Reinhartz, Adele. Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. 217 pp. $24.95 (USD). ISBN: 0-664-22359-1.

[1]  As a biblical scholar and self-confessed amateur film connoisseur, Reinhartz works with several related assumptions. First, movies both reflect and shape our worldviews and assumptions. They offer, therefore, an ideal conversation partner with the Bible, which has had a similar relationship to readers and communities through time. And second, since popular films refer in various ways to the Bible, viewers who are biblically literate will enjoy a richer cinematic experience than those who are not. The book aims to show how the Bible, as sacred canon and as a classic of Western culture, may be a lens through which to appreciate film. And more particularly, the book seeks to demonstrate how the Bible plays a role in contemporary popular films.

[2]  Reinhartz acknowledges that the Bible is often present in film, but not as an integral aspect of the filmic narrative. The Bible may be present as a prop (e.g. the Gideon Bible in Coneheads), as a source of direct biblical quotation (e.g. Spider Man's mother reciting Psalm 23), as a source of allusion to biblical phrases, people, and places (e.g. ÒZionÓ in The Matrix), as characters modeled on a biblical character (e.g. Sister Agnes in Agnes of God as a Virgin Mary figure), and as a source for motifs or themes that are analogous to certain biblical stories (e.g. the Moses story and The Lion King). Reinhartz's book is unique, however, in that it promises to bring movies into conversation with biblical books. Each chapter includes a brief introduction to the biblical book, a summary of the film, and an exploration of the use of the Bible in the film through analysis of plot, character and themes.

[3]  In each of ten chapters Reinhartz discusses a movie alongside a book of the Bible (the eleventh explores two movies that reflect misuse of the Bible). (1) Viewed through the lens of the creation stories in Genesis, The Truman Show may be understood as a subversion of the expulsion from the garden. Departure from the garden is a necessary risk for the growth and development of human freedom. (2) The frog motif in both the book of Exodus (one of the ten plagues) and Magnolia illustrates that even an inadvertent allusion to the Bible can illuminate rich thematic correspondences between a movie and a biblical text (director Paul Thomas Anderson claims to have been unaware of the biblical plague of frogs). (3) The biblical injunctions regarding the death penalty (Exod 21:23-25; Lev 24:17-22) are juxtaposed with the way the Bible is used in the film Dead Man Walking both to justify capital punishment and to offer a way of transforming retributive justice into the possibility of redemptive and restorative justice. (4) The power of female friendships is explored through conversation between the book of Ruth and Fried Green Tomatoes. (5) A comparison of Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991) with the book of Job exposes the Bible's use as an instrument of terror. (6) A metaphorical interpretation of The Sixth Sense shows how the motif of crying out for help, which is brilliantly evoked in the Latin citation of Psalm 130:1, contrasts sharply with the human propensity to block out and to fear those who cry to us for help. (7) Pulp Fiction's truncated citation of Ezekiel 25:17 becomes a catalyst for showing how the Bible serves as resource for paradigms that allow a person to understand or interpret his or her situation in relation to the world. (8) The power of Òthe WordÓ in the Gospel of John and in The Apostle represents the ability of a text to mediate the presence of God. (9) 1 Corinthians 13, Paul's chapter on love, becomes the basis for engagement with The Shawshank Redemption by showing that the Bible itself, without an inner and transcendent hope, cannot liberate or redeem. (10) Pleasantville portrays the impossibility of a return to paradise; by contrast the book of Revelation offers the hope for an end to evil and oppression through God's new creation. (11) Both Pale Rider and Nell draw on the Bible, but in superficial ways that mislead the viewer rather than illuminate the film.

[4]  Reinhartz offers creative interpretations of these twelve films, illustrating the variety of ways the Bible may be present in film. She is particularly adept at showing how the Bible has been filtered through the lens of Western culture, at illustrating how viewers bring cultural knowledge (or lack thereof) to interpreting the stereotypes and cultural assumptions portrayed in the films, and at pointing out how the Bible has been used and abused. Given those strengths, the goal of the book (restated as an invitation to the reader on the last page) makes good sense: ÒOur mission, should we choose to accept it, is to help others to an educated reading of the text against which movies and other popular representations of the Bible may be testedÓ (188). Yet that mission also reflects a weakness, or disappointment with the book. Two broad observations will have to suffice as illustrations of the book's limitations.

[5]  First, the book does not allow enough space for authentic dialogue between film and biblical text. For example, in the first chapter, The Truman Show is allowed to interrogate the biblical account of the expulsion from the garden. But the biblical text is not given a place in the conversation except through the traditional assumption that expulsion is a result of disobedience, or through the psychological interpretation that the expulsion represents the movement from immaturity to adulthood. The complexities and interpretive possibilites of that text are not allowed to interrogate the film or to offer alternative perspectives on the constructed world of Seahaven or on the so-called real world outside Seahaven. Similarly, in the chapter on Pleasantville, the analogies between ÒpersecutionÓ in the movie and in the book of Revelation are not developed. Nor is the eschatology of the book of Revelation allowed to critique the movie by showing how Revelation's ethic of living hopefully in the present evil time encourages readers to discern the idolatry of imperialism in all its guises, and to choose against it in the present.

[6]  Second, the book gives the impression that each chapter will bring one biblical book into conversation with a specific movie. Usually, however, only one narrative, motif, or thematic element of the text becomes the focus of the discussion. For example, a chapter title suggests that Dead Man Walking will be brought into conversation with the book of Leviticus through the theme of ÒThe Riddle of Divine Justice.Ó But the chapter deals only with the motif of lex talionis, Òan eye for an eye.Ó The chapter on The Truman Show treats only two chapters of Genesis and does not include the narratives of journey, risk, and loss throughout Genesis to shape the conversation about how human beings manage to live outside the safety of an artificially constructed reality. Even though the chapter on The Apostle begins with the motif of the embodied word in the Gospel of John, it is the biblical portrait of the apostle Paul that is cited Òas a paradigm for the plotÓ of the movie. Although the chapter explores how the Bible as Òthe wordÓ mediates God's presence, the chapter refers to the Gospel of John only in its introduction and conclusion. Space is given to the analogy with the apostle Paul, but Paul's theme of relationship between divine grace and human weakness, an obvious parallel to the movie, is missing in the conversation. In the end, each chapter becomes more of a thematic exploration than an engagement with one biblical book.

[7] In spite of those somewhat idiosyncratic criticisms, the book illustrates well that the Bible is still a living resource for reflection on the predicaments and prospects of being human in the world. Reinhartz has admirably shown that biblical literacy is a prerequisite for full and rich movie viewing.

Gordon Matties
Canadian Mennonite University
Winnipeg, Manitoba
gmatties@cmu.ca