Summary Points

• To be God’s image bearer is to be human, and to be human is to be a cultural agent, carrying on God’s creative work by doing culture. This is known as the cultural mandate.
• Culture is our common, historical endeavor to define and live in God’s world; but human sinfulness makes cultivating the creation a difficult and complex affair, introducing obstacles for personal, cultural, and institutional life.
• Culture is communicated through texts—human actions, events, and material works that embody meanings that are widely shared.
• Movies can be understood as metaphors for life.
• A perspective or outlook is a vantage point from which we make sense of reality. (We each have one, although we may often be unconscious of it and of its functioning in our lives.)
• We can draw four basic principles as a guide for a critical and productive engagement with the cinema: (1) film is valuable in and of itself, ordained by God as a promising aspect of human life and culture; (2) human beings are incurably religious; (3) film can and should deal with our full humanity; and (4) all people have the capacity to tell stories that enrich our understanding of the human dilemma (common grace).
• These four principles lay the groundwork for a two-pronged approach that is both discerning and exploratory—one that is characterized by encounter and dialogue.

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Movie Clips

Arrival (2016) Official Trailer

Arrival (2016) Cast Interviews + Behind the Scenes Footage

Vantage Point (2008) Trailer

Rashomon (1950) in 9 Minutes

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Fun Stuff

For an informative behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Arrival (2016), see Emily Rome, “How Arrival Turned Linguistics Into One of the Most Gripping Dramas of the Year,” Gizmodo, November 15, 2016.

For a detailed story analysis of Arrival (2016) see, Taylor Holmes, “Movie Arrival Explained and Interview with Eric Heisserer,” THiNC, November 12, 2016.

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Sidebar: More on Metaphors

To understand movies as metaphors, the parables Jesus tells about the kingdom of God are instructive. Theologians describe them as a blending of metaphor and narrative. They are short stories with characters told from a distinct point of view that involves hearers in interpreting their meaning. Jesus’ parables are realistic enough, relying on everyday life, people, and events; however, by drawing farfetched and seemingly incompatible comparisons without providing final resolutions, they challenge existing ideas and provoke thought about their intended meaning. The effect is to disorient, to shake up the hearer’s existing view in order to point to another vision of reality—or as theologian John Donahue puts it, “to see everyday life as the carrier of self-transcendence.”¹ The stuff of everyday life, in other words, can help us overcome our individual limitations toward deeper spiritual understanding, even if the ultimate mystery remains beyond our grasp.

For example, the Pharisee Nicodemus is bewildered when Jesus declares that only those who are “born again” can see the kingdom of God. The Jewish leader’s response points to the obvious and the need for a new way of thinking: “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” (John 3:4). Likewise, when Jesus tells the disciples that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” they are dumbfounded and ask, “Who then can be saved?” (Matt. 19:24-25). Parables are more about showing than telling the truth. They provide “clues of divine meaning which shine through the perplexities of life,” as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it (which strikes much the same chord as Picasso’s “the dust of everyday life”).² Parabolic narratives offer a different way of seeing that invites hearers to sort out their meaning or to realize the truth. They can help us understand better the relationship of story to life.

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1. John R. Donahue, SJ, The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative, and Theology in the Synoptic Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 10.

2. Robert McAfee Brown, ed., The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 248.

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