Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Nomadland, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Nomadland (2020) directed by Chloe Zhao.

The Virtues Of Being Human: Faith, Hope, And Love In James Gray's The Immigrant (2013), The Lost City Of Z (2016), And Ad Astra (2019), John Adair

Journal of Religion & Film

James Gray’s three most recent features reflect on the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, revealed and developed through encounters with others. The Immigrant (2013) reveals the way faith informs familial commitments, social bonds, and a life-giving response to suffering and injustice. The Lost City of Z (2016) portrays a dreamer, a man whose hopeful vision of another world animates every aspect of his being. And Gray’s most recent feature, Ad Astra (2019) traces a man’s turn toward relationship as he discovers what it means to love. In each case, as Gray’s characters display these virtues, the characters transcend …

Heroes, Villains And The Muslim Exception: Muslim And Arab Men In Australian Crime Drama, Sana Patel

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Mehal Krayem, Heroes, Villains and the Muslim Exception: Muslim and Arab Men in Australian Crime Drama.

Theology And The Films Of Terrence Malick, Joel Mayward

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Christopher B. Barnett and Clark J. Elliston, eds., Theology and the Films of Terrence Malick.

The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, And The Radical Imagination, Joseph W. Roberts

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination by Greg Burris.

Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality In American Cinema, Jessica Knippel

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Kameelah L. Martin, Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema.

Queer Muslim Diasporas In Contemporary Literature And Film, Hina Muneeruddin

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Alberto Fernández Carbajal's Queer Muslim Diasporas in Contemporary Literature and Film.

Gender And Patriarchy In The Films Of Muslim Nations: A Filmographic Study Of 21st Century Features From Eight Countries, Candace Mixon

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Patricia R. Owen, Gender and Patriarchy in the Films of Muslim Nations: A Filmographic Study of 21st Century Features from Eight Countries.

Consuming Bollywood, Anjali Gera Roy

Journal of Religion & Film

Hindi popular cinema, marked with sartorial, visual and material excess, has paradoxically portrayed acquisition of wealth or unregulated consumption as inimical to the Chaturvarga philosophy, or the idea that an individual should seek four goods – Artha (wealth), Kama (pleasure), Dharma (duty) and Moksha (renunciation) - in moderation in order to lead a balanced life. While its visual imagery is largely oriented towards Artha or pleasure, Dharma, in its meaning as duty, has been the prime motivation of Hindi or Bombay cinema’s characters and structures the cinematic conflict and action. However, Hindi cinema appears to have undergone a phase-shift in …

The Monstrous Other And The Biblical Narrative Of Ruth, Jonathan Lyonhart, Jennifer Matheny

Journal of Religion & Film

Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) restages the biblical narrative of Ruth in Cold War America, crystallizing the parallel through setting numerous scenes at a local cinema that is playing The Story of Ruth (1960). The book of Ruth tells the tale of how a non-Israelite outsider could be welcomed into the kingdom of God and ultimately into the lineage of Christ. Likewise, del Toro populates his tale with multiple outsiders—multiple ‘Ruths’—including a mute woman, an African American cleaner, a Russian Communist, and an elderly homosexual male. However, these are merely reflections of the ultimate outsider, Del Toro’s …

Islam, Immigrants, And The Angry Young Man: Laurent Cantet And The “Limits Of Fabricated Realism”, Elizabeth Toohey

Journal of Religion & Film

My paper juxtaposes Laurent Cantet’s films The Class (2008) and The Workshop (2017) to explore how they are infused with concerns about radical Islam and the place of Muslim immigrants in the West. Both films center on "angry young men" facing class-based marginalization, who are prone to anti-social behavior. In The Workshop, however, a great effort is made to reveal the intellectual potential and moral complexity of the young white French-born Antoine, whose alienation is defined by his attraction to the xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric of the Far Right, whereas viewers of The Class are kept at arm’s length …

Corruption As Shared Culpability: Religion, Family, And Society In Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014), Maria Hristova

Journal of Religion & Film

This article engages in close analysis of how Andrey Zvyagintsev depicts corruption and its various manifestations: moral, familial, societal, and institutional, in Leviathan (Leviafan, 2014). While other post-Soviet films address the problem of prevalent corruption in Russia, Zvyagintsev’s work is the first to provoke strong public reactions, not only from government and Russian Orthodox Church officials, but also from Orthodox and political activist groups. The film demonstrates that the instances of legal and moral failings in one aspect of existence are a sign of a much deeper and wider-ranging problem that affects all other spheres of human experience. …

No Riddle But Time: Historical Consciousness In Two Islamicate Films, David Sander

