig=ACfU3U1iakkS_CYHI1-eHQodpG4b66sHDw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjckueVrbnoAhUSpZ4KHczCAtUQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Did%20Swedish%20silent%20films%20use%20double%20exposure&f=false

Is There a Swedish New Wave?

Given the infamous position the Lumiere Brothers have as the pioneers of early cinema,
(and coincidentally, the anniversary of their Cinematographe was a couple days ago),

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/lumiere-brothers-workers-leaving-factory-anniversary-1202219698/?fbclid=IwAR0RsjHaKTgh4Xt5wYGNWicdfVAjzXnA2jILimSHoPoP3RQ8L1_KI7UFer8

perhaps slightly less aware is the competing story of two German inventors, Max and Emil Skladanowsky, the creators of the Bioscop, a film projector eventually proved to be inferior to the lumiere brother’s creation. 

Fun fact. The screenings of the Bioscop were actually the first payed screenings of moving pictures in Europe (November 1st, 1895 in a restaurant called Feldschlößchen), and actually played a vital role in the development of German cinema and its influence on cinematic history despite it being short lived.

Recognized in history as the birth of a theoretical idea now called the “cinema of attraction” (by a film theorist named Tom Gunning), the early years of German cinema for the most part travels a similar line as much of Europe in that it continued to balance the allure of this new thing called the “moving image” with the perception of it as either art or entertainment. These travelling projections, or the German Kintopp as they came to be called, moved through the Country capturing the imagination of its people through the power of the image, using visuals to evoke emotions (the root of cinema of attraction).

As history goes, the fascination with seeing moving pictures on screen eventually led to the creation of something more concrete being established within the German landscape, with the Kammerlichtspiele Cinema in Berlin 1912 being the first cinema of note, but with cinemas emerging in places like Mannheim as early as 1906.

Cinema and Class Structures
What is interesting to note about these early years of travelling entertainment within Germany, and eventually the glorious German architecture that would follow, is that even in its formative years cinema was functioning as a commentary on class. According to many of the sources I encountered, the novelty of these pictures eventually gave way to popularity, shifting its focus to lower and middle class audiences. The popularity of the medium in Germany began to divert the higher classes away, causing them to dismiss it as frivolous entertainment. It would be later though, as the idea of film began to take concrete shape in the form of a more visible architectural presence, that it began to be considered as serious art.

This relationship between film and class continues throughout German cinematic history, with this social concern informing everything from German expressionism, Nazi propaganda, post war cinema, to the eventual re-education purposes entering into the modern age. But intiatilly, with this history comes the building of these grand cinemas, their destruction in the wars, in Germany’s post war period their reconstruction amidst the East-West divide and the American funding that allowed West Germany to begin to redevelop, and ultimately their familiar deconstruction once again with the onset of tv, a familiar epidemic that exists in similar form across Europe.

If I can backtrack a bit to the early 1900’s and the emergence of German cinema as a concrete form, a part of what moved film from a lower class distraction to an upper class and distinguished artform was the connection of cinema in Germany to its formative influence on oral, literature and cultural German storytelling methods. What made films in Germany artistic was its connection to “literary form”, which itself connected back to Germany’s historical positioning as some of the earliest storytellers to influence modern forms. This provides cinema with a foundation on which to grow in form as well as a new way of expressing shared themes and ideas.

It is out of this that German cinema is able to gain an intellectual presence, developing different styles and methods such as Schaulust (literally translated visual pleasure), which grew to become the most prominent and distinguishable characteristic of German cinema and cinematic criticism. As Walter Serner writes, “If one looks to where cinema receives its ultimate power, into these strangely flickering eyes that point far back into human history, suddenly it stands there in all its massiveness: visual pleasure (Schaulust).” And these distinct visual forms emerge from Germany’s rich history of storytelling.

What might be more interesting though is Germany’s more recent cinematic history, particularly in the years following re-unification. On a superficial level there are many ways in which it appears to mirror the development of the multiplex that we see in America, with cinemas at first spanning out into smaller and more modest venues called KoKis (Independent Cinemas meant to protect the virtue of cinema), and then ultimately growing into the big box centers that are about more than just the screen and the film. But where America’s movement created something entirely other, buildings that mirror their capitalist agendas rather than offering any clear connection to some idea of its cinematic history, in Germany the movement was and is an attempt to reconnect to the glorious buildings of their past. As film studies expert Jan Phillips writes, “In contrast to the homogenous multiplexes, the focus here is on the cinema theatre itself – which consciously reflects the glamour of the picture houses of a bygone era.” As I will touch on more below, this connection to building and art, people and architecture is a defining part of German culture and its cinematic tradition.

