Movies are Prayers (Josh Larsen)

"Movies, at their most potent, are not diversions or products or even works of art, but prayerful gestures received by God."  Indeed, films voice our deepest longings, argues film critic Josh Larsen, and can be viewed as prayers-  prayers of joy, of lament, of anger, and so on. In his book Movies are Prayers, his intent is "to offer two things: a consideration of the role of prayer in the Christian life, and a way of exploring film from a theological perspective." To do so, the book "identifies nine different expressions of prayer and then places an array of films within each one."  The first chapter is "movies as prayers of praise," for example, and he discusses the concept of praise before looking at how movies like Avatar, This is the End, Fantastic Voyage, Into the Wild, Children of Men and more have elements that function as praise.

Larsen groups the nine expressions of prayer along the creation-fall-redemption-restoration narrative of Scripture:

• Creation: praise
• Fall: yearning, lament, anger
• Redemption: confession, reconciliation, obedience, meditation/contemplation
• Restoration: joy

In the back is a useful index of films discussed as well as the expression of prayer they reveal.  Larsen looks at primarily secular films for this study, arguing that ". . . prayers can be unintended and can come from unbelievers, that even the howl of an atheist is directed at the God they don't acknowledge." I agree.
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Story is so powerful. "God uses story to communicate his very nature to us, as well as his plan for the world. We, in turn, use story to make sense of our experience within his narrative. And so our prayers, including those uttered in the movies we watch, always fall somewhere along God's timeline."  I love movies, and enjoyed this book.  Check it out if you're interested in thinking about movies in a different light.

Rating: A