Journal of Religion & Film

This article explores ways in which film expresses “internal history” in the context of Muslim cultures. As such, it enquires how film can work as both Islamic art and historical contemplation. The films discussed here, Nacer Khemir’s Wanderers in the Desert and Muhammad Rasoulof’s Iron Island, inhabit and explore the borderline between imagination and reality. The films in question offer an imaginal interspace between “modern” and “traditional” worlds. As such they open up critical perspectives on the meaning of history. What follows is a discussion of how each film offers a window onto differing perceptions of time, and what …

Apocalypse And Eschatology In John Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath (1940), Nancy Wright

Journal of Religion & Film

John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) visualizes conventions of the apocalypse genre to represent not simply a particular historical setting, the Great Depression, but also a vision of history to be interpreted in terms of eschatology. Expressionistic photography transforms the characters’ experiences into enigmatic visions that invite and guide interpretation. A comparison of montage sequences in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and Pare Lorentz’s The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936), a Farm Security Administration documentary, clarifies how Ford’s narrative film aligns spectators within and outside the mise-en-scène.

Hail, Caesar! A Jesus Film In Search Of A Christ Figure, Jon Coutts

Journal of Religion & Film

For over a century the moving picture has been a medium ripe for propagation or exploration of the story of Christ. Since the first wave hit screens in the late 1890s and early 1900s, the list of so-called “Jesus films” has come to number in the dozens. Given that Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2016 Hail, Caesar!­ sets itself up as a reprisal of such films, the question is how to interpret it. To explore this, interpretation of the film is framed by consideration of the Coen brothers' attention to religious themes, is set against the backdrop of the second wave …

The Moving Image And The Time Of Prophecy: Trauma And Precognition In L. Von Trier’S Melancholia (2011) And D. Villeneuve’S Arrival (2016), Luca Zanchi

Journal of Religion & Film

Both the deferred recurrence of post-traumatic symptoms and the foresight granted by prophetic vision bring about a disruption of temporality and generate a chronological discontinuity which is often formally rendered as narrative discontinuity. This similarity produces an interpretive ambiguity that is central to the films, Melancholia (2011) by Von Trier and Arrival (2016) by Denis Villeneuve. Both movies begin by hinting at the post-traumatic origin of visions and then gradually shift towards a prophetic explanation. In addressing these two case studies, this article approaches prophecy and its temporality from a narratological perspective, integrating the critical parameters of trauma-theory with the …

The Gaze And A Sufi Ethics Of Vision In Majidi’S The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, And The Real, Cyrus A. Zargar

Journal of Religion & Film

In his 2005 film The Willow Tree (Bīd-i Majnūn), Majid Majidi offers a complex moral commentary on the faculty of sight. To do so, the filmmaker draws from Sufi theories of gazing, in which desire must be for ultimate meaning (maʿnā), as conveyed through the vehicle of perceivable form (ṣūra), a distinction with both metaphysical and ethical implications. Majidi presents sight, when devoid of contemplation, as a sort of voyeurism, especially in contrast to the privacy and immediacy of speech and especially within the context of the modern city. Moreover, his use of a …

Skyfall: The "Aliens Sequence" In Monty Python's Life Of Brian, Robert Cousland

Journal of Religion & Film

Despite its brevity and science fiction genre, Terry Gilliam's "aliens sequence" in Monty Python's Life of Brian functions in at least three ways: It is a brilliant parody of Star Wars and other space epics. It addresses concerns that were of profound significance for the religion of Jesus' day and, finally, and it significantly challenges the Christian premise of a divinely ordained purpose underlying Jesus' life.

In Memoriam Terry Jones (1942-2020)

The Neighborhood Of Gods: The Sacred And Visible In The Margins Of Mumbai, Darshana Sreedhar Mini

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of The Neighborhood of Gods: The Sacred and Visible in the Margins of Mumbai (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (2nd Edition), Michael Gibson

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Paul Schrader's Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, 2nd edition (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018).

The Muslim World In Post-9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001-2011, Ali A. Olomi

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Kerem Bayraktaroglu's The Muslim World In Post-9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001-2011 (North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2018).

God On The Big Screen: A History Of Hollywood Prayer From The Silent Era To Today, Dan Wells

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Terry Lindvall's God on the Big Screen: A History of Hollywood Prayer from the Silent Era to Today (New York: NYU Press, 2019).

J.E.S.U.S.A., John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of J.E.S.U.S.A., directed by Kevin Miller. It is now available on Vimeo Prime (bit.ly/jesusa).

Burden, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Burden (2020) directed by Andrew Heckler.

Now Is The Time, Jodi Mcdavid

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Now is the Time (2019) directed by Christopher Auchter.

Abortion Helpline, This Is Lisa, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa (2019) directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Mike Attie.

Song Of Clouds, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Song of Clouds (2019) directed by Ankit Poudel.

A Thousand Sails, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of A Thousand Sails (2019) directed by Eric Tsang.

Church And The Fourth Estate, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Church and the Fourth Estate (2020) directed by Brian Knappenburger.

Tahara, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Tahara (2019) directed by Olivia Peace.