This is a bit late, but over at Jim Emerson’s Scanners are a couple of posts that illustrate why I like that blog a lot . . . the first proposes an hypothetical Atheist Film Fest, with a little bit of Christopher Hitchens thrown in for good measure, and calls for submissions. The second follows it up with a discussion of Psycho III, of all films.

The responses to these posts shows how difficult it is to pin down just what one means when one tries to label a film “atheist” or “theological” or “Christian” for that matter. There are obvious examples, especially on the Christian side — The Passion of the Christ being the most notorious recent example. But most films are not so easy to pin down. Is Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc anti-Christian (i.e., against the Christian faith) or anti-Church? Is a film like Viridiana, made by the notoriously anti-Catholic Luis Buñuel, really anti-faith, really atheistic?

What about films that address–either in dialog, visual metaphor, or what have you–theological themes? Francis Ford Coppola’s powerful ending to The Godfather intercut Michael Corleone’s violent accession to power with scenes of his god-child’s baptism. Is the sequence anti-Church, anti-Christian, anti-God, or simply anti-hypocritical-mobster? Or is there something more subtle at work, conflating the religious family of the church with the mafia family of Michael? Comparing biblical family sagas–say that of Isaac with favored and not-so-favored sons–with the Corleone family might be a fertile basis for analysis.

Then there are films that don’t register on the theological scale hardly at all, that are a-theistic (without-god) in the purest sense. Some of my favorites are in the French humanist tradition (e.g., La Règle du jeu and especially Jules et Jim). Films by Japanese directors, although at times surrounded by the trappings of religion, often play out without reference to them. In Ozu’s Tokyo Story, for instance, the Hirayama family’s domestic drama occurs without any seeking of comfort or answers from the divine, without any overt wondering what life is all about; it just is what it is. Is this a reflection of Bhuddist acceptance, of the belief that it is up to each person to find nirvana? Only at the end, at the memorial service for mother Tomi held in a temple, is religion explicitly referenced. In this the Hirayamas are like many nominal Christians, who seek the church only in times of transition or extremis.

In the end, the theological or religious content–or lack of it–of any given film is subjective. Whatever the filmmakers’ intentions, audiences project upon them–as they do upon all art–their own contexts, their own stuff. Because of this, some of what we dedicated theology-sniffers see in a film will not be put there by its director; sometimes a cross is just an ‘X’. By the same token, just because such content is unintentional on the part of the filmmakers doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. The sacred is such a part of the cultural milieu in which many Westerners, at least, were raised that it is bound to creep in unannounced. A work of art is, in the end, judged by itself, not the artist.