A Christmas TV Movie Before the Hallmark Channel

A Christmas Without Snow (1980)

My high school drama teacher would not do productions of Shakespeare. He said he had too much respect for the Bard’s work, and it was just a fact that high school students didn’t have the experience or skills to pull off poetry and emotions in the comedies or the tragedies. I thought of him while watching the 1980 TV movie A Christmas Without Snow. In the film, a small, amateur choir takes on George Frideric Handel’s Messiah -- a masterly work. A small, unskilled choir is not going to do it justice. That’s just one of my problems with how church and clergy are portrayed in the film.

Here at Movie Churches, we prefer to look at films that had theatrical releases. We like to keep a distinction between movies and television (so much so that next year we’re starting a new blog, TV Churches), but frankly, there's not an abundance of theatrically released films that feature both Christmas and churches and clergy. You'd think there would be, but we’ve already hit most of them. Besides, this film (described in IMDb as "a timeless, rare classic for the holiday season") touches on some interesting issues.

The film was written and directed by John Korty (who made other popular made for TV movies of the time such as A Farewell to Manzanar, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and most notably, The Ewok Adventure) and stars Michael Learned (Ma from The Waltons) and John Houseman (who played John Houseman in Scrooged).

It tells the story of a newly divorced woman, Zoe Jensen (Learned), who leaves her son in Omaha, Nebraska to start a new life in San Francisco. Strangely, she moves early in the fall and hopes to find a teaching job. Yes, I know this is prior to Monster.com and LinkedIn, but it still seems she could have made some phone calls before the move to learn that teaching jobs are not in abundance (because most school hiring decisions are made early in the summer and because downtown San Francisco isn't rife with schools). She must settle for office temping jobs.

Zoe is lonely, but a neighbor in her apartment building invites her to join a church choir. (That’s what interested me about this film -- we often see or hear church choirs in films, but there aren’t many movies about church choirs.) Zoe quickly makes friends with other women in the choir, drinking coffee before practice begins. She talks with them about how hard it is to find men in the city, “You know San Francisco…” If this is a reference to the city’s gay community, it is the only one to be found.)

Choir practice begins and the new director, Ephraim Adams (Houseman), a crusty senior citizen who took the job so he wouldn’t have to retire. He explains his expectation for the choir: “Music is a craft, not a social activity or religious duty.” 

I would think being in a church would lead to some connection with religion, but the pastor, Reverend Lohman (James Cromwell), nods in agreement. This surprised me because if music is performed in a worship service, I would think it would be, you know, part of the worship. Anyone who reads the Psalms knows there can be a relationship between music and religious duty… In fact, that relationship is essential. But the Reverend doesn’t think so. (If it’s just about the music, why not have the choir perform French or German art songs instead of, you know, religious music.)

The director continues, “Just as the Reverend is called to his vocation, I am called to mine. I expect miracles. I will make something of the cacophony I heard last Sunday.” 

The miracle he expects is for the choir to perform Handel’s Messiah, “Because it is difficult. Those seeking a more relaxing activity, leave now and locate the nearest hot tub.” Hey, that would be more than difficult. To take a nineteen member strong amateur choir that meets one evening a week and is -- according to the director -- just, well, bad -- and expect them to pull off a decent performance of Messiah, would be impossible. Indeed a miracle. But I take it, a secular miracle since the director wants to stay clear of religious duties.

In that first rehearsal, accompanied by their new organist, Seth Rueben, the choir does indeed sound awful. I would think it would be wise for a choir director to get to know his resources, the strengths and weaknesses of his members, before deciding what music they should use, but Ephraim decides the music first and try to impose it on the members. He does admit the choir will have to grow, recruiting other members. This is another challenge, to take in new members along with learning new work.

