An Interview with God

There's an intriguing philosophy at work behind this seemingly meandering story, dealing with issues of blind faith, the morality of the divine and the challenges of 'staying on the path' in the modern world. However, what lets the film down is the morose and plodding nature of its execution that left it struggling to hold my attention between its titular interview scenes; while its conflict is confused and seemingly overcome by a mere change in mood rather than any attempt to address issues constructively.

I love spiritual themes. This movie missed the mark, in my opinion. It's got so much potential, but it's squandered. I loved The Shack which wasn't perfect either but it came much closer than this movie.

"Interview" asks great questions but doesn't deliver any satisfying answers. I know it's good to leave things unsaid and it's not good to spell everything out for the audience, but they leave way too much unsaid - so much that this ends up being a nothingburger.

Oh, God! Was 10x better. Evan Almighty! Was great. Bruce Almighty! Was great. And many others do a much better job. This just raises questions. It baffles me how screenwriters can get away with such a big miss. There is so much good info available on how to write a great screenplay!

Every movie can be boiled down to the "author's message." The message here is that "god is good and mysterious." Gee, thanks.

It's not clear if the author has an opinion and is simply unwilling to share it or if they only have faith and questions.

When one watches a movie with this title, it goes without saying that getting upset at concepts and presentation of religion and faith would be pretty stupid. It would be equally foolish to expect the movie to follow one's personal beliefs. So there are two bits of poor-review nonsense hopefully set out of the way, and we can get to the movie itself.

This starts out excellent: interesting premise, good acting, good characters. Both lead actors really do an excellent job in their roles and up until about halfway through the first of three "interviews", it holds up. But that's when the foundation starts crumbling and a movie that had great potential begins stumbling along.

It's not that the story line isn't interesting. There's a plot twist that is very well done and really adds to the story. It's too bad that degree of ingenuity didn't continue throughout the film.

One hopes that a presentation like this would present a bit of wisdom, wit and at least enough philosophy to make one think on important subjects. The problem is this film skirts around the important subjects with trite and incomplete answers. Parts of the movie were absurdist from a faith standpoint. Fortunately there weren't many such issues. Just the opposite in fact, as the writers and director seemed almost afraid to tackle the tough questions . They asked them... but repeatedly failed to provide any semblance of an answer.

About halfway through the film I got so fed up with "God" answering questions with a question that I wanted to strangle the writers, and some might consider it justifiable homicide.

In the end the story line fizzled out, we were (predictably) left with more questions than answers, and the theme of the show seemed to slowly teeter and face-plop. At the beginning I had high hopes, but by the end all such hope had been abandoned and we were left with the reality that this was simply another pretentious, goes-nowhere-really thud film. I wish that were not the case; would that the story had lived up to the actors potential and the message have worked-- or more accurately, that there had been a message. That's not something I can discuss without spoilers, so I'll just say that this film falls considerably short of it's potential... and that we've seen better such films. Several better such films.

This movie is exactly what it presented itself to be... and sadly not much more to challenge one's thinking beyond that. But to the actors: good job, really. Wish they'd have had better material to work from... and a far better purpose to the film.

People are going around saying that Morgan Freeman should have played God here, but David Strathairn does a pretty good job. I was impressed by the acting from both of the two leads. Brenton Thwaites clears his name a little performance wise and shows that he's capable of more than what he's been offered in the past. It's a straightforward setup, a guy is gonna interview a man who tells him that he's God. From there on it starts out interesting. There's clever dialogue thrown back and forth. And yes, my attention very clearly on every word said. But as soon as we move away from the interview aspect the story crumbles. It's never as interesting as those interview parts. I know there's effort there, but its approach to tell the mundane story didn't latch on to me.

Lookswise it's nothing that stands out. Simple framing and narrative. But honestly they didn't need to push the execution. The simplicity is good enough when watching two characters have interesting things to say. Speaking of that, the film definitely should have put more focus on the actual conversations. Because that's what held my attention. The stuff that happens in between went with the convoluted "we gotta have these curveballs of drama and mishy-mashy, sugar-coat, sweet turning points". Jeez, it's ok movie. The conversation of what a man and a God can have about life (and whatever else) is your great subject. Use it wisely. To be fair, the Journalists story that you follow isn't bad per say. I's uneventful compared to what this movie could have reached. The third act almost fell apart, which made it end on a very safe note.

So it's an OK little movie. The conversation scenes and performances were good. The rest is merely your usual soap opera. Last thing to say is that it's not that long and decently easy to watch.

Ken Aguado has written a clever script about spirituality, that emphasizes questions rather than answers, and includes some unexpected plot twists. The acting is uniformly good. David Strathairn provides a convincing performance as God. The music is haunting and sets the tone beautifully. One drawback about seeing this film in the theater was the jarring cut to an irreverent interviewer at the end, before the credits. I would have preferred some time (with a little music) to contemplate the movie themes, followed perhaps by some suggested discussion questions that groups could use as a starting point for sharing their reactions. Sorry, but the tacked on interview was really awful.