A National and International Cinematic Industry
The more I travel the world through film, the more common and aware the relationship between the building of a National Film Industry and the pressures of an International Industry becomes. A strong, localized Industry is vital to the health of a given Country, not just on an economic level but on a social level. And what is most important about this fact is that the history of cinema holds a deep and very real connection to the development of a Country’s ethos, identity and social awareness. This is at least in part because of the ways it has replaced (in the modern age) the theater as the means through which a Country is able to form (through the telling and retelling of their stories in a shared and public fashion) a collective narrative and recognizable identity. Film has the power to unify people around an idea and a purpose in a way that other artforms cannot.

Even more so, these stories become the lens through which people are able to both understand their history and the means by which they are able to express their experience of it. It gives voice to their past, their present and actively imagines their future, thus giving the people confidence to then step out into a more global reality. This is why you see so many of Countries in their pre and post war periods developing their industries and investing in their filmmakers as part of a renewed National vision and value. This is also where, in times of struggle, Countries with power are those with established arts (film industries), holding a strong national identity that is able to carry and influence abroad.

As Jochen Kurten writes in the article,

“Fact and Fiction: German Films and History”, “More than any book or exhibition, even more than school lessons, popular feature films influence Germans’ image of their own history. That is not new knowledge perhaps, nor is it surprising. But as articulated by Hans Walter Hütter, director of the “Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” (House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany), the claim carries a lot of weight.”

A real problem arises when a Country needs to rebuild but is left unable to rise above the foreign influences and pressures that holds them captive. This was and is true for Germany, which found so many of its citizens having moved away and now living on American and foreign soil. Without those creatives who are able to help give voice to the narrative of the Country as it is being experienced, Germany has found itself being overshadowed by the perspective of those living abroad viewing the Country from a distance and a localized industry that has failed to capture its true ethos in a visible way.

I can say, of all the Country’s I have visited so far, either in part or in full, Germany is so far the most unique in this regard. Their history is entrenched in this national-international narrative. This is a very simplified analysis of a complex discussion, but what adds to this picture is that Germany’s lengthy and difficult political story also dictated its cinematic history towards the path it eventually followed, forming its cinematic landscape in ways that were more beholden to oppression than liberation. As the wonderful 2018 Hitlers Hollywood shows, when the cinema that is there becomes the voice of a dictator and regime, the story of its people gets muddied and confused. This is why movements like Italian Neo-Realism were so influential and so important. They helped rebuild their Country’s through film that became the voice of the people, interested in capturing their reality and their concern.

To this end, the biggest hurdle that German Cinema faced and continues to face is the fact that it has been left scattered by its relationship to international borders and its in-Country conflict, causing what began as one of the most promising centers for cinematic development (as represented in their architectural history, preserved, rebuilt and destroyed, their innovation and their early films), to give way to period after period of mass exoduses of Germans to foreign soil, with (as mentioned) one of the primary  exoduses being the eventual establishment of German cinema now being made from American soil and as American films by German Americans. European influence early on (France, Italy and Denmark) quickly gave way to the gradual Americanization of German culture, of which a byproduct was an unfortunate disassociation from the history that had informed the German peoples experiences. This is something, as a people, they are still trying to overcome, and the future of German film plays a vital role in re-establishing these connections.

Cinema, Early Expressionism and Politics
One can then add to this the difficult history Germany has faced on a socio-political level, moving through the two World Wars and towards eventual re-unification of East and West. The decision to ban imported films in both world wars, including French Film, had a two-fold effect. On one hand it did help to protect a “distinctly German cinematic identity.” Consider the Weimar period, a complex and problematic interwar era that, despite its early struggles to create a true Democracy and the infamous Article 48 that paved the way for Hitler, gave rise to some of a period of stability and cultural reform in German Expressionism and Chamber Dramas, even advancing the art of film itself. German Expressionism is heavy in symbolism and imagery, not coincidentally evoking new class distinctions and a high level of social commentary. It was a way of understanding the German experience through stylings that were unique to their form of storytelling. It reflected the voice of the people in a time of change, a drastic contrast to the Country under Nazi rule.

