Spiritual Cinema
"Movies containing spiritual, metaphysical, conscious or similar messages or themes".
Simon Keyes explains the idea behind Spiritual Cinema.
It is the extraordinary power of cinema, high or low, serious and exploitative, to move and disturb us that we should celebrate and embrace in all its diversity. Films can fertilise our inner lives and provide a counter-balance to that compartmentalisation of our "religious" selves that Thomas Merton dubbed our "personal holiness project". The feelings and shadows that films (well, perhaps not quite every movie) incarnate in us give us privileged access to the world beyond our immediate experience. The sights and sounds of cinema can resonate in the realms of the unconscious and the archetypal like no other medium, and there is much for us to learn about ourselves in this experience.
Below is a list of "the best of" this genre...
The Robe (1953)
6.8/10
Director: Henry Koster
Starring: Richard Burton, Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, Michael Rennie
A lavish costume drama set during the crucifixion of Jesus and the birth of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Richard Burton, Jean Simmons star. Trivi... Read more
The Seventh Seal (1957)
8.2/10
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson
Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (Max von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges h... Read more
The Sixth Sense (1999)
8.1/10
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Toni Collette, Haley Joel Osment, Bruce Willis, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg
Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a distinguished child psychologist haunted by the painful memory of a disturbed patient he was unable to help. So... Read more
The Sixth Sense ( Blu-ray ) (1999)
8.1/10
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Olivia Williams, Toni Collette, Donnie Wahlberg
Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a distinguished child psychologist haunted by the painful memory of a disturbed patient he was unable to help. So... Read more
The Song of Bernadette (1943)
7.7/10
Director: Henry King
Starring: Jennifer Jones, William Eythe, Charles Bickford, Vincent Price, Lee J Cobb, Glad...
This excellent story of the 19th-century French peasant girl who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary and found herself at the centre of a worldwide contro... Read more
The Sound of Music ( Blu-ray ) (1965)
8/10
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Julie Andrews
The hills are alive with the sound of the Von Trapp family in this beloved Rodgers-Hammerstein epic musical. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer lea... Read more
The Story of Ruth (1960)
6.9/10
Director: Henry Koster
Starring: Stuart Whitman, Elana Eden, Tom Tryon, Peggy Wood, Viveca Lindfors, Jeff Morrow,...
Telling the biblical story of Ruth the Moabite who, after the death of her husband, accompanies her mother-in-law when she returns to her homeland of... Read more
The Straight Story (1999)
8/10
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Everett McGill, Harry Dean Stanton
In a gentle, G-rated change of pace that still features his trademark fascination with rural American quirkiness, director David Lynch recounts the tr... Read more
The Ten Commandments (1956)
7.9/10
Director: Cecil B DeMille
Starring: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, D...
For sheer pageantry and spectacle, few motion pictures can claim to equal the splendor of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 remake of his epic "The Ten Commandm... Read more
The Terminator (1984)
8/10
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Paul Winfield, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger
A cyborg is sent from the future to present-day Los Angeles on a deadly mission. He's got to kill a young woman whose life will have great significanc... Read more