Rental Gem: Saved!
By Darren Barefoot on December 27, 2004 - 8:06pm
Cross-posted from DarrenBarefoot.com.
You probably didn't see Saved!
It pretty much tanked
at the box office, and didn't play in the cinema for very long. I think it failed
to attract both a Christian or a non-Christian audience. You should watch Saved!
on DVD, though.
I just watched it last night, and was really surprised (I love it when a film
surprises me) and impressed. I expected a vicious, anti-religious screed, but
instead I watched a clever, funny, subversive movie about teens growing up Christian.
On one level, it's just a teen movie in the tradition of John Hughes and American
Pie. On another, the film explores how modern, American Christianity deals
with difference.
Read on for the complete review.
The cast is full of odd-balls--Macaulay Culkin's in a wheelchair, Mandy Moore
has a mullet and Mary-Louise Parker is somebody's mom. The cast also includes
the excellent Patrick Fugit and Jena Malone. We first saw the former smirking
his way through Almost Famous, and I think I've only seen Malone briefly,
getting shot in Cold Mountain.
Watching the movie, I waiting for it to devolve into cheap and easy shots at
the Christian Right. Instead, it frequently chose a more complicated take and
a subtler argument against religious rigidity. Ultimately, the film is God-positive
without being didactic or offensive. Here's Roger
Ebert:
Now if the film were all pitched on this one note, it would be tiresome and
unfair. But having surprised us with its outspoken first act, it gets religion
of its own sort in the second and third acts, arguing not against fundamentalism
but against intolerance...By the end of the movie, mainstream Christian values
have not been overthrown, but demonstrated and embraced. Those who think Christianity
is just a matter of enforcing their rulebook have been, well, enlightened.
It's a complicated film whose most seditious line is "I know in my heart
that Jesus still loves me".
After checking out Metacritic,
I went looking for some Christian reviews of the movie. Predictably, many
sites didn't
get it. They focus not on the anti-fanaticism, pro-tolerance message, but
on things like the likely untruth that "most of the Saved! production staff
is [sic] homosexuals or homosexual advocates?". This
one is more thoughtful, but (like nearly every Christian movie review site)
tends to obsess about the details of the film's language, violent and sexual
content (it's extremely PG in all three categories). The emphasis of this
review is on who will and will not be offended, and draws a hilariously
Catholic conclusion:
And though the film ends on an ambiguously pro-faith note, the spirituality
proposed is more of the fluffy-feel-good, nondogmatic brand than a costly
grace which places moral demands on the believer.
Finally, I found this
rambling page of review and discussion that comes from a 'liberal' Christian
review site.
One footnote: Saved! was shot in Vancouver (mostly at this
high school), but I didn't really recognize it as such. Usually, locals
can recognize locally-produced films by the diffuse grayness of the natural
light. This film enjoyed a lot of sunny autumn days, and I think they tweaked
the tone of the exterior shots in post-production. The light's colour temperature
feels a little too hot and white for a Vancouver production.
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