Talking about . . . storytelling

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Everyone loves a story. Whether it’s an account of a brave, independent girl whose attempt to rescue a friend leads to the discovery of deception as in The Golden Compass, or a morality tale like Mr Brooks, about an exemplary citizen living a double life as an undetected serial killer, a good yarn has the power to captivate.

A great storyteller draws us into the narrative, engaging our attention to such an extent that we finish the book or leave the cinema with a sense of returning reluctantly to the real world. Whether or not we like the main characters, we are invited to journey with them, confronting their dilemmas and sharing their struggles. And in a good story, the experience is transformative.

The Golden Compass is based on the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, who said, ‘There’s more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy. . . . All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by.’

Searching for values

From a biblical perspective, a good story will enhance our understanding of God. We are told by the apostle Paul to think on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8), but keeping this in mind when queuing at the local multiplex can be tricky. The search for biblical values in a film cannot mean merely measuring its quality by the amount of swearing, violence or sex it contains.

We can no more expect characters who do not profess Christian faith to act according to Christian morality than we can real-life people who are not Christians. Sadly, Christians too often fall into the temptation to migrate to another planet from their friends and neighbours. In storybook terms, fear of disappointment, or catching something nasty, leads them to avoid all contact with kissable frogs.

In The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker asserts that everything written can be distilled into seven storylines. The idea that the richness and diversity of our cultural heritage can be condensed into a formula seems simplistic, yet there is something appealing about Booker’s claim. A Christian worldview is rooted in the Bible: purpose and meaning are found by joining the ‘big story’ of creation, fall and redemption through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

In his prologue Booker writes, ‘The plot of a story is that which leads its hero or heroine either to a ‘catastrophe’ or    an ‘unknotting’; either of frustration or to liberation; either to death or to a renewal of life.’

Sounds familiar? When we come to examine our culture’s stories we find echoes of the Christian message. Reflecting on these echoes can challenge us and deepen our understanding of both. After all, from a biblical perspective, even filmmakers are made in the image of the Creator God. Learning to spot these reflections, and remaining open to the possibility of transformation, is vital.

Identify the voice

Take, for example, The Lookout, a straightforward story about a bank heist. Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a young man left brain-injured by a car accident. Unable to hold down a more demanding job, Chris is employed by a bank as a janitor. One night he meets Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), the ringleader of a gang which plans to stage a robbery. Gary promises Chris wealth, power and independence if he helps them gain access to the bank. As Gary manipulates Chris into doing what he knows is wrong, we hear echoes of the persuasive voice of the devil. The skill in watching the film is to identify the voice as that which seeks to persuade us that we are better off living without dependence on God and to be challenged by the reminder.

Similarly, Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford’s film about the war in Afghanistan, confronts the viewer with the stark statement that ‘if you don’t stand for something, you might fall for anything’. The film explores responsibility and apathy through the tale of two American soldiers (Derek Luke and Michael Peña) who choose to ‘fight to make things better’ as their fate is determined by a slippery US senator. As Christian opinion is increasingly marginalised, there is value in engaging with the question of what it means to stand up for what is right and in reflecting on how we discern truth from falsehood.

A less comfortable challenge lies amidst the beauty and imaginative scope of a film like The Golden Compass. The lavish tale is set in a world that is subtly different to our own – a world where people’s souls, or ‘daemons’, take physical form and where rumours of other worlds are whispered in Oxford colleges by academics who live in fear of the Magisterium, the arbiter of orthodoxy. Pullman is avowedly anti-Christian, and the film has subdued the book’s obvious parallel between the Magisterium and the Church. Yet even in this atheistic environment, we discover expressions of courage, truth and sacrifice. As we watch it, the task for the discerning viewer is to celebrate the good, while rejecting the false assertion that humans are better off when they have no need of a higher power.

Learning to watch with discernment and appreciation may indeed prove to be the way to live happily ever after in our culture.