As the months go on, Zoe develops friendships with women in the choir and awkwardly dates a couple of the men. This is one of the best things about the movie’s depiction of the choir: a community of friends does develop. They even gather together for Thanksgiving. But it does seem that faith is a very small aspect of these friendships. One of the members talks of going to “the church of Beautiful Women.” Outside of choir practice, they do join together in singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”

Ephraim auditions for solo roles in Messiah. One of the members asks for private auditions, which the director refuses, explaining, “Pressure in this room will be as great as in church with four hundred people present.” I wondered if they were going to do one just performance of Messiah for the congregation, rather than a performance for the general public.

Two major obstacles endanger the performance of Handel’s work (aside from the ineptitude of the singers). First, the organ is vandalized. One of the choir members accuses another choir member, a young man who's one of the few African Americans in the group. The actual culprit is the teenage son of the pastor. 

The pastor and his wife seem to have an odd relationship with their son. They expect him to put the church first in his life, as they do. (They, in fact, say to him, “This church is the most important thing in our lives.” I can see where he might take that wrong.)

The church can’t afford the $5000 to repair the organ. They consider purchasing an electric organ which sounds like a kid’s Casio and for some reason picks up police radio calls, so the choir pitches in and repairs the organ themselves. I thought such work would take great levels of expertise, but what do I know?

The other obstacle is that Ephraim gets very sick and is hospitalized just before the performance. They try to figure if anyone can take his place directing, but Seth argues no one else would have the director’s take on the work (because The Messiah is such an obscure work in the classical world).

But Zoe encourages everyone to go on with the show, and they do and it comes off swell.

So how would I rate this church, whose name and even denomination is kept secret throughout the film?  The choir of the church does develop a sense of community, which is a good thing, but they are all about performance and not worship -- which is not a good thing in my book. As for the pastor, we hear one sermon of his, in which he rails against the commercialization of Christmas. His wife thinks it’s his best sermon, but I think the Charlie Brown Christmas special did it much better. Since it's Christmas, though, I’m giving this church a Scroogish Two Steeples.


(And about that title, A Christmas Without Snow; it’s always a Christmas without snow in San Francisco. It’s like calling a film set in Omaha, A Summer Without Beaches.)

Now In Theaters: I Can Only Imagine

I Can Only Imagine, (2018)
Last month, the big movie business news was the success of Black Panther, which broke box office records and may continue to be the biggest story for the rest of the year. Part of the interest in that story is diversity, a celebration of the primarily black cast and crew making a Marvel action movie. This month, though, the new news story is I Can Only Imagine.

This new film was predicted to make $2 - $5 million on its opening weekend. Instead, it took in $17 million and had Cinemascore rating of A+ with 79% of the audience saying they’d pay to see the film in a theater again. The film even has a “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes, which is a rare thing for a Christian film. Sure, it couldn’t beat Black Panther and Tomb Raider at the box office, but it did beat other big studio productions (A Wrinkle in Time; Game Night; Love, Simon). As for diversity, it presents a Christian message, which -- in Hollywood -- is a diversity of thought that may be even rarer than racial diversity.

People who’ve seen it seem to love the film, which has some interesting and odd elements. It is the first time lead actor J. Michael Finley (as songwriter Bart Millard) has appeared on the screen (he appeared on Broadway in Les Miserables and Hair). It’s hard to decide if it’s odder to see Finley in his late 20’s (guessing) as a high school student or Dennis Quaid (in his mid-sixties) as the father of a ten-year-old. The film also features 91-year-old Cloris Leachman as “Memaw" (she played "Maw Maw" on the sitcom Raising Hope), who provides the name of Millard’s band, Mercy Me, and the inspiration for the title song (by urging Millard at a funeral to “imagine”).

I thought the film was okay. Of course, I think the song is just okay, but with sales of two and a half million copies, “I Can Only Imagine” is the best selling Christian song of all time. It swept the Dove Awards (the Christian Grammys). It also crossed over into the top 40 of the secular contemporary market. For some reason, the song is on the Christmas playlists of many radio stations.

The real Bart with Mercy Me

More importantly, many people have said the film brought them hope and encouragement, bringing them through difficult times in their lives.

But, as you know, this blog isn’t here to examine box office numbers -- or even the quality -- of films. We’re here to rate churches and clergy in film, and while churches and clergy play a small part in I Can Only Imagine, they do come out looking pretty good.

