helpful insights
You can read my fuller review at Spoiled Milks (8/2/19).
How do movies have this effect on us? Are directors, producers, and editors merely trying to play with our emotions? To manipulate us? How are we to rightly interpret a movie? How should Christians approach movies? Just as many people wear glasses with "carefully calibrated lenses" so that we can se the world in focus, in Deep Focus, Robert Johnston, Craig Detweiler, and Kutter Callaway (JDC from now on) seek to bring you "a series of lenses to help us discern more clearly the images projected before us" (3).
JDC use the analogy of a phoropter, that funny-looking machine at the eye doctor. The series of lenses they offer come in the following chapters: historical, narrative, audiovisual, critical, ecclesial, theological, ethical, and a cultural lens. The book ends with a converging of these lenses by looking at :the trauma of love in the films of Christopher Nolan."
Recommended?
The subtitle to the book is "Film and Theology in Dialogue." The theology is strewn throughout the book. References to God and Christ are made, and section are filled with Bible verses. Ecclesiastes makes an appearance more than once, as movies can often show the vanity of the material world, even while praising it. However, I was disappointed at how much (or little) theological discussion there was. But perhaps that was due more to my own expectations rather than what the book itself promised.
This book is not a simple read, but it provides a good dimension on how to think through movies. It has given me a new appreciation for movies, and to be less skeptical toward them, though still cautious at understanding which ones will linger with me negatively (like horror movies). Movies can help give us a grand vision, a reminder of the eternity placed in our hearts which points us to how things should be, something that can only be accomplished by Christ.
