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...
Sympathy for Delicious (2010)
5.8/10
Director: Mark Ruffalo
Starring: Juliette Lewis, Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Noah Emmerich, Orlando Bloom, Christ...
Paralyzed from the waist down after a motorcycle crash, homeless ex-club DJ Delicious D (Christopher Thornton) seeks help from Skid Row priest Father... Read more
Of Gods and Men (2010)
7.2/10
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Starring: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale
Trappist monks living in Algeria find their Catholic faith tested to the limit after a revolution takes place and the government urges them to abandon... Read more
Hereafter (2010)
6.5/10
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Matt Damon, Richard Kind, Cecile De France, Bryce Dallas Howard
Director Clint Eastwood's poignant film examines the possibility of an afterlife through a host of emotionally evocative characters. It centers on a m... Read more
Eat Pray Love (2010)
5.7/10
Director: Ryan Murphy
Starring: Billy Crudup, Javier Bardem, Julia Roberts, Richard Jenkins, James Franco, Viola...
Believing there's more to life than a husband, house and career, Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) finds herself with a new appetite for life in this inspir... Read more
$ 9.99 (2009)
6.7/10
Director: Tatia Rosenthal
Starring: Voices Of, Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Samuel Johnson, Barry Otto, Joel Edg...
Based on a series of short stories by famed writer Etgar Keret, this feat of stop-motion animation poses the question 'what's the meaning of life' and... Read more
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
Unmistaken Child (2008)
7.7/10
Director: Nati Baratz
Witness an extraordinary individual journey in this touching, revealing look at a Nepalese monk's search for his reincarnated mentor. This beautifully... Read more
Henry Poole is Here (2008)
6.5/10
Director: Mark Pellington
Starring: Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza, George Lopez, Cheryl Hines, Richar...
Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) has a great life, a beautiful fiancee and he's just found out he's going to die. Hoping to drop out and live his final days... Read more
Chaotic Ana (2007)
6.4/10
Director: Julio Medem
Starring: Manuela Velles, Charlotte Rampling, Bebe , Asier Newman, Nicolas Cazale
Ana (Manuela Velles) is an innocent, living a sheltered existence as an artist in an Ibizan cave with her father; but when Justine (Charlotte Rampling... Read more
Buddha's Lost Children (2007)
7.9/10
Director: Mark Verkerk
Thailand's Golden Triangle is a rugged region known for its drug smuggling and impoverished hill tribes but one man devotes himself to the welfare of... Read more