Nearly fourteen years ago, when this blog was young (in fact, it might have been before I even bought the URL), I wrote a post on ‘Christian’ movies and how most of them were terrible when they really don’t have to be. It’s been over a decade and it feels written by a different person —as do many older essays, facebook posts, and emails. But I’d be remiss if I said the core point didn’t still work: so many faith-y, ‘Christian’ movies suck because they’re often so much more concerned with preachifying a sermon rather than trying to tell a story.
And the truth is, faith is a tricky thing to show in stories. The pressure to make a character an idealized representation of a belief system means stripping away any flaws that might make them an imperfect Christian (unless the plot is them becoming a better Christian)1. Everything has to be sanitized and clean, lest you accidentally offend the sensibilities of a pearl-clutcher or introduce any measure of nuance into an inflexible religious code. Any and all problems have to be solved at the end (often by a quite literal deus ex machina) because it is imperative to remind—and pontificate to—the audience that faith in God will solve everything. There’s a summation attributed to David McFadzean about the typical Christian movie: it’s a lot like porn — “It has terrible acting. It has a tiny budget. And you know exactly how it’s going to end.”[x] That extended diatribe to say I am wary of any movie (or novel, or whatever story) that purports to put ‘faith’ front and center. (As an aside, ‘non-Christian’ movies don’t often fare much better, painting in broad strokes that all-too-often results in a funhouse mirror image of a person of faith)
Enter Wake Up Dead Man.
This is a movie that I will discuss obliquely, since I deliberately avoided any and all promotional material for it, wanting to enjoy all its twists and turns as it happens and want you, reader, to have the option to do the same.
Wake Up Dead Man is a movie about faith and, without hyperbole, probably the best movie about faith I’ve seen in quite some time. As with the other Benoit Blanc movies, there is a murder at the center. Surrounding said murder is an insular Catholic church and its small congregation led by two priests: the older Monsignor Wick and the newcomer Father Jud. Tension is rife between Wick’s neo-fundamentalist us-against-the-world view of faith and Jud’s welcoming belief in loving your neighbor, whoever they might be. Added to that is Benoit Blanc, the great detective and atheist who holds a very, very dim view of religion.
This is a movie about faith but it’s not a Christian movie. It is not about faith and religion with the rest of the world in absentia. There is no preoccupation with defining the tenets of Christianity, nor is there a sermon meant to edify the viewer’s religious views. And, of course, there is no need to convert the irreligious Blanc to a ‘true’ religion. This is a movie about the nature of faith — and what faith means to its adherents. Who is drawn to a faith practice? How does that faith manifest in their lives? Do people turn to religion for comfort? For hope? To feel better than those outside it? What does it mean to believe?
Reflecting real life, Wake Up Dead Man does not try to present a correct, universal answer to these questions. The movie shows the works of faith and how it’s used to justify hate and justify love. Monsignor Wicks uses his religion as a shell agains the purported evils of the world. Father Jud fights to show love and grace to everyone and live as Christ would, even when it’s difficult and even at his own expense. But is Jud’s character an expression of his commitment to his faith, or is his commitment to his faith an expression of his character? Faith is a personal question and Wake Up Dead Man lets them hang with you as the credits roll rather than offer a pithy platitude.
Not to say it’s all a serious meditation. Wake Up Dead Man maintains that sardonic, satirical silliness that ran through Knives Out and Glass Onion. And, of course, it’s still an excellent and satisfying murder mystery. As important as faith is to the narrative, it doesn’t come at the expense of, y’know, everything else that makes a movie worth watching. And that, that wholeness and honesty in its attitude towards it all, helps make Wake Up Dead Man such a beautiful story about faith.
- I’m using faith and Christian interchangeably here, as much of the faith-y movies I know are rooted in (American Evangelical) Christianity and it is the faith tradition I’m most familiar with. ↩︎
Essays, Not Rants! 