Films for All Seasons: Book Review

Abby Olcese teaches a lesson in (cinematic) liturgy

Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies, Abby Olcese. InterVarsity Press. 240 pages. Available October 15, 2024.

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What can we learn of hope in The Last Jedi (2017)? Of peace in Joyeux Noel (2005)? Of joy in the Paddington films? Of community in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)? Abby Olcese, longtime editor and film critic for such publications as The Pitch, Sojourners, Think Christian, and RogerEbert.com, sets out on a peculiar journey in the film criticism world: connecting “secular” films with the Christian liturgical calendar. Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies is at once a characteristic work of thoughtful criticism and a unique contribution to practical Christian living.¹

Films for All Seasons connects entertainment with the spiritual, reminding conscientious film lovers that even mainstream media can be mined for nuggets of wisdom and truth. Its logical flow is accompanied with discussion questions at the end of every chapter to foster lively conversation. It evokes the Reel Spirituality Monograph series in its easy-to-read, yet profoundly insightful approach.

One delightful result of this work is evangelical readers’ reintroduction to the liturgical calendar. I grew up in Baptist churches and, for the better part of my Christian life, assumed that the Church Year consisted of only the “big ones,” Advent, Christmas, Holy Week, and Easter. But reading about Epiphany and delving deeper into the liturgical calendar by way of cinema is a reminder of the rich Church History that led to what we know today as the Church Year. Even if my church does not strictly practice every event in the liturgical year, it is beneficial and encouraging to ponder them through the lens of cinema.

At its core, Films for All Seasons echoes a staple of my own mission in writing on film. It may be best stated as Think Christian has: there’s “no such thing as secular.” Or, I would say, the goal of the Christian film critic is to seek out the good, true, and beautiful in cinema. That doesn’t mean Christians restrict themselves to only movies made by the Kendrick brothers; movies about Jesus Christ and Christianity can range from honorable to downright scandalous. It is the job of the Christian critic to make such distinctions public for Christians and non-Christians alike to observe. Olcese does this well, analyzing popular and obscure movies to unearth seeds of deep Christian truth.

Jesus in Tinseltown

Though my goal in writing on film is to find deep truths in unruly places (e.g., cosmic justice in Longlegs or religious morality in Paul Schrader’s Man in a Room Trilogy), I’m always wary of Hollywood depictions of Jesus Christ. Willem Dafoe’s in the scandalous The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)—which Olcese analyzes well in the book—and Jonathan Roumie’s in The Chosen (2017–), among others, sometimes make me uncomfortable—not always because of the actions they commit while playing Jesus, but because of the strange cognitive dissonance resulting from telling myself, “that’s the risen Lord Jesus Christ,” while knowing fully that those playing him have also been in action-thrillers and brutal Viking epics. I cherish good media that make it easy to suspend disbelief. (My favorite literary genre is fantasy.) But for me it’s much harder to believe that an actor is, in that moment on-screen, truly Jesus, than to believe that he’s the Green Goblin in another moment.

For that reason, finding theological parallels to Christ and the Gospel are much more comfortable for me than direct re-enactments. Daniel Radcliffe didn’t play the Nazarene Carpenter-King, but he played a character who, like Jesus, laid down his life for those he loved. Margot Robbie didn’t play the Christian Savior, but, Olcese claims, her titular character in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) has striking similarities to him.

It’s vital to remember that all parallels such as this fall short of conveying the true Christ. Most of the time, it’s not even the primary goal of the filmmakers to show Christ in their characters—so you can imagine how intrigued I am about Gerwig’s forthcoming Narnia adaptation—but it is the lot of film critics to explain these similarities and differences. Olcese does well with the former, but neglects the latter in places I deem necessary.

She also seems to stretch for some parallels at times. For example, she writes that Barbie struggles with the imperfection of the real world, and tells her creator Ruth (Rhea Perlman) that it’s “not what I thought it would be.” Olcese relates this to Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane that God “let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:29) and argues that Barbie struggled to be “sent out,” as it were, by Ruth, into a broken world to make it better. (She compares Ruth’s final moments with Barbie and her newfound mission of changing Barbieland and the real world for the better with Jesus’s baptism and “sending out” into ministry.) While there are slight parallels here, Olcese’s argument is thin. She notes that Christ truly was burdened by the weight of an imperfect world, and his prayer is about the sacrifice he will make. But he mourns “becoming sin” to save the world (2 Cor. 5:21)—something Barbie clearly does not do. As noted above, parallels fall short; but in this example the connection would have been stronger if more differences were noted.

This shouldn’t be a reason to avoid or condemn the book; there are still many great parallels—even within the chapter on Barbie—and if anything, she makes good theological points to ponder, awakening the mind to notice Christian parallels in unseemly places. To me, it seems that the book’s theological commentary can be overly simplistic at times. Nevertheless, Olcese’s commentary on ethical dilemmas and fraught savior complexes in The Dark Knight (2008), personal growth and redemption in Logan (2017), the effects of religious compromise in The Bishop’s Wife (1947), the heartbreak of war in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and breaking the cycle of sin in Groundhog Day (1993), among a host of others, are stellar.

Silver Screen Liturgies

In her book, Olcese has placed the cinematic calendar in its rightful place beneath the Church Year. It’s enthralling for critics to think of the year through cinematic moments: Festival seasons, summer blockbusters, holiday releases, and the much-lauded awards seasons come with unique glimmers of the beauty of filmmaking, but Olcese places movies under God’s dominion, and shows that the Christian’s mind should be “set on things above,” even when pondering things below (Col. 3:2).

Olcese has crafted a work of “silver screen liturgies,” which was the working title of the book. While there may be points that seem a little too stretched, or underdeveloped theological concepts, Films for All Seasons is a much-needed work in both Christian publishing and film criticism. Olcese displays keen thoughtfulness in summarizing and analyzing a variety of films, and presents them in a theological light with the goal of inviting Christians into the wondrous world of movies. In a world oversaturated with voices on every movie, Olcese offers a distinctly refreshing take on the interweaving of cinema and Christian belief.

1. Thank you to InterVarsity Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.