Bart Millard had a very tough childhood. His father was an alcoholic who beat Bart and his mother. His mother abandoned them both when Bart was ten years old, leaving him at the mercy of his belligerent father. Something else very important happened when Bart was ten years old, he went to a Christian summer camp in Texas.

Bart was nervous and scared when he arrived, but he was soon befriended by other campers. He enjoyed the food, scenery, and recreation. He even enjoyed a couple of the best things about summer camp that aren’t found in brochures: getting into trouble and first love.

The camp speaker, a youth pastor named Rusty from Greenville First Baptist Church, effectively communicates God’s love and the need for forgiveness. When he gets back home, Bart attends that church, which is in his hometown.

As Bart grows up, he discovers a talent for singing. The pastor of the Baptist Church asks Bart to sing in church (something viewers hear about, but never see). We see teenaged Bart in a coat and tie headed to church on a Sunday morning. His father asks him to stay for breakfast, but Bart explains he needs to go to church to sing, and he asks his father to come along. When his father says he “doesn’t belong there,” Bart asks him to listen to the church service on the radio, telling him the time and call letters.

We later learn that Bart’s father, Arthur (Quaid), did listen to the radio broadcast, and he kept listening week after week. He starts listening to other Christian radio broadcasts and begins to read the Bible for himself. After Bart leaves to pursue his musical dream, God changes Arthur’s life.

Churches don’t usually have camp or media as their primary ministry, but sometimes they do these things very well, bringing hope to -- among others -- a battered little boy and a lost alcoholic. And that’s why Greenville First Baptist, the church in this film, our highest rating of Four Steeples.

Hawaii Movies on the Big Screen

Hawaii seems to love its musical nostalgia. In restaurants and bars, you can still hear some Elvis. In grocery stores you might still catch some Peter, Paul, and Mary. When we visited the Kukui Grove Cinema, instead of, say, a Geico commercial before the feature film, we watched concert videos from the seventies and eighties. Journey’s “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” with those glorious fashions of our youth, was on the screen when we entered. It was a little strange, but so much better than the same ad (“Buy some Coke at the snack bar!”) we’ve seen dozens of times.

The theater had some other touches of the past. For instance, they do not take credit cards (but they do have an ATM in the lobby). The lobby has current posters, but also old posters for such films as Streets of Fire. We saw a large poster for the upcoming Fall “Ohana” film festival with eclectic collections such as a triple bill of Paper Moon, Starman, and Airplane. (I suppose the link is to be found between “Moon,” “Star,” and “Air.”)

It seems strange to use any of one’s time on Kauai inside a movie theater, but it was gloomy and rainy outside, and we had time before our redeye flight back to the mainland. We decided to watch Central Intelligence with Kevin Hart and The Rock (who inexplicably has decided that he now wants to be known by his exceedingly less cool moniker, Dwayne Johnson.)

There isn’t much church to be found in this film, which is set chiefly in Maryland. (Actually, it was set much more in Maryland than the movie we used for that state.) There’s one scene where a character claims to have come to the Lord and wants to repent for a nasty prank he played in high school. It is interesting to see the victim of the prank is so moved by the apology, until he finds that the repentance is just another prank. It’s a throwaway scene in a quite silly comedy about high school legacies and international intrigue, but it does show our longing to make old hurts right.

Joyful Noise (2012)

Perhaps you're familiar with the Great Commission Jesus gave His disciples, found in Matthew 28: "Go into the world and win that Big Singing Competition!"

Oh, you might have thought the Great Commission was about making disciples, and that Jesus was more concerned with healing and feeding and, you know, saving people. But in the film Joyful Noise about a church choir starring Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah, we learn that God has other priorities.

The film opens with the Pacashau, Georgia, Sacred Divinity Church* choir singing, Not Enough Love, which might be more aptly named, Not Enough Content. The song is filled with such profundities as "Why can't we try harder? Why can't we see farther? Why can't we do better? Love's a good starter!" The theological content pretty much consists of wondering what God must be thinking, "He'd have to be sad." This song doesn'tt exactly have Charles Wesley caliber lyrics, but the teens in the choir think of such songs as "stodgy old church music."

