Appendix 2: Jesus and the Crucifix

Faith and Culture

The use of the crucifix in films has become more prevalent since the 1980s. It was frequently part of the set design as a quick indication of Christianity or belief. However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, more secular times, the cross and the crucifix have been used by Christian and non-Christian directors alike to give some religious depth to their films. Steven Spielberg is a striking illustrator of this in his Amistad (1997).

Gospel stories and Gospel images are an intrinsic part of world culture, especially Western culture. The metaphors of crucifixion, resurrection, son of God, and miracles are used by believer and nonbeliever alike. A distinction can be made between the “Christ of faith”/the “Christianity of faith” and the “Christ of culture”/the “Christianity of culture.” The former is lived Christianity, commitment (however minimal), belief, and an acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord and Savior, usually in a church community. The latter is an understanding and use of the tenets and stories of Christianity that does not necessarily involve any personal commitment. Christian stories, images, and metaphors are available to everyone as part of world cultural heritage. Filmmakers generally use aspects of the Christianity of culture.

However, there has been, since the middle of the nineteenth century, a terminology related to biblical interpretation and theological study. It is associated with rationalist scholar, Ernest Renan. A distinction was made between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.” Attempts were made, in the name of historical accuracy, to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth, or the Jesus of history. The commitment of believers in the Gospels was to the Christ of faith. This distinction is still used, but, with the developments in biblical studies and the growth of a personalized spirituality centered on Jesus, it is less useful and helpful than it was. It is not useful in reference to understanding Jesus-figures.

In cinema, writers and directors present Jesus-figures and Christ-figures. One might ask how the distinction between faith and culture relates to these figures, to “faith/Jesus-figures” and to “culture/Jesus-figures,” to “faith/crucifixes” and to “culture/crucifixes.” (A suggestion has been made that the latter might be represented in type in lower case: jesus-figures.) However, it is difficult to assess faith and/or culture in popular cinema since the director may be drawing on faith experience while asserting the portrait is cultural. A useful example is The Last Temptation of Christ based on Greek Orthodox Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, Calvinist Paul Schrader’s screenplay, with Catholic director, Martin Scorsese. Is this “fictional” portrait a faith/Jesus or a culture/Jesus—or both?

The Crucifix, Icon and Symbol

Some examples of films from the 1980s and 1990s that offer images of the crucifix in popular films can be found in my essay, “Jesus on Screen” in John R. May’s collection New Images of Religious Film. The films included there are Lilies of the Field; some films that use Catholic images in connection with a homosexual orientation (The Fourth Man, The Long Day Closes, and The Garden); and dramas like The Penitent, A Prayer for the Dying, Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane, The Lawnmower Man, and Born on the Fourth of July. The use of the crucifix also includes the graphic use of the cross in connection with the Dracula myth in the prologue of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and in the hallucination scene, discussed earlier, in Bad Lieutenant. The crucifix can also make a judgment about the characters and situations. In the corridors of The Nun’s Story (1959), there is a very large crucifix dominating the space, the sisters, and the stern formation the novices are undergoing. In Christopher Columbus (1991), Torquemada (played by Marlon Brando) interrogates Columbus about his expeditions, quoting St. Augustine to query the efficacy of the voyages. Once again, a crucifix looms large over Torquemada.

One of the best films for discussing the role of the crucifix is Leap of Faith (1992) with Steve Martin as a phony, but big-time traveling evangelist in the American South (Jonas Nightengale). As the assembly tent is set up, a huge crucifix is raised. It dominates the charismatic meetings and the song-and-dance routines and the showbiz pizzazz. But the figure of Jesus on the cross is a mournfully dying figure, quite a contrast to Jonas’ antics. Jonas also uses earphones from his controller to urge people forward, to comment on the drought situation in the area (information gleaned from the ushers who note where the individuals are sitting and the data passed on to Jonas onstage). There is even an alleged healing.

However, in his quieter moments, Jonas goes into the tent and contemplates the crucifix, as does the camera for the audience to reflect on the true Christian meaning of what they are watching. However, ever the charlatan, Jonas puts some liquid on the eyes of Jesus and later claims the statue is weeping.

Where this thematic of the crucifix comes to a challenging climax is a scene where the young boy from the local restaurant, whose legs are crippled, believes that the faith-healer can actually heal and comes into the tent, full of faith, for a cure. Jonas hesitates—only to find that the boy is cured. While he makes another song and dance routine of the experience, he gives up his ministry.

Freedom and Human Dignity

Steven Spielberg highlights the plight of African slaves in Amistad (1997). Spielberg, with his Jewish background, powerfully uses Christian symbols, especially the cross, to dramatize the suffering of the African slaves and offer a means for interpreting its meaning. They were the new Christs. This was a new Crucifixion. The slaves identified with the Judeo-Christian stories, composed their Negro spirituals, and took so readily to literal and evangelical Christianity.

