The Chosen, Season 4: Lectio Divina or Fan Fiction?
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Release Date: 09/23/2024
Revisiting Malick's A Hidden Life (2019)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James, Thomas, and Nathan Douglas conclude their journey through Terrence Malick's filmography (thus far) with a discussion of the film that introduced him to many Catholics: A Hidden Life, about the Austrian martyr Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, who was killed for refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler. Coming after Malick's avant-garde phase of the Weightless Trilogy, A Hidden Life is a more conventional narrative but retains much of the stylistic and formal development of his past few films. Links Original episode on A Hidden Life New Polity podcast on Bl. Franz SIGN UP for...
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Triumph of the Heart director faced glorious trials making great Catholic art - w/ Anthony D'Ambrosio
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Anthony D’Ambrosio directed, wrote, and produced the outstanding new film Triumph of the Heart about St. Maximilian Kolbe. In this inspiring interview, he discusses the difficult path he and his team charted to produce this independent film with a low budget, high artistic standards, and deep Catholic spirituality. Film is an expensive medium. Since a high budget requires one to calculate mainstream appeal in order to make one’s money back, a low budget can leave more room for artistic and spiritual integrity. Though the production faced many hardships, it was buoyed up by the hope that...
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US army chaplain meets Italian monks in Paisan (1946)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Roberto Rossellini's 1946 World War II film Paisan has a unique structure: six vignettes following the American troops north from their landing in Sicily through Naples, Rome, Florence, Romagna, and the Po Delta. However, the film takes the perspective of the Italians, with the Americans more often than not naive outsiders. It is a fascinating exploration of the clash of cultures in the tragic scenarios of war and foreign occupation. One segment in particular will be very interesting to Catholics: an American priest serving as an army chaplain visits a Franciscan monastery along with his...
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He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas discuss the original creepy clown movie, He Who Gets Slapped, starring Lon Chaney in an amazing performance as scientist Paul Beaumont, who suffers a mental breakdown after his research and his wife are stolen by a wealthy baron. Leaving his former world behind, Beaumont becomes a circus clown known only as He, whose entire act consists of attempting to say profound things while being slapped and ridiculed by the other clowns, recreating his trauma - until one day, he comes back into contact with the man who betrayed him... The film explores the effect that the crowd's ...
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Triumph of the Heart is a film worthy of its subject, St. Maximilian Kolbe
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas review an outstanding and very intense new film about St. Maximilian Kolbe, directed and written by Anthony D'Ambrosio. Triumph of the Heart is set mostly in the starvation cell in Auschwitz as Kolbe and his companions try to find a way to die with hope and dignity. Don't miss it, in theaters Sept. 12. SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: DONATE to keep this podcast going: Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission.
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A hard world for little things: The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas discuss one of their favorite films, The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton. It’s about the sacred innocence of children, and discerning true vs. false prophets. A unique mix of fairy tale, horror, and Southern gothic with expressionist visuals, The Night of the Hunter contains some of the most striking and poetic sequences ever filmed. SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: DONATE to keep this podcast going: Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission.
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Hitchcock's I Confess and the world's failure to understand priesthood
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1953 film I Confess, a young priest in Quebec City is suspected of murder because of his unwillingness to break the seal of confession. A major theme of the film is the incomprehension with which the world sees the priesthood, such that people project their own sins onto the priest, resulting in a kind of white martyrdom. SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: DONATE to keep this podcast going: Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission.
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The Ritual portrays exorcism accurately, but is stuck in genre cliches
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
The new exorcism film The Ritual, starring Al Pacino and Dan Stevens, is based on the famous 1928 exorcism of Emma Schmidt, which also partially inspired The Exorcist. The Ritual is touted as more realistic and meticulously researched than most exorcism films, and it does seem to portray the rite of exorcism accurately (as the title indicates, most of the film is focused on the ritual itself). The film avoids many of the worst pitfalls of exorcism movies, such as fascination with the glamor of evil, sadism, etc. It is a Catholic-approvable treatment of the subject in that it avoids theological...
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Fragmented sexuality in Malick's To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, & Song to Song
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
00:00 Introduction 12:44 Form 1:04:15 Themes 1:28:17 Moral problems 1:52:00 Favorite sequences After the artistic triumph of his magnum opus The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick had an unwontedly prolific period, releasing To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015), and Song to Song (2017). In these films, known informally as the "Weightless Trilogy", Malick took his previous formal experimentation even further, relying heavily on improvisation stitched together with a stream-of-consciousness editing style evoking the fragments of memory. The results are undeniably aesthetically exciting,...
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Crucifixion darkness: Barabbas (1961)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Barabbas is an unusual specimen of the midcentury Hollywood Biblical epic, more spiritually searching (and edgier) than its peers. Starring Anthony Quinn as the criminal released by Pilate in place of Christ, Barabbas is based on a 1950 novel by Nobel winner Pär Lagerkvist (recently by Anthony Esolen among the greatest religious novels of the 20th century). It follows Barabbas through a long life in the shadow of the Cross, haunted and struggling to comprehend the meaning of having had his life exchanged for Christ’s. He becomes almost an archetype of human resistance to grace – but in...
info_outlineThe Chosen has now passed the halfway point of its seven seasons. Four seasons in, it is possible to take a big-picture look at the show’s trajectory.
Season four takes us from the execution of John the Baptist to the raising of Lazarus, ending on the verge of Holy Week with the apostles preparing for Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Biblical threads throughout the season include the falling away of Judas, and Jesus’ sorrow and frustration at his disciples’ inability to hear His predictions of His imminent death.
This season still has some of the great moments that have made The Chosen worthwhile, and these scenes are highlighted in the discussion. Jonathan Roumie's performance as Jesus remains the show's greatest strength. Unfortunately, though, the show’s weaknesses have begun to get out of hand, to the point where even its otherwise great moments are significantly undermined.
The first major issue is with the creativity of the writers. At its best, the show has shed new light on moments from the Gospel by noticing small details of Scripture and fleshing them out. Invented backstories for the Apostles served to support and color the Biblical account.
But in season four, the writers seem to be caught up in their own story ideas, so that even the Gospel moments are overshadowed by wholesale invention. Instead of enhancing the viewer’s understanding of Scripture, the show increasingly interprets the Gospel events through the lens of fictional subplots, in a way that is necessarily reductive, necessarily less interesting, and often clumsily executed. One particular fictional plotline is so badly conceived and so distracting from the Gospel that much of season four is genuinely hard to watch.
Another thing consistently undermining the show’s strengths is its busyness, and in particular its tendency to overexplain Jesus’ words from Scripture rather than letting them resonate. This problem is not new, but it stands out all the more in a weak season.
Br. Joshua Vargas and Nathan Douglas join James and Thomas for a deep and entertaining discussion of these and many other aspects of the show.
Links
Thomas's essay on Angel Studios https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/angel-studios-hype/
Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com