Craig Detweiler

Tree of Life: From Genesis to Revelation

Craig Detweiler — Thu, 26 May 2011 09:45:19 -0700

Tree of Life resurrects the era when Hollywood still aspired to greatness. Not since 2001: A Space Odyssey (or less successfully, The Fountain) has a filmmaker attempted to capture both the origins of life and our ultimate destination. Director Terrence Malick came of age when movies still mattered. And with Tree of Life, only his fifth feature in forty years, Malick has drawn upon ancient biblical wisdom to prod and comfort adventuresome filmgoers. Some will find it tedious and overreaching. But those who surrender to the resplendent images may find the experience unexpectedly healing.

Countless stories have started with the problem of pain. We wonder why the innocent suffer. Why do bad things happen to good people? Tree of Life opens with quotations from the book of Job. In the biblical narrative, Job loses his wife, his children, his health and his home. Friends offer bad advice, blaming him for his ordeal, suggesting he repent from whatever sins caused God to send so much suffering.

Job is understandably tempted to curse God. Malick has chosen source material ripe for drama. In 1959, Archibald MacLeish turned the trials of Job into the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, J.B. Yet, Tree of Life focuses not upon the losses of Job but upon the overwhelming answer from God. Ultimately, Job is humbled by a God’s barrage of questions rooted in creation. “Where you there, Job?” “Did you set this all in motion?” Tree of Life dares to offer a divine perspective on tragedy.

Without that framework, Tree of Life may seem random and intractable. It is a poetic meditation on loss. It unfolds as a visual symphony with five or six movements centered around a core aspect of life: death, birth, the age of awareness. The sections are separated by musical cues rather than plot twists. The soundtrack includes classical compositions by Bach, Brahms, and Holst and contemporary requiems by Henryk Goreki, John Tavener and Mother Thekla. The threadbare plot flows from tragedy to creation, and from innocence to experience. A family is invited to move from grief to surrender. And viewers are taken from Genesis to Revelation.

This film has been years in the making. Anticipation among cinephiles has been huge. It just won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Best Picture. Tree of Life is worth the wait. But will most people miss this movie that deserves to be seen on the big screen? Will the Christian community that often wonders why Hollywood doesn’t make anything for them pass on The Tree of Life for retreads like The Hangover Part II and Transformers 3? I am all for popcorn movies, but in this case, I’ll opt for something that truly feeds the soul. Check out my full review of Tree of Life here.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (Live Video Discussion w/ Producer Stephen McEveety)

Conversant Live — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:28:44 -0700

The Stoning of Soraya M with Stephen McEveety from Peter Joel on Vimeo.

TheStoning.com

TheStoningParable.com

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Summer 2009 @ The Movies

Craig Detweiler — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:57:20 -0700

Craig Detweiler: Summer 2009 Movies from CJ Casciotta on Vimeo.

MTV Interview: The Church & American Idol

CJ Casciotta — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:09:24 -0700

A while back I wrote a blog called American Idol: Good for TV, Bad for Church which came to the attention of MTV Senior Writer, Gil Kauffman. Gil wanted to know why so many Christians were not only tuning into "Idol" this year, but also performing on the show. He took a couple of quotes from our conversation and put them into his story for MTV.com. Here's an excerpt:

Just as this season kicked off, freelance writer CJ Casciotta penned an essay for faith site ConversantLife.com titled "American Idol — Good for TV. Bad for Church," in which he questioned whether the show's shunning of the "awkward, the socially inept, the ugly, the difficult" during the often cruel early rounds shouldn't be a call to action for the rest of us to embrace those whose lives are a struggle.

Casciotta's interest was piqued when he heard "Shout to the Lord" on "Idol" last season, and he suspects that the inclusion was an overt attempt to court Christian viewers. "The people at 'American Idol' are not idiots. They realize that there's this huge percentage of America that watches TV as a family, and a lot of families go to church. ... [The viewers] know worship leaders and musicians in church, and why not bring that aspect to the show?" he said.

He suspected that the inclusion of so many people of faith on "Idol" this year is part of a trend Christian music has been undergoing over the past decade, growing out of its cloistered corner and going more mainstream without losing its core values. "People who are Christians have a platform through 'American Idol' to write their songs and share their stories, and it doesn't have to fit in with the traditional Christian or worship genre," he said.

In fact, Casciotta said, he thinks Christian voters could end up being the deciding factor in this year's finals. "I would hope for people of faith that they would judge solely by talent," he said. "But if it came down to it, and the two [finalists] were equally talented and one was Christian, people would vote for that person who shares our faith."

To read the full article click here.

I also mentioned to Gil when we talked that I believe the church has had it backwards for a few decades now. Instead of creating culture, we instead settle for copying it. Centuries ago it was quite the opposite. The church was the epicenter for culture creators. Everything from music, to art, to architecture was birthed from it. Perhaps one of the reasons so many Christ Followers are auditioning for American Idol is, in a small way, due to this new renaissance of artistic expression erupting from within the church walls and overflowing to the "outside world." Perhaps, and hopefully, Christians are sensing the freedom to use their unique gifts and talents in and for a culture where every circumstance carries some kind of spiritual significance to it.

I'm interested, what are your thoughts? Do you see this shift happening too? If so, where? Do you agree that this is a good thing? Does anything concern you?

A great video featuring one of my heroes, Craig Detweiler, that hits on my point exactly about halfway through: