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...
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
7.9/10
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Robert MacNaughton, Peter Coyote, Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace
The winner of 4 Oscars and now a classic, about a 10 year old boy befriending a creature from another planet that's been stranded on Earth. A warm, in... 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
Chariots of Fire (1981)
7.2/10
Director: Hugh Hudson
Starring: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Ian Holm
England's finest athletes have begun their quest for glory in the 1924 Olympic Games. Success brings honour to their nation. For two runners, the hono... Read more
The Elephant Man (Blu-ray) (1980)
8.2/10
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Freddie J...
From the director of 'Eraserhead' and 'Dune', based on the true story of John Merrick, who suffered from a rare, physically distorting disease and was... Read more
Altered States (1980)
6.9/10
Director: Ken Russell
Starring: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid
William Hurt stars in a dazzling debut as a research scientist on an incredible journey into the inner space of the mind. He tries everything from ps... Read more
Somewhere In Time (1980)
7.3/10
Director: Jeannot Szwarc
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Teresa Wright
Christopher Reeve stars in this lush romantic fantasy about a lonely artist, obsessed with a beautiful Victorian woman's portrait, who inexplicably fi... Read more
The Elephant Man (1980)
8.2/10
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Freddie J...
From the director of 'Eraserhead' and 'Dune', based on the true story of John Merrick, who suffered from a rare, physically distorting disease and was... Read more
Stalker (1979)
8.1/10
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring: Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn
An extraordinary sci-fi film about an expedition into 'the zone', an eerie no-man's-land created by a meteor strike and depicted as a warped version o... Read more
Stalker (Blu-ray) (1979)
8.1/10
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring: Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn
An extraordinary sci-fi film about an expedition into 'the zone', an eerie no-man's-land created by a meteor strike and depicted as a warped version o... Read more
The China Syndrome (1979)
7.4/10
Director: James Bridges
Starring: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas
The title infers a total atomic meltdown that would bore a hole through the Earth all the way to China. Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon st... Read more