Even a most cursory look at Expressionism can tell you that it was interested in using style to say something about what the people were thinking, feeling and fearing. It lends itself readily to the horror genre, but expands beyond it. Even more so perhaps, Chamber Dramas, translated from the German word Kammerspielfilm which means “an intimate, cinematic portrait of lower middle class life”, comes from a style of German theater that is very sparse and very simple and has an interest in character over movement, examining the motivations of a character rather than depicting a story arc. These were perhaps the flip side of expressionism which tended to be more grand displays of cinematic fervor. Chamber films were intimate with a specific interest in digging underneath the German Psyche.

Also not surprising is the deep conviction of German Expressionism to the rejection of Western ideas and ideologies. Even then it knew the dangers of being absorbed by an international identity, and it is one of the reasons why the genre and style is still the most recognizable German collection of films on an international level. It is through both Expressionism and Chamber Dramas, among other German styles and movements, that we are able to recognize, for example, the deep connection with Germans to architecture and cityscape, buildings, streets and civic life. Knowing this can help one understand the devastation that their destruction had on their physical and emotional landscape, the motivation they had for rebuilding the old, and the power that held in giving them a future.

But whatever periods of potential and creativity that we find and discover, we also know that we are never far away from another war, another divide or another political battle, many of which decimated and or controlled the culture, architecture and national identity in its wake. With the wars came bans on importing international films and exporting German films, with subsequent Government control banning and directing what kind of films could then be seen and made. This cut off lines of artistic influence altogether, and even more tragically so abruptly. Films then turn towards propaganda with history becoming confused, the voice of the people left fighting to be heard and largely marginalized in its course.

The irony of this is that over this same period of time it could be said that Germans have had the single greatest influence on American film in its illustrious history. But that comes at the expense of being able to see and understand Germany’s cultural identity from the context of its own soil, and it has impeded its ability to heal and reform as a Country from so many of these experiences.

Facing A Persisting Cinematic Problem 
To say this another way, German film is thus caught in a catch 22. Their banning of international films led to their films not being recognized outside of their borders, which led to a declining interest in film overall, which led to a lack of creatives willing and able to make films that reflect their own story from their own perspective.

As a few articles suggested, they have tried to come up with solutions but have never really regained their footing and their ability to be inventive. They have lost a national identity both inwards and outwards, with most of the success coming from international partnerships these days and German filmmakers making and producing abroad.

As one article puts it,

“Germans, like many of their European neighbors, offer government subsidies to their filmmakers in an effort to encourage domestic motion picture production. Europeans, including the Germans, have traditionally tended to regard filmmaking as an art rather than a business. Because the resulting European films are often limited-budget, intellectually challenging productions that lack the Hollywood big-star, action/blockbuster formula, their mass appeal has been limited.”

(Further) “It is ironic, then, that the German film diet of today is predominantly Anglo-American, especially in light of Germany’s historical role in world cinema. Almost from the first days of motion pictures, both the Austrians and Germans were at the cinematic forefront, exerting great influence over the medium. And yet years of migration have made their cinematic presence in America far greater than it is in their own Country.”
(Cinema in Germany)

Germany, unlike Ireland (which I visited before travelling to Germany cinematically speaking), was never able to reconcile this predominantly Anglo-American influence with a vigorous longing to return to their homeland. Whereas the Irish have created movements meant to reclaim their heritage and rebuild their culture through Irish Cinema, Germany continues to wrestle with its complex relationship with its past and present and future, consequently struggling to find its place in the cinematic world as its creatives remain scattered abroad.

(And yet) Authentically “German” films are still every bit as important now as they have always been, and have even persisted in some surprising ways that are not always easy to recognize in an increasingly global climate. These films are important because they help one to not forget their past but to face it, to remember it and build towards a stronger future.

