Looking for God in Hollywood

What did you do on your vacation, Susan?

Me? I saw a movie. It is called Sleepers. Do you want the plot? . . . Okay, well there are four kids, Hell's Kitchen, New York. Dead-end kids, though they get sent up to a reformatory school for what really was an accident. There they are terribly mauled by sadistic guards, the whole bit, torture, rape. They are let out swearing vengeance.

Flash forward ten years. Two of the Gang of Four coast into a saloon. They are full-time hoods at this point and one of them goes to the john and, coming back, spots sitting in a booth eating his supper one of the sadistic guards. He walks over to alert his buddy that the enemy is here and the two crowd into the booth. "Do you recognize us?"

The sadist tells them to buzz off. "Why are you bothering me?"

"Because we want to see you die." Bang bang. Come to think of it, bang bang bang bang, such is the pleasure #1 and #2 took out of the killing.

They are arrested. Trial time. A nice touch, the fourth member of the Gang of Four is the prosecutor. It looks like curtains for #1 and #2 because there is plenty of circumstantial evidence. But #3, who wasn't at the scene of the time, approaches the Catholic priest (Robert De Niro) who knew them all since they were kids. Now this priest has for two whole hours played Mr. Straight. He had trouble as a kid himself and in fact spent time at the same House of Horrors as the Gang of Four. But he is frequently seen in the early movie trying to encourage them to do the right thing. Think of Spencer Tracy at Boys Town. So what does #3 ask him to do?

To appear at the trial and testify that #l and #2 couldn't have been at the bar killing somebody on the night of November first because they were at Madison Square Garden with the priest watching the Celtics lose a game. Holy Moses! Is he going to do it? The camera pans in close, the judge directs the priest's hand on to the Bible, and looking the jurors in the eyes the priest defies his calling, defies the juridical system, defies God, and -- takes a bow from Hollywood?

The movie closes without one more reference to the priest. We aren't even given a shot of him drunk with remorse in a back alley or committing suicide, or turning himself in for his perjury. It was among other things an artistic scam, because you don't invite the viewer/reader to invest confidence in some- body whose many contributions to the story are up to a moment charac- ter-building in one very clear direction -- only to see him swerve away from his own ideals in order to bail out two murderers. Bad morals, sure; but also bad art.

Bad cinema? Well, Susan, you probably have heard the complaint. Michael Medved, who is the movie critic of the New York Post and active in the Jewish faith recently did a documentary on the subject. He reviewed fifty movies, a small number of those that are available for any survey that seeks to make the point that religion is the studied target of Hollywood. The war on religion goes so far as to introduce a religious motif merely for the purpose of debas- ing it. Cape Fear was made years ago featuring Robert Mitchum as the evil man, but no mention of religion. It was remade in 1991 featuring Robert De Niro -- who is introduced with elaborate tattoos all over his body memorializing apocalyptic phrases from the Bible.

In Medved's tape on Hollywood's war against religion he gives us scenes from fifty movies, many of them familiar to regular viewers. The villainous figure, whether a priest, a rabbi, an evangelical, a Pope, a soldier, a nun is the figure associated with God. Godfather III went as far as one could reasonably go, this side of having Deep Throat rise again to document that St. Peter's Basilica is owned by the Mafia.

What surprises Mr. Medved is that the great majority of the anti-religious flicks are turkeys in the market. Every now and again a director will take a deep breath and permit a friendly view of religion, as when Whoopi Goldberg disguises herself as a nun and creates a splendid choir -- in a movie (Sister Act) that does well.

Poor Hollywood. An early tour with an anti-religious comedy features a fat/dumb Pope. In one scene he proposes giving money to starving children and is corrected by his cardinal-in-waiting: "Our job is to take in money, not to give it out." The preliminary run was such a bomb it went back to the studio and the title was changed from The Pope Must Die, to The Pope Must Diet. Didn't help.

So, Susan, next time you're in Rome, or in Jerusalem, send a postcard to your neighborhood Hollywood Director. Tell him you'll say a little prayer, maybe he'll grow up.

COPYRIGHT 1997 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning