Reel Redemption: The Rise of Christian Cinema is an ultra low-budget, feature-length video essay comprised entirely of found material (movie, television, and YouTube clips) commissioned by, and available exclusively through, Faithlife TV, a family-friendly streaming platform.
First, let's be clear what this documentary is not. It is not a comprehensive history of Christianity as expressed through the medium of film. Nor is it a history of the American church's involvement with the corporate Hollywood industry. You will not learn about Billy Graham's World Wide Pictures or Christian auteurs like Rolf Forsberg, Ron Ormond, or Donald W. Thompson. Rather, this is a thoughtful and stimulating survey of Christians' often contentious relationship with Hollywood, their emergence as a powerful moviegoing demographic, and their dramatic rise as a modern industry with powerful--if uneven and unpredictable--box office clout. It is also a critical yet optimistic look at the difficulties of representing spiritual truth--which resists visualization--in a visual medium for a congregation of viewers perpetually uncomfortable with ambiguity and abstraction, the very qualities that sustain art.
Smith, who wrote, edited, and narrates the film skillfully, belongs to an emerging class of young evangelical scholars who are both traditionally religious and cinema-literate. A prolific reviewer and podcaster, Smith is ideally positioned within a burgeoning discourse at the intersection of art and faith. He understands film language, but just as importantly, he understands Christians, and is more interested in building bridges than burning them.
The essay begins, appropriately enough, in the silent era, highlighting prominent examples of religious subject matter in epics like DeMille's The Ten Commandments, and speeds along to the ascendance of the Motion Picture Production Code and its powerful partnership with the Catholic Legion of Decency. Smith then goes on to demonstrate how the mainstream church gradually turned against Hollywood when the Code was replaced by the ratings system, climaxing with the boycott of the The Last Temptation of Christ. (Practicing a little self-censorship himself, Smith chooses one of the more anodyne clips--the raising of Lazarus--to illustrate that film's controversial retelling of the gospel narrative.)
Up to that point, very little in Reel Redemption deviates from broadly accepted film histories. Indeed, anyone who has taken a survey course on American cinema might find themselves in familiar territory. Smith, however, takes some bold discursive leaps during the essay's final third, which shines a spotlight on a rejuvenated Christian film industry that saw the release of The Omega Code--an independent effort that placed on the U. S. box office chart in 1999--and reached its apotheosis with The Passion of the Christ, which sent shock waves throughout the secular entertainment industry.
The content that came out of this new era of faith-based filmmaking has largely been disparaged--often with good reason--or ignored entirely by modern scholarship, so it's refreshing to see movies like those of the Kendrick Brothers (Fireproof, Courageous, et al.) engaged seriously, or at least respectfully. As a critic, Smith is both reproving and sympathetic, calling most Christian films "propaganda" for leading with a message, then softening this critique by suggesting that they should be regarded as a genre. Perhaps his most original contribution to the discourse is the identification of the "emblem," a symbolic object similar to Hitchcock's MacGuffin that drives the plot forward and gives the audience something to focus on.
As a one-man performance, Reel Redemption is impressive, an ambitious attempt to map the iconography of faith-based film and point toward a more fruitful engagement between Christians and Hollywood. As a piece in an expanding conversation, it fills a need and a void. Even so, Smith's reach exceeds his grasp. Besides a passing reference to Bergman's The Seventh Seal, there is very little discussion of European cinema and its influence on American culture, particularly in the late 1950s and 1960s when arthouses were at the peak of their popularity. It somehow falls outside the scope of Smith's thesis to include a towering figure like Terrence Malick, the cinematic patron saint of hipster Christians, whose Tree of Life expanded and redefined what we loosely refer to as "Christian cinema." And perhaps most significantly, Smith sweeps aside a century of church-financed filmmaking with its own quirky yet industrious studio system, whose history is chronicled with the utmost dedication by scholars like Terry Lindvall and Andrew Quicke.
In short, Reel Redemption could easily have filled an entire miniseries' worth of content with archival material and interviews with surviving pioneers, with Smith a globetrotting emcee in the style of Mark Cousins. Even after an engaging hour-and-a-half, there remain uncharted oceans to explore. Will anyone be courageous enough to shoulder such an undertaking?