This is why, seeing beyond even expressionist film, recognizing movements like New Objectivity, which like Chamber Films existed as a parallel and counter to expressionist film in that it traded the expression for realism, Trummerfilm (literally “rubble film”), which distinguished films captured right after the war in the rubble of its aftermath (films largely interested in the theme of rebuilding such as “Somewhere in Berlin”), Heimatfilm (“homeland film”), which spans that post war period up until the 70’s with films interested in generational contrasts and the relationship between rural and urban life, is important to understanding Germany as a Country. All of the genre and style distinctives that do still exist with German cinema are important because they can protect and record the history of the people amidst the upheaval and the rebuilding. This is true today even with viewing films (like the Nazi Propaganda films, and even the post war films where one can see a clear agenda covering up the reality) that confused their history and manipulated it. They tell a part of their story that is worth remembering and making sense of, and provide an overarching narrative that one can look back on, think and reflect upon and piece together in a meaningful way. They also allow one to hear and see the voice of the people being expressed in the midst of trying times, offering us a glimpse of those who tried to stand up against that which was not right and tell stories that reflected their actual experience.

And seeing and supporting modern German films today becomes vital to learning and capturing and recapturing the true German spirit now. It might take more work to uncover these films than in other Countries but it is worth the investment whether one is German or not. Because one thing is true, for all that the German people have witnessed and lived through and had to overcome, they have so many stories worth telling, a strong storytelling culture to pass on and preserve, and a culture worth celebrating in its immense potential to impact the cinema of tomorrow.

*MY JOURNEY THROUGH GERMAN CINEMA
Here is a link to my working (and ranked) list of German films from my travels. There are of course many that I can still add, and I will continue to do so as I get a chance.
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-germany-in-process/

SOURCES
https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/flm/20652941.html
https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/germany/cinema-in-germany/
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-and-fiction-german-films-and-history/a-19321099
https://u.osu.edu/berlin2798horstbuchholz/2015/05/22/a-brief-history-of-german-cinema/
A Critical History of German Film by Stephen Brockmann
https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Film
The German Cinema Book by Tim Bergfelder
The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 by Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, Michael Cowan
https://pro.europeana.eu/data/cinema-of-attraction
Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany By Thomas J. Saunders
Feinstein, Joshua (1999). Constructing the Mythic Present in the East German Cinema: Frank Beyer’s ‘Spur Der Steine’ and the 11th Plenum of 1965.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light… everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”
– Ephesians 5:8-14

What is the meaning of the darkness?
At the core of this question in A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick’s latest film, is that familiar visual sense that has come to define his style. Here he weaves darkness and light as both literal cinematic functions and metaphorical human experience together into a marvelous and uncertain dance of existential longing. As a big fan of Malick, particularly the equally contemplative and sensory experience of the Tree of Life, what I found in his latest work is an unexpected maturity and a willingness to ground his artistic vision in something a bit more accessible.

What might be most profound about the journey that A Hidden Life invites us to take as viewers into this inevitable and uncertain dance is that it resists the urge to paint this as a singular trajectory from the darkness to light. As one character surmises late in this story, even when it is raining the sun doesn’t stop shining. The implication is that we don’t always see the sun in light of our experiences, leaving us to wrestle, to question and to doubt when the darkness grows.

Which is precisely were we find the family whom occupy the heart of this film. A family of faith and optimism suddenly caught between the ever pressing darkness and the seemingly distant light. Faith exists for this family as a constant, a given, a gift. But God’s faithfulness also proves to be allusive, distant at difficult to understand. This is the internal struggle, the inward journey this family is forced to take and carry in the face of this darkness.

Where The Darkness Hides The Light
Hanne Johnson, a ministry leader in the Covenant Church of Canada recently penned a Lenten devotional on the verse I quote above, and in that devotional she writes concerning this imagery of the light and the darkness,

“The most beautiful thing about this light imagery is that darkness explained is the absence of light. Not the other way around. Once there is light, there is no longer darkness,” for as it says “Everything that is illuminated becomes light.”

In reflecting on the story of A Hidden Life, its images flowing through my memory and my meditation, I found this truth about the nature of light and darkness to be helpful. Because often what makes the darkness most difficult is when the darkness is all that we can see. And the reason the darkness is all we see is because the darkness comes in our suffering.

In the case of the film, suffering becomes the overarching theme, one that the film returns to over and over again as the source of the darkness. In suffering they try to make sense of their faith, coming back to the imposing reality of this darkness as one that is desperate for answers and unclear even of the right questions as it invades their world, their village, and the choices they are forced to make in one direction or another.

In the midst of the suffering the darkness appears to veil God from their sight. What invades the darkness though is this deeply ingrained sense or spirit led nudging that the light still shine and wants to unveil God to them in all God’s mystery and love.

