This interview is part of The Reconstruct, a weekly newsletter from Sojourners. In a world where so much needs to change, Mitchell Atencio and Josiah R. Daniels interview people who have faith in a new future and are working toward repair. Subscribe here.
In 2023, it came to the attention of several Sojourners editors that our yearlong fellows had never seen the 1996 masterpiece Space Jam. Immediately, we began planning a watch party.
The watch party began with my short lecture, a presentation titled, “A Brief History of Why Michael Jordan Agreed to Make Space Jam,” which I described as a critical analysis of the material interests of Jordan, Bugs Bunny, and other Looney Tunes. It was a reminder of my favorite way to enjoy a film: as a critic.
By critic, I don’t mean one tasked with nitpicking what makes a film good or bad. I mean someone who helps viewers interpret the choices of filmmakers, as film critic Abby Olcese put it during our interview.
Olcese has spent years honing her talents as a contributor to multiple outlets, including serving as a film critic for Sojourners and as film editor for The Pitch, a magazine in her hometown of Kansas City, Mo.
In her forthcoming book, Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies, Olcese guides the church through the liturgical season via spiritual reflection on movies. Rather than tell readers how a movie is to be interpreted, Olcese guides participants on watching, considering, and discussing 27 films, each aligned with the liturgical calendar.
In our interview, Olcese and I discussed what critics are actually for, where many faith-based films go wrong, and how films can make us better Christians.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mitchell Atencio, Sojourners: The first chapter of the book is about “watching devotionally.” You encourage readers to build a “holistic, intellectual, and spiritually curious approach” to movies. Why couldn’t you just assume people already watch films devotionally?
Abby Olcese: I taught a brief class, “How to Watch a Movie Like a Film Critic,” at a senior center a couple of times — I had a lot of fun. Based on the interactions that I had with folks, I realized not a lot of people see stuff like this.
The conversations that I have with other film critics and people who do this work are very different than the conversations that I have about movies with even my parents, who I consider to be pretty well-versed in movies. Or even, in some cases, friends who I talk about movies with all the time.
I’ve been doing this sort of writing for most of my career, and it used to really anger me that I had to explain myself to people. But in having to do it for such a long period of time, I’ve come to really appreciate the opportunity that lies in there: [opportunity] to not judge people for not meeting you where you’re at but being able to meet them where they’re at. And saying, “Here’s what I think about this [movie]. I think you could really enjoy it in a different and deeper way if you looked at it in this particular way. And even if you don’t necessarily agree with me, I feel like it’s a fun experiment.”
How do you think about those disagreements as to whether a movie is good or bad? I like Man of Steel (2013). I can tell you all the reasons I really enjoy that film. And it’s a bad movie, I know that! The inverse is true for The Sound of Music (1965) — great movie, and I don’t enjoy it even a little bit.
There’s been a lot of a lot of conversation about what the role of a critic is in the last few years. I want to say it was Alissa Wilkinson who made the point that it is a critic’s job to help you process something. [Wilkinson, film critic at The New York Times, told The Times, “I’m not here to tell you to like something. I’m here to tell you how I saw something and why I saw it that way, and help you process your own reaction.”]
It’s not, necessarily, a critic’s job to tell you whether something is good or bad. A very recent phenomenon is people understanding that you can enjoy a movie on your own and for your own reasons. But if you want to process what it is you saw — if something struck a chord with you and you’re trying to figure out why that choice was made, or what it reminds you of, or if you really liked/disliked something — it really can be helpful to read somebody who has watched a lot of movies. Someone who has this deep bench of knowledge that they can pull from and help co-educate you on where some of these choices are coming from. Whether or not you like it is irrelevant — it’s what the filmmaker decided they wanted to do.
It’s like looking at a painting or any other piece of fine art. Choices were made, tools were used. It’s a little bit different for film because it’s a business, so every once in a while you get something that is genuinely the work of the studio. And usually those movies are not very good. But often you’re watching something where everybody who was involved in the movie made choices and agreed that those choices were the right choices to make.
It is up to me, as a critic, to help interpret those choices. It is up to you, as a viewer, to decide whether or not you personally like those choices. Not necessarily whether they add up to “good” or “bad.”
Developing taste is more about liking what you like and knowing why you like it. And having the curiosity to push that boundary and see if there’s other stuff that you continue to like based on the things that you know you’ve already enjoyed.
I’m a sucker for live action/animation movies like Space Jam (1996), so I know I should try films that employ that technique.
I’m a real sucker for Christ-figures. I think they’re great. The more reluctant, the better. That probably comes from a lifetime of growing up in the church and finding the crucifix really moving.