I wasn't that impressed with that first song, but apparently it was killer. The choir director, played by Kris Kristofferson, gets tingly in the arm. Dolly Parton helps him off the stage, then we see everyone at the funeral.

Pastor Dale (played by Courtney B. Vance, who was also a pastor in The Preacher's Wife and Eye See You) conducts the funeral saying, "God judges a man by two things; faith and the contents of his heart." I would think faith would be one of the contents in a man's heart, and the Bible does talk some about God judging people by their actions. As a Christian pastor, it seems like he would talk about where a man puts his faith. Pastor Dale makes no mention of salvation coming from faith in the death of Christ on the cross, but again, theological content doesn't seem to be an emphasis in this church.

What seems to be really important in this church is how the choir places in regional choir competitions. Immediately after the funeral, the pastor invites the choir director's widow (Dolly) into his office. She tells him the service was perfect. He disagrees and says it would have been perfect if the choir has been part of it.  He then tells her he thinks the choir should go on to the Regional Semi-Finals as planned, and that's why the church council has appointed Vi Rose (Queen Latifah) -- not the widow -- as the choir director. That's some grief counseling.

So the choir prepares for the next big competition, knowing they'll be facing their big rivals, Taylor Sikes and the Holy Spirit Church of Detroit. Vi's daughter thinks they need to modernize their music, so she suggests singing Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror (circa 1988). The choir must also decide on the big risk of whether to recruit musical talents like Dolly's thug grandson and the tuff kid from the local music shop. It doesn't seem to matter to the choir leadership if the people in the choir and band actually believe the things they're singing about.

Even the regulars in the choir don't seem to value the teachings of Scripture or holy living very highly. After on choir practice, a man and the woman in the choir start chatting about how long it's been since they slept with anyone, and then they start making out on the steps of the church. Then they go to her house for a one night stand.

The reason it's a one night stand is that the guy dies after sex. The circumstances don't seem to bother Pastor Dale, as he tells the woman, "You should cherish the brief time you and Mr. Su had together." (Referring to the man by his last name; really?) The woman tells the pastor she's concerned no man will want to go out with her because she's killed a man with sex. The pastor, with his typically great grief counseling agrees it will be a real problem and offers no hope.

So the choir goes to the Semi-Meta-Regional-Amateur-Divisional Sing-off and gets beaten by the church from Detroit. The pastor says that since they can't win, they should disband the choir. The money could be spent better in another way than on entry fees and travel expenses. After all, the town they live in is suffering great economic woes. Almost everyone in town is out of work and hurting. The church does run a soup kitchen, so good for them on that.

But the choir just won't quit. And when they find out that the Detroit choir was disqualified for using professionals, the choir, as runner up, can go on to the finals. But they're going to use those modern arrangements and young thugs, so Pastor Dale threatens to withdraw the church's sponsorship for the competition. Since church sponsorship is required to enter, Dolly suggests that her grandson could get an internet ordination so they could have a phony church sponsorship. (Cheating seems to be widespread in the world of church choir competition.)

Anyhoo, the choir goes off for the national choir competition, and they discover that their big rival a children's choir. But Vi seems to be pretty good with smashing the dreams of small children, 'cause though Jesus loved kids, they're pretty resilient.

So they're in the big competition. They use secular songs like Sign, Sealed, Delivered, strip off their choir robes, and most importantly, sexualize their appearance and dance moves. As Vi says, it's all about "giving glory to God." They even seem to have some kind of miracle technology that allows their voices to be amplified without visible mikes as they dance around the whole auditorium.

It's all worth it, because they win the national competition, which is an inspiration to their financially devastated small town. They are greeted as conquering heroes. I would think the people of this small town would be better off moving someplace where they could get jobs, but really, Choir Competition Uber Alles.

Pacashau Sacred Divinity Church gets One Steeple for that Soup Kitchen, but that's it.