Where The Darkness Reveals The Light 
As the Mayor of the village laments (and then professes) early on in the film, “This is what happens when the world dies. Men survive. But here (in this village, in them) life is gone. Their reasoning for living gone.” This is why they seemingly must choose to look out for them selves regardless of what this might mean for the lives of others.

The backdrop for the story in A Hidden Life is Nazi rule and Hitlers reign, with the persecution of those deemed inferior and a hindrance to their prospering the thing that is immediately informing their quiet Austrian village life and something they are forced to embrace. The above lament from the Mayor quickly turns into an unsettling form of defiant proclamation, causing the Mayor of a small Austrian village to remind the villagers that there are those he believes would impede on their ability to live good and happy lives, and thus they must support them in their efforts for their sake.

This causes tension when Franz, the father and husband of the family that lies at the centre of this story, is unable to reconcile his experience as a soldier and the unjust treatment of others with his appeal for a comfortable and happy life. He is a conscientious objector, and for him, Nazi rule is not something they can ignore and is something that stands opposed to the tenants of his (and their) faith.

And so he decides to stay true to his convictions, what he believes to be right and true according to God, virtue and conscience. Only what persists is the reality that the more they attempt to believe in and stand by what is right, the more suffering that seems to befall them, a reality made all the more prevalent as they continue to look out at the suffering of the world wondering how and why God would allow such darkness to exist and persist in the first place.

Where are you God when all we see is darkness.
As Hanne so aptly wrote in her devotional , to see and experience the light is to have it inform the darkness, and in doing so expose it to the light. This is the truth that A Hidden Life wants to point us towards and help uncover. In one sense, to make sense of their suffering they must learn to see the light. In another sense they must learn to embrace the darkness.

This is where we find the different imagery in the film gaining in power. The ringing of the bell is at once indicative of the darkness (as the Priest says, it is literally being melted down and made into a bullet) and indicative of hope. The rain is what hides the sun but it is also what sustains them, sustains creation and fills their well. The train reflects the heart and innocence of childhood and Franz’s memories, but also the horrors of his current reality.

Malick brilliantly weaves these interconnected realities into the fabric of the film itself. Some of the most powerful moments are the subtlest ones, be it the image of their child in Fanie’s (the wife and mother) arms laughing even as we see her turn her head in silent, sobbing tears. Or the romanticism of the letters Franz writes from prison to Fani, imagining a more hopeful situation at home even when we as viewers see her and the kids literally trudging through mud in isolated desperation.

If their suffering brings darkness, the power that the darkness gains over the course of this film becomes visceral, tangible and wrenching to watch. The proclamations of faith appear to give way to Gods growing silence in the midst of the “why” questions. But where there is darkness there is also light, and the darkness is what allows the light to shine even brighter.

Perhaps one of the most poignant and memorable scenes in the film for me is one where we encounter a tracking shot that takes us through the halls of the prison, imagining God Himself speaking as the suffering gives way to an elongated prayer being prayed over Franz. The way this is shot, elevating our gaze upwards and framed against the narrow confines of these passageways allows the confines of the prison walls to open up to the sun in this grand display of the light breaking through and igniting the darkness in literal and metaphorical ways. This visual piece affirms the films prevailing and hopeful position that even when we cant see God, we can believe that God is at work redeeming this world, restoring its brokenness, and healing the pain. 

And yet, even while this hope emerges, what becomes clear is that the darkness is the very thing being illuminated in its wake. It is not being ignored and it is not being done away with. To see the light we must peer into the darkness. And as Ephesians suggests, what is being formed out of this darkness is us, the faithful witness of God to a hurting world.

Where The Light forms Us Against the Darkness
Where the question of the darkness begins in A Hidden Life with the presence of suffering, God emerges through through the darkness as the light that is shaping these characters day by day in the mud and the muck and the mire. This sentiment grows from a statement like  “there is a difference between the kind of suffering we cant avoid and the kind we choose” towards the realization that it is “better to suffer injustice than to do it.” The further we get into the story the more we learn about what the darkness looks like when illuminated by the light. It is the same kind of progression that we see in the painter as he paints the church walls with images of Christ. “I paint their comfortable Christ,” he confesses, adding “how do I paint that which I do not know.” The paintings avoid the darkness and thus miss the witness of the light, leading him to profess, “someday I’ll paint the true Christ.” While the darkness allows the light to bear witness in us to the hope of faith and the the longing of our soul, this longing to know Christ and to be people of the light is what allows God to shine in the darkness of others.