When I find characters that realize that they have to sacrifice themselves for the good of the group, I find that really cool. Reluctant dad figures are another one that I really like. They fit into a similar category of “I’m gonna do everything I can to protect this vulnerable creature that’s with me, even if it means I have to give up my own life.”
How do you draw faith lessons from a film without shoehorning faith into the way that you watch a film?
Not every movie fits neatly into the liturgical calendar. There are a lot of films that I love that didn’t end up in this book because they don’t fit specific theological themes. There are certain movies that I love that I would never put in a book on faith and spirituality because I don’t agree with the perspective. Which isn’t to say that it’s not worth dissecting, but I don’t know, if I were to write a book about the spirituality of Yorgos Lanthimos movies, a lot of people are going to get mad and rightfully so.
In college, I took an anthropology class that was looking at cultures of violence and violent conflicts. A lot of it, surprise, came from colonization. We ended up watching The Battle of Algiers (1966) — great movie. It’s about the French occupation of Algeria and the [pauses] I guess you could call them terrorists — the people who lived there, who did not want to be colonized, and responded violently, a lot of that being bombs in public places.
[Watching the film], you’re spending a lot of time with these Algerian people who believe they are fighting for the right thing. They are actually really heartbroken to feel they have to commit to violence. They’re so angry and they don’t see [their anger] being responded to [unless they use violence].
That was the same week the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds (2009) came out. Incidentally, it happened to use some of the same music as The Battle of Algiers. Watching it at the same time and having that in the back of my brain, I had this one example of large-scale violence being used in a movie that helped me understand the people that I was watching. And there was this other extremely violent movie, where in some cases I did understand the motivations of people, and in other cases it clearly was just glorification [of violence]. It was really goofy and there for entertainment.
Between the two of them … it helped me figure out how to dialogue with film as a person of faith and let it be a dialogue and not so much prescriptive.
What do you think of very explicitly faith-based films? It’s so easy for us to say they’re bad and regressive in their message, but if we set aside who dominates faith-based films, what do you think about the concept?
Obviously, I dislike a lot of faith-based movies. It’s not even necessarily because they are bad. They often they have lower budgets, so they tend to skimp on a lot of stuff and just hope you’ll be along for the ride because Jesus.
But a large part of what gets scrapped in that way is storytelling. You’re not telling a compelling story. You’re not providing a unique perspective on something. You’re basically giving a sermon. And not even a good sermon.
They’re not for anybody, is the thing that drives me crazy. They reinforce the beliefs of people who already have those beliefs. And if you’re making them to minister to people, you’re not meeting them where they’re at because they’re going to avoid it like the plague — they know exactly what you’re selling them, and they don’t want it.
And I don’t love the idea of a progressive version of that. The progressive version of that is to just let people honestly express their beliefs. If you’re really being true to what we consider to be the reality of progressive Christianity, you’re looking for authenticity and honesty, and you can’t really manufacture that.
Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) is a wonderful movie, and it is an excellent movie about faith, in that it is an exploration of different perspectives, different conversations, and helping us understand how [those perspectives and conversations] inform the choices the character makes.
[The film is] also really upfront about the stakes that exist for Franz Jägerstätter, a martyr who refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler and was put to death for it. Malick spends like the first third of that movie — and it is a long movie — exploring what Jägerstätter’s life is like, and it is a beautiful life. It's very quiet. He’s living in the rhythms of nature. He has a wife that he loves; he has kids that he loves; he has a town that he loves. And the whole point of that is to make you understand how difficult it was for him, emotionally, to do what he did.
There are so many ways that a faith-based film company could take that and turn it into a syrupy, holier-than-thou thing where we all just bend a knee to declare this man a saint. He is actually canonized as a saint, but Malick does this amazing thing of A) making you understand that it was not easy for him, and B) couching that experience against this view of [being] up against hatred and a fascism that is nasty and insidious and infects the minds of people who have been around your whole life, who you thought you loved and it turned out they were very different.
[Editor's note: Jägerstätter is not currently a saint. He has been beatified by the Roman Catholic Church and is called “Blessed,” which is the second stage of becoming a saint. He’s also officially venerated as a martyr.]
Another movie that does that really well is The Mission (1986), which is one of my favorite movies of all time. Again, it’s just a story about people who believed what they believe very strongly and did what they did. Not because they’re better than you, not because God made them all powerful — they all died — but because when the love of Jesus calls you to do something, and the kingdom of man calls you to do something very different, and those things are not compatible, you have to choose one or the other. And the way of God often means sacrifice, but that is what it is.
That doesn’t mean you have to go today and die for that. But, if somebody is willing to die for that, then surely it must be possible for me to open my door to a person that I disagree with, or welcome the stranger, or treat somebody who is very different from me like the human being that they are, because that is easy.
The greatest movies about faith are movies that make me feel like that.
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