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...
Departures (2008)
8.1/10
Director: Yojiro Takita
Starring: Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kimiko Yo, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Ryoko Hirosue, T...
When his orchestra disbands, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) decides to start over and moves back to his small hometown. Desperate for work, he secr... Read more
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
7.2/10
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Starring: Alec Guinness, Graham Faulkner, Judi Bowker, Leigh Lawson
Franco Zeffirelli relates the tale of St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian soldier who returns from the Crusades and dismisses his family's material weal... Read more
Jean de Florette / Manon Des Sources (1986)
Director: Claude Berri
Starring: Yves Montand, Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Beart
A double feature. 'Jean de Florette'. A marvelous tale of greed and intolerance from the novel by Marcel Pagnol about a city hunchback who inherits a... Read more
Powaqqatsi (1988)
7.3/10
Director: Godfrey Reggio
"Life in Transformation". As a follow up to "Koyaanisqatsi", this visual montage shows how the Third World societies have been exploited. Beautifully... Read more
Waking Life (2001)
7.8/10
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh
Director Richard Linklater's innovative cartoon odyssey uses live-action footage overlaid with matching computer animation to create an experience as... Read more
Gandhi (1982)
8.1/10
Director: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mill...
Richard Attenborough's Academy Award-winning epic follows the extraordinary life of Mahatma Gandhi (played by Ben Kingsley), from his beginnings as a... Read more
2001: A Space Odyssey ( Blu-ray ) (1968)
8.3/10
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Leonard Rossiter, William Sylvester
Light years ahead of its time, this groundbreaking, visually stunning masterpiece grows even more wondrous as time passes. Beginning with The Dawn of... Read more
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
8/10
Director: Charles Laughton
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish
Robert Mitchum gives one of his best performances as Harry Powell, a psychotic self-styled preacher who is after the stolen money of a hanged man. Set... Read more
Siddhartha (1972)
6.7/10
Director: Conrad Rooks
Starring: Shashi Kapoor, Simi Garewal
From the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Herman Hesse ("Steppenwolf"), "Siddhartha" is the story of a young Brahmin who leaves his wealthy parents to bec... Read more
The Education Of Little Tree (1996)
7.3/10
Director: Rick Friedberg
Starring: James Cromwell, Tantoo Cardinal, Joseph Ashton
James Cromwell ("Babe") stars in this heartwarming adaptation of the acclaimed bestseller about an orphaned eight-year-old Cherokee boy sent to live w... Read more