I love how the prayer that frames that tracking shot through the prison halls, God’s prayer over Franz, expresses itself once again in the form of Fani visiting her husband now in prison as the darkness looms larger than ever. Her words are simple. “I love you and I will be with you always.” It is a prayer that echos God’s own promise to her and to them. Later on she confesses, for as much as she loves him God loves Him more, and for as hard s it is to believe He is capable of bringing His peace and comfort into any situation and in the way that she so desperately asks for and needs. This prayer broke me, because it’s the kind of prayer one can only pray over another, and one that is nearly impossible to pray alone. It reminds me of how grateful I am to know that in my darkness others are and have prayed for me.

The Illumination of the Light To Transform and Reform
This is the power of the light. As the quote from Eliot reads in a caption at the end of the film,

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

This quote makes A Hidden Life for me one of the most powerful witnesses of faith I have experienced on screen, precisely because of the way it strips us of that singular aversion we so often carry towards believe in God- the desire to do things on our own and in our own way and by our own means. We believe we know best, and when life doesn’t turn out the way we want we blame God, imaging the darkness and hiding the light. We give up, choosing the easier path, the path of least resistance. And we give in to the idea that God is not at work in the world and we are left to fend for ourselves.

The film begins with the honest admission that while we might be capable of dreaming of a better world for ourselves, we cannot ignore the darkness in others. The darkness is ever present in a world which was created for good, and those God desires to heal and to redeem are the reason God calls us to be the light. To ignore this truth, or to believe we can live beyond this by our own strength and means, is to live dangerously and foolishly.

Likewise, as one character says to Frani midway through the film, you have been abandoned (seemingly by her husband, God and the town), so the answer given to her is to do it (live life) on her own, in her own strength. Do what the others could not and rise above it. This approach is proven equally fallible and foolish in this story, because what the light unveils to her and within her is that she cannot do this on her own. So much of the film’s images depict her in relationship to others, relationships that have been hindered by peoples blindness and are in need of God’s love, or relationships that emerged from their willingness to enter into her world  and her struggle. And in the context of the story these relationships are what point her, Franz and us as viewers towards God as the one who is with us every step of the way, the one who has entered into our story and shared in our struggle.

The third tendency is to deal with the darkness by anointing ourselves the necessary judge and jury of what is evil and what is good. This is a stridently humanist approach to the world’s problems. But Malicks treatment of Franz guides his conscious action to do good towards a judgment of himself first rather than an interest in judging others. He sees the darkness first in himself, and thus is driven to love others in their darkness because of this. In one of the most powerful scenes in the film he is asked if he judges those who have committed great acts of injustice. His answer is no, because that would leave him equally undeserving of this grace he so desperately needs.

This idea that society can be good on it’s own, that we don’t need anything else but our own will and determination, and that we have the right to be the judge and jury of the world in all things good and evil, these things are present in every facet of society today. It is a bi-product of deciding that one (or the world) has no need for a God. The declaration of A Hidden Life is that we do stand in need, and living as if we don’t is what gives the darkness its power. For Franz, to give so completely of himself in the midst of his suffering even when he has no confidence or assurance that what he is doing will make any difference and and bring any change at all is what allows the light to illuminate the darkness. It strips his suffering of the power to defeat him precisely because it places it at the feet of the God who loves Him unconditionally. In faith he recognizes his own need for God and trusts that as God’s light in a world of darkness, God can and will be working through him to bring love, peace, comfort to a world in need. This is the most compelling witness, one based on on need, trust and willingness.

Over and against the loudness of those who believe they can and will change the world by their own efforts, this film finds hope in the many unknown voices whom might not make the headlines but make up that wonderful cloud of witnesses to the reality of God’s love and grace being poured out in the face of the darkness. We can trust that God is still working in the world to make all things new once again, that is the wonder and the hope of this witness. And in their willingness to trust even in the midst of their doubts and their weakness, in their willingness to step out in faith and live a life of conviction, God has and is using them and us to illuminate the darkness for the sake of revealing the light of hope, love, renewal and restoration. A vital message for the dark times we face as a world even today.