Theology and Screenwriting

I must confess, I've recently made personal commitment. A personal commitment to something that has always been in the back of mind, no matter how hard I've tried to ignore it. Growing up in the church may or may not be a good thing, depending on your world view. It can either give you a ground work on the dealings of faith and a zest for all things theologica, or if you prefer, it brain washes you into a belief system you that adds a permanent scar on your psyche. I've held both points of view at one time or another.

But I can't help shake thoughts of God or an after life, or subscribing some sort of meaning to the events in my life. And I can't ignore that fact that things that give thought to some sort of supreme power or purpose are just way more interesting than not believing.

I've been reading a lot of those philosophy and _____ books. i.e. Philosophy and The Matrix, Philosophy and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Philosophy and Quentin Tarantino. Those have been some of my favorite reads so far. And I feel they can be very helpful to a screenwriter, but that's another topic all together.

When reading these books, they main topic that keeps popping up is ethics and how it relates to the subject. In the book about Tarantino, there is a good read on the ethics of criminals and the idea of Mexican standoffs. But I can't help but take it one step further and see the connection between Theology and things of pop culture. And I find it's not too hard to see them if you're willing to look.

I say all this because two movies I saw this week relate to theology:

#4 Luther -Thespian Joseph Fiennes plays the great theologian and father of the Protestant faith Martin Luther. A great little film on the history of the church and the great schism with the Catholic church. Luther is a very important and very interesting person. Fiennes does a great job presenting the struggles with faith and tradition that Luther encountered. The church, however noble we make it out to be, has a rich history of mistakes and evil thats not easy to come to terms with. But Luther stands strong on his convictions and provides a model of faith that ought to be emulated.

5# Gran Torino - On the other hand, Gran Torino presents a more worldly view point of faith. The world is full of awful and misguided people. Some have evolved to the point of recognizing the conflict of their own convictions and how they mesh with how they've acted through the years. It's a point well represented by a character like Clint Eastwood. And I call him a character because it's Eastwood playing the person we've all come to associate him as. And along with that character comes a sense that the world isn't operating on the same codes or ethics that we've come to believe as important or right. It is tale of life and death and redemption from the past. (spoiler) It's one man dying for another. It's one man's final attempt to put things right. It's very catholic in the sense that the deeds we do here define our existence and it's never too late to put things right. Leave this world a better place than the way you found it and you can be certain of justification.