valarltd | Hollywood theology. Round One: God

Hollywood shapes our comprehension of the Divine in many ways.

According to the IMDB, God (here the Christian god) has almost 300 film appearances, the earliest being in 1936.

We can have our pick of images and ideas of this deity.

Rex Ingram, soft spoken, but steel spined.

Alanis Morrisette. Brokenhearted, loving and quirky
WARNING: gory and strong language

My generation's silver screen God was George Burns. There's still a strip mall here that has "Think God!" on their sign.

The current trend is Morgan Freeman, which also works for me. Dumb movie, great characterization.

And no geek list would be complete without
Ralph Richardson as the Supreme Being from TIME BANDITS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOzHoJYKMtM (embedding disabled)

and Graham Chapman from Holy Grail

John Huston in The Bible. Val Kilmer in Prince of Egypt. And many more, almost three hundred as I said.

More in this series later. It was rather inspired by someone asking who my favorite silver screen devil was. I got to thinking about the way movies shape our understanding. I'm not doing a lot of analysis, just tossing out the images for the reader to put it together themselves.

Toward the end of my stint with Christianity, Alanis Morrisette was the only image of God I could deal with. That infinite sadness and love as she takes Loki's head in her hands and holds him, her heart breaking for this one she cannot save. Then we had the whole ugliness with my kids, and that god and I parted ways.