Facing the Giants

I've done a lot of watching since July-- especially as the fall season got off the ground but I have remarkably little to say about anything. Last week, however, I joined a group of pals headed to the local multiplex and we ended up watching Facing the Giants. I had already heard about Giants, filmed entirely in a small Georgia town by the congregation of the local church. Story goes it ended up as a studio film simply becasue somebody connected to one of the musical groups featured in the soundtrack saw a screening of the film while it was navigating the permissions process, liked it, called a friend, who called a friend and PRESTO!

The movie's gotten a lot of flack as a mouthpiece for the religious right, but the problem with the movie is not so much that it's heavy-handed in setting up its Christian world view (which it is). The problem is moresothat it's so very awkward while doing it. The first half of the movie reads like the "romans road" tract offered in shopping malls by well-meaning evangelicals, and you can tell the film's "actors" are likely more at home in those shopping malls than on camera.

However,the film's controlling philosophy firmly established, the back half picks up and asks a question ALL people of faith (regardless of what faith) should ask themselves from time to time: what happens if I believe, whole-heartedly, unreservedly believe.

Every conflict in this picture gets resolved in the "happily-ever-after" mode. A move I saw coming and sat steaming about for quite a while, because really, life doesn't always work out. Still categorizing the movie as a Church's evangelistic tool, I was angry because the message then became, "become a Christian and all life's problems will disappear"-- a message that is incendiary to me because, put simply, there is no magic bullett. Bad things happen all the time and no belief system will ever change that.

As the movie closed, though, and the final point of conflict was weepily and happily resolved, I realized that if you look at this movie simply as a genre piece rather than a vehicle for proselytizing you realize that at it's core Facing the Giants asks the same question every Disney movie from Mary Poppins to Peter Pan and every Sports movie from Rudy to the Rookie, to Miracle: what happens if I believe?