Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast CatholicCulture.org

Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List - which was included on the Vatican's 1995 list of important films - is generally acclaimed as a masterpiece, yet some critics have called it a Hollywood falsification of its subject matter, either because it does not sufficiently show the brutality of the Holocaust, because the story  is told from the point of view of a German, because it has (in some respects) a happy ending, or because (according to the critique of Shoah director Claude Lanzmann) any fictional portrayal whatsoever of the Holocaust is necessarily a transgression.
It is true that while Schindler's List conveys not a little of the horror of the Holocaust, it is also the work of a master entertainer, Steven Spielberg. For a 3 hour, 15 minute drama about genocide, it is remarkably watchable; and indeed, compared with many other movies of the same length, it positively flies by. Shouldn't a film about the Holocaust be a bit more...unbearable?
In this discussion of the film, James and Thomas take these questions seriously, while ultimately vindicating Spielberg's work. While there are things a popular Hollywood drama is not going to accomplish, it is legitimate to portray terrible events in a way that is honest and yet does not actually traumatize the viewer. A film that exercises more restraint will perhaps be more successful in carrying on the memory of the dead to future generations than one which is such an unrelenting immersion in evil that few can bear to watch it.
Meanwhile, the film, while not being unwatchably brutal, offers a real spiritual challenge to the viewer, one which will especially resonate with those who study to imitate the lives of the saints. Those who object to telling the story from the perspective of a real-life German savior of eleven hundred Jews are missing the point.
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Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

It’s time for another lively discussion of the wildly popular Christian TV series The Chosen, following on the release of its third season, which stretches from the sermon on the mount to the feeding of the five thousand. Since the show is written by Evangelical Protestants, Thomas and James make a point of keeping an eye out for any doctrinal errors, and Br. Joshua Vargas joins to share his knowledge of Scripture and ancient Jewish and Christian culture and practices. The good news is that season three (unlike the 2021 Christmas special) is The Chosen’s least doctrinally problematic season yet.
By this time the show has hit its stride, having established a consistent set of strengths and weaknesses. The chief strength, as always, is Catholic actor Jonathan Roumie’s performance as Jesus. As Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees becomes more open, we get to see him in a more provocative and even stern mode than before The show’s portrayal of the spiritual value of suffering and the importance of Peter as head of the apostles both tend in a more Catholic direction as well. And its unashamed faith in the supernatural aspects of Jesus’ earthly ministry continues to edify, with the apostles themselves now being given authority to perform signs and wonders.
After somewhat holding back their non-doctrinal criticisms while The Chosen got off the ground in its first two seasons, James, Thomas, and Br. Joshua now critique the show’s aesthetic weaknesses, which may be as much a product of today’s pop storytelling as of Evangelical Protestantism. Often this takes the form of “telling” rather than “showing”. The least interesting moments are when character drama takes the form of bickering, in which we are expected to believe the stakes are high despite the apparent pettiness of the conflict.
In general, there is a lack of faith in subtext, so that while often the show’s expansion of the terse Gospel accounts is illuminating, at times it actually diminishes their impact, especially when extended fictional backstories are allowed to overwhelm real Gospel moments.
There are also moments when the show’s emotional tenor keeps it from portraying large-scale scenes such as the feeding of the five thousand in an appropriately awe-inspiring way. As Br. Joshua puts it, “The show excels much more at making intimate scenes feel epic than at making large scenes feel epic.”
Finally, the writing, while good in many ways, frequently resorts to jarringly anachronistic language, at times betraying a lack of sensitivity to how different ways of speaking reveal different ways of thinking. The writers seem to think that while people in the ancient world may have had different opinions from us, their basic emotional experience of reality was the same as ours. It was not. Certain quips put into these first-century characters’ mouths are self-aware and self-referential in a way unmistakably a product of the age of mass entertainment and social media.
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Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

Earlier on this podcast was discussed Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Another of Dreyer's films was also included on the Vatican film list, this one from the sound era: Ordet (The Word), based on a play by the Lutheran priest Kaj Munk, who was later martyred by the Gestapo.
The film centers on the Borgen family, land-owning farmers in a small village in Denmark. The patriarch, Morton Borgen, is a religious man, but his oldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while his second son Johannes, while studying theology, has gone mad and believes he is Jesus Christ Himself.
Ordet can be viewed as a provocative critique of a modern Christianity that no longer believes in miracles. Its astonishing conclusion throws down the gauntlet, forcing us to consider what it really means to have faith.
This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio
Go to Catholic Culture's website for tons of written content, including news, articles, liturgical year info, and a vast library of documents: https://www.catholicculture.org
Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

The Leopard was one of the most popular Italian novels of the 20th century. An historical epic about a Sicilian prince who must navigate the social upheaval that came with Italy's unification in the mid-19th century, it was written by a man who was in a position to know about fading aristocracy - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was a Sicilian aristocrat and the last Prince of Lampedusa, and his novel was inspired by his great-grandfather.
This novel, which paid tribute to the old order while taking a decidedly pessimistic view of liberalism's promise of a new dawn for mankind, was adapted into a classic film starring Burt Lancaster and directed by Luchino Visconti. Though Visconti was a Communist, he was also the descendant of Milanese nobility, and made a film which treats the old nobility with sympathy, yet without rose-colored glasses.
The Leopard (1963) was included on the Vatican's 1995 list of great films, under the category of Art. Joining the podcast to discuss this film is David Paul Baird, co-author of a book on the Vatican film list forthcoming from Word on Fire.
This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio
Go to Catholic Culture's website for tons of written content, including news, articles, liturgical year info, and a vast library of documents: https://www.catholicculture.org
Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice, is a deeply personal work, made while the director was dying of cancer. It deals, in Tarkovsky’s words, with "the theme of harmony which is born only of sacrifice, the twofold dependence of love. It's not a question of mutual love: what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love." For this reason, perhaps, it was included in the 1995 Vatican film list, in the category of Religion.
To put it simply, the film’s protagonist, a middle-aged Swedish man, realizes that he must make a sacrifice to God in order to avert the onset of nuclear war. In its concrete plot, The Sacrifice is rather mysterious and surreal. Yet even if it doesn’t totally work as a literal story, its themes of love, faith, fatherhood, and the dire spiritual situation of modern man are handled economically and intelligibly. Still, guest host Nathan Douglas suggests that The Sacrifice should not be the first film you watch by Tarkovsky—perhaps it should even be saved for last.
Letterboxd review mentioned in discussion https://letterboxd.com/kilo_orange/film/the-sacrifice/
Behind-the-scenes footage from the house-burning scene (1:13:39-1:27:00)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Rd6PbSmHM
Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com
This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio
Go to Catholic Culture's website for tons of written content, including news, articles, liturgical year info, and a vast library of documents: https://www.catholicculture.org

Animation director Timothy Reckart (The Star) joins Criteria to discuss his theory that the greatest action movie of recent years, Mad Max: Fury Road, is best viewed in light of Pope St. John Paul II's theology of the body.
Themes of the discussion include:
The film's depiction of a society based on use of persons as objects How the story reverses the very mechanisms of that use and domination and transforms them into means of self-giving love Storytelling through action rather than dialogue How this apparently feminist film complicates an ideological reading Complementarity rather than enmity between the sexes Note: This discussion contains adult themes.
Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com
This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio