Beautiful light : religious meaning in film / Roy M. Anker.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Though "religious" films usually don't get much respect in Hollywood, religion still regularly finds its way into the movies. In Beautiful Light Roy Anker seeks out the often unnoticed connections between film and religion and shows how even films that aren't overtly religious or Christian in their content can be filled with deep religious insights and spiritual meaning.

Closely examining nine critically acclaimed films, including Magnolia, The Apostle, American Gigolo , and M. Night Shyamalan's Wide Awake , Anker analyzes the ways in which these movies explore what it means to be human--and what it means, as human beings, to wrestle with a sometimes unwieldy divine presence. Addressing questions of doubt and belief, despair and elation, hatred and love, Anker's work sheds "beautiful light" on some of Hollywood's most profound and memorable films.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

What has film to do with religion? Or, for that matter, anything at all religious'? Anker asks. Quite a lot, as it happens, given the evidence of his close analyses of nine films that range from The Shawshank Redemption to Dead Man Walking and from American Gigolo to The Thin Red Line. Anker, who taught film and literature for many years at Michigan's Calvin College, a religious liberal-arts institution, brings an academic background and style to his thoughtful and informed examinations of his subjects as he searches in each for religious meaning and content. Though always persuasive and insightful, he is no stranger to hyperbole. Of the character Sonny Dewey in Robert Duvall's The Apostle, he declares, American cinema has never before seen anything remotely like him. As for Sean Penn's depiction of Matthew Poncelet in Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, it is as chilling a portrait of aloneness as there is in contemporary American film. Though not for the casual reader or ordinary filmgoer, Anker's resolutely brainy Beautiful Light will be catnip for students of religion and the cinema alike.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist