He’s a great character, God. Reliable, if a bit formulaic. And he has pulling power. Put his name on the poster, and you’re bound to generate interest, and perhaps the odd death- threat. He also has the benefit of being ineffable, so he takes up little screen space, and omnipresent, so you can always tip a nod in his direction.
Few characters have captured the attention of so many filmmakers, whether positively or negatively, nor appeared in so diverse settings, as God. Nailed to the cross with flagellation and an awful lot of blood (The Passion of the Christ), teaching benign lessons in second-rate comedies (Bruce Almighty), or simply handing down holy writ (The Ten Commandments), he is so varied a character, and so evocative, it is no wonder film studios cannot keep away.
As a general rule, his screen appearances are few, and weak. While Morgan Freeman does a great God (who else can be accused of being typecast as the divine?), Bruce Almighty was a pretty terrible concept, badly handled.
God doesn’t really lend Himself to comedy. Except dark comedy. Which is odd, because you’d think a little bit of guilt would go a long way towards creating comedic situations.
His better roles portray Him as more of a present absence (or absent presence. Is there a difference?) There are films which, while making very little of the connection, rely very heavily on the conceit of the divine, such as the Exorcist.
You can’t really have demons without God, certainly not those who revile crucifixes. But the Exorcist never makes much of an ever-merciful God, using him as a necessary, but hardly terribly interesting foil for a good bit of terror, blood and darkness.
The Lord also shines in films which give Him only a nod, or involve Him only as an allegory. The Narnia Chronicles are a great example of this; they involve a world which is pointedly removed from our own, a fantasy, yet every moment the divine lurks in the background, adding colour and vitality, adding, essentially, a moral tone.
This can be true also of more high- brow films (arthouse fans, notebooks ready please). Ingmar Bergman’s Faith Trilogy, for example, debates not so much the way that man transacts with God, but the way man transacts with man in a world in which the divine can be felt only through morality, or perhaps merely a terrible weight. Like much great art, these films (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence), deal in questions rather than answers, and, with a wrenching beauty, find God not in joy, but in despair.
Other works can involve God not to mock Him, nor to praise Him, but simply to attack Him. The best of these are often somewhat more subtle. As with Bergman’s Faith Trilogy, Pedro Almodóvar’s Dark Habits attacks the foibles and weaknesses of men, gently and wittily poking fun at religion.
That faith can be seen as ridiculous is a commonplace view, and probably less damaging than the faithful often imagine. Lightened by humour, and strengthened by mature introspection, attacks, or merely inquiries into faith in films can be most healthy for the religious community.
It is, I am sure, this lack of maturity that has resulted in some cases of actual danger from the more extreme elements of the faithful. With directors actually being murdered for challenging extreme Islam, a proper, measured debate on the role of faith in films is needed.
To a certain extent the most hopeful sign is that even the best secular films are permeated by religious concepts. The Shawshank Redemption relies heavily on ideas of difficulty, resolution, hope and redemption, which are fundamentally Christian, as does the recent masterpiece The Lives of Others.
That God has been so successful in films is unsurprising, given the extent to which he is entwined with Western culture, and references to him even in such outwardly secular films confirm this.
Read our reviews of classic God-themed films here