Amistad has a moving sequence in which the imprisoned slaves are looking at one of those books of stories of the Gospels and the history of the early church, which are illustrated by sketches. As they look with wonder at the life of Jesus, his miracles, his preaching, and then his suffering and death, the audience watches the slaves pondering the Crucifixion and the crosses on Calvary. They identify their suffering with that of Jesus. They also look at his Resurrection in a symbolic way rather than a scientific, analytic way and appreciate that this heaven might be a good place to go after suffering. This sequence reminds us of how readily the African slaves took up a Gospel-style Christianity. Spielberg intercuts with this sequence another in which the judge appointed by President Van Buren to condemn the slaves and who has hidden his Catholic identity goes into a church and prays before the crucifix. The next morning, as the slaves walk in chains to the courthouse, Spielberg shows the three masts of the ship Amistad (which means “Freedom”) outlined above the roofs like the three crosses in the sketches of Calvary.

Spielberg, not a Christian, is using the inherited cultural symbols from Christianity to focus a discussion on slavery using Christian insights. Spielberg also used images of the cross in Saving Private Ryan (1998). This shows the power of cinema analogies for moral discussion.

In films taking an anti–capital punishment stance, the criminal to be executed is shown with arms outstretched evocative of Jesus on the cross. This is true of The Execution of Raymond Graham (1982) with Jeff Fahey and Morgan Freeman. It is seen in Last Dance (1996) as Sharon Stone goes to her death. A Catholic context is important for the death scene of Sean Penn as Matthew Poncelet in Dead Man Walking (1995). Sister Helen Prejean had ministered to Matthew in prison when he asked for a spiritual companion before his execution. Listening to him, praying with him, singing “Be Not Afraid” with him, she virtually heard his confession, helping him perceive God’s forgiveness and love for the sinner before he died. With capital punishment, even the guilty person reminds us that Jesus died as a criminal on the cross for us all. On the cross, Jesus asked the Father to forgive his executioners, “for they know not what they do.” He forgave the repentant thief.

The end of Dead Man Walking reminds the audience of the repercussions of this kind of forgiveness. The camera tracks around the outside of the church. We see inside. Sister Helen is praying with Mr. Delacroix, who could not bring himself to forgive Matthew Poncelet. He had attended the execution. But, now he is praying with the nun, whom he differs from so profoundly. In death there can be reconciliation.

A film that audiences responded to, especially many clergy, was Priest. It began its life as a modest television film for the BBC, written by Catholic author Jimmy McGovern, who had recently moved back to the church following the death of his father and was appreciative of the help given by the priests at that sad time. McGovern was interested in the role of priests in the 1990s, the issues of celibacy and of sexual orientation, and the role of confession and its protection of secrecy for the privacy of the penitent.

The two central priests raised the celibacy issues very clearly. The parish priest was a zealous man who had spent time in Latin America as a missionary. On his return to Liverpool, he was conscious of his experience abroad, that a man was expected to be with a woman otherwise he was not truly a man. He was living in his presbytery with his housekeeper in what was formerly and technically called a “concubine.” This came as a shock and a scandal to his new assistant, Father Greg Pilkington (Linus Roache), one of the group of more traditional young men being ordained in the 1990s. However, he was tormented by his homosexual orientation. He spends the night with a man he meets at a club, then refuses him communion at Mass. When the priest meets him again, he is arrested for lewd behavior, is shamed, and attempts suicide.

One sequence is powerful in its use of the crucifix. Father Greg has become concerned over the confession of a young girl whose confession he hears and who reveals sexual abuse by her father. The priest is threatened by the father in the confessional and his own behavior attacked. Father Greg is overwhelmed and, in a very moving scene, prays desperately before the crucifix, with a strong visual focus on the crucified figure of Jesus, about God’s seeming inaction in painful experiences. He wants a miraculous intervention. He does not realize it, but because of the bickering at a parish meeting, he had ended it before time, enabling the mother of the abused girl to return home earlier than expected and discover what was happening.

Father Greg brought to the screen for the first time in a major film the issue of a priest’s sexual orientation, something that was discussed during the 1990s by the churches. The basic principle of a priest leading a celibate life no matter what his orientation had been a long tradition in the church, though one that had not been openly acknowledged in many countries. Priest surfaced questions within the context of prayer, parish ministry, and personal decisions and anguish.

While Steven Spielberg uses crucifix images again for the Ryan family and their prayer and faith during World War II in Saving Private Ryan (1998), crucifix imagery can be used as a comment on the violence and pain of war. In The English Patient (1996), Kip, the bomb disposal expert, takes the nurse Hana up in the church to look at the beauty of the religious frescoes. World War II films often move the action into a church, still standing or destroyed, to evoke a more religious response to war.

An intriguing example of the crucifix literally in the middle of war action is seen in Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One (1980). The sergeant, played by Lee Marvin, fights during World War I in Flanders Fields. In the middle of a ravaged and desolate field is a more-than-life-sized wooden crucifix. It is old and weathered. It is marked by bullets. Fuller shows the cross, evoking rather than asking for an emotional response to the battle and for audiences to reflect on the Gospel message in the context of war.

The sergeant returns to Flanders in World War II after fighting with his young soldiers in North Africa, in the invasion of Italy, and at Normandy. The crucifix is still there. But a German sniper uses the crucifix as a cover to hide behind and to kill. The shadow of the cross is cast over the dead men lying on the ground. Now there are insects in the eyes of the figure of Jesus. Jesus is dead. Is God dead—or, at least, absent? What is the meaning of Christianity and the message of Calvary in the wars of Christian Europe? The use of the crucifix in cinema continues to offer insights into the role of Jesus and his Passion as interpreted for contemporary cinema audiences.