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...
Ben-Hur (1959)
8.1/10
Director: William Wyler
Starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd
Winner of eleven Oscars including Charlton Heston as Best Actor, an epic spectacle concerning a prince of Judea who incurs the wrath of the Roman Empi... Read more
Close-Up (1990)
8.3/10
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Hossain Sabzian, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abolfazl Ahankhah, Mehdrad Ahankhah
Regarded as one of the greatest films of the '90s, acclaimed director Abbas Kiarostami's brilliant exploration of a misguided cinephile's attempts to... Read more
Diary of a Country Priest (1950)
8/10
Director: Robert Bresson
Starring: Claude Laydu, Antoine Balpetre, Gaston Severin
A priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregatio... Read more
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
7.2/10
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Brendan Gleeson, David Thewlis, Edward Norton, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Marton...
Ridley Scott directed this epic-scale historical drama inspired by the events of the 12th century Crusades. Balian (Orlando Bloom) a humble French bla... Read more
Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
7/10
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, B D Wong, Mako
This grand historical adventure in Tibet is the story of Austrian mountain climber and Nazi party member, Heinrich Harrer (Brad Pitt), who after fleei... Read more
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
8.3/10
Director: Godfrey Reggio
The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance", an apt summation of this mesmerizing collection of wonders both natural and man-made. S... Read more
Vanilla Sky (2001)
6.9/10
Director: Cameron Crowe
Starring: Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Noah Taylor, Kurt Russell, Jason Lee, Cameron Diaz
Director Cameron Crowe's re-working of the 1997 Spanish film 'Open Your Eyes' (inspired by a Philip K Dick novel, 'Ubik') stars Tom Cruise as a charmi... Read more
Yi Yi ( A One and a Two ) (1999)
8.1/10
Director: Edward Yang
Starring: Nianzhen Wu, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Issey Ogata
Set in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, writer/director Edward Yang's acclaimed drama juxtaposes old and new, love and heartbreak as it follows the em... Read more
Nostalgia ( aka Nostalghia ) (1983)
8.2/10
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring: Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano
A homesick Russian poet, researching in Italy with the aid of a beautiful interpreter, arrives at a Tuscan spa and is set a challenging task by the lo... Read more
1984 (1984)
7.2/10
Director: Michael Radford
Starring: Cyril Cusack, John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton
An extraordinary film version of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton. A story of impossible love and tragic b... Read more