*Although we happen to be in Georgia this week on our attempt to visit a church and a bar in every state, we couldn't visit this church due to its blessedly fictional status.

Blues Brothers (1980)

I was, like most teens in the late 1970s, a big Saturday Night Live fan, so I rushed out to see a film featuring cast members John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, but when I first saw "The Blues Brothers" I must admit I thought, "What a stupid film!  It was nothing but blues music and car crashes." But I saw it again with friends and thought, "Hmmm, blues music and car crashes." And then I saw it a third time. "What an awesome film! Nothing but blues music and car crashes!"

But the film does have something besides blues music and car crashes. It has churches, which is why I'm writing about it here. As always, we're here to review the churches in the movie rather than the movie itself.

We first see a ministry of the Catholic Church, rather than a church proper: an orphanage.

The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage was where Jake and Elwood Blues, the Blues Brothers, were raised. When Jake is released from Joliet Prison, Elwood picks him up and takes him there. Jake objects, but Elwood tells him, "You promised to visit the Penguin you got out. You can't lie to a nun." (The Penguin is their nickname for the nun who runs the orphanage, the Sister Mary Stigmata.)

The stairs to the Sister's office are dominated by a rather terrifying crucifix. Sister Mary Stigmata welcomes the Brothers home and soon informs them that the orphanage came up $5000 short in their tax assessment. The Archbishop wants to sell the orphanage to the Board of Education and send the Sister to the mission field.

Jake offers to get the money for her, but the Sister rightly assumes he plans to steal it and hits him with a ruler. Which causes Jake to swear. So she hits him again. Which causes Elwood to swear, so she hits him. Much swearing and hitting ensues. The brothers flee and the Sister yells after them, "Such a disappointing pair, I prayed so hard for you. The two young men I raised to obey the Ten Commandments come back as two thieves with filthy mouths and bad attitudes. Get out and don't come back, until you've redeemed yourselves."

So what do I think of the Church as represented by the Good Sister? She does live up (down?) to the common cliché of nuns as ruthless disciplinarians. She doesn't seem to be living life with a WWJD bracelet. On the other hand, she is one of only two people who cared for the young Blues Brothers, which should count for something.

The other person who cared for them was the orphanage maintenance man, Curtis (played by Cab Calloway).  When the Brothers meet with him, he reprimands them for swearing at the Penguin. He then tells Jake he should, "Get wise. You get to church."

Jake responds, "I don't want to listen to no jive-a** preacher talk to me about heaven and hell."

But soon Jake and Elwood are on their way to the Triple Rock Baptist Church pastored by the Reverend Cleophus (the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.) Elwood tells Jake, "We've got to make that move toward redemption. We've got to go to church."

Jake and Elwood appear to be the only two white people there when they enter the Triple Rock. A neon cross decorates the wall with the motto, "There is Power in the Cross." There is also stained glass and a river painted in the front of the church (the River Jordan, perhaps). The Reverend is indeed preaching about eternal destiny, mourning lost souls and warning that "the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night."

Then the music kicks in; loud, raucous Gospel music, exhorting the congregation to "Preach the Word! All the way! Feel it! Know it! Raise your voices!" All are singing exuberantly and many are dancing with abandon.

Elwood looks at Jake who looks shaken, asking, "Jake, are you all right?"

Jake is more than all right. He sees a light from heaven and suddenly seems full of joy. He cartwheels down the aisle and the Reverend asks if he's seen the light. Jake has.

Jake tells Elwood that God has shown them how they can earn the money for the orphanage legally. They can put together the old band. Elwood joins him in praise, proclaiming, "God bless the United States of America!" Both dance.

The Brothers leave the church changed. As Elwood says many times, "We're on a mission from God." Jake puts it another way, "Well, me and the Lord, we have an understanding."

So my evaluation of these churches? The ministry of the Catholic Church doesn't come across as fun exactly, but they do step in to help some kids that no one else cared for. As for the Triple Rock Baptist Church? It's pretty awesome.

 

Triple Rock gets 4 Steeples.