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...
It's A Wonderful Life ( Blu-ray ) (1946)
8.6/10
Director: Frank Capra
Starring: Beulah Bondi, Donna Reed, Gloria Grahame, Henry Travers, James Stewart, Lionel B...
Classic bittersweet comedy/drama that is the quintessential Frank Capra film. James Stewart is a banker living in the typical American small town of B... Read more
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
7.5/10
Director: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello
An original, highly psychological thriller that explores the thin line between reality and illusion. Jacob is a Vietnam veteran who becomes haunted by... 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
Jesus of Nazareth (1977)
8.5/10
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Starring: Robert Powell, Olivia Hussey, Anne Bancroft, Ernest Borgnine, Claudia Cardinale,...
Franco Zeffirelli's highly acclaimed version of the life of Jesus. This epic, moving drama, filmed in Tunisia and Morocco, features a stellar internat... Read more
Jesus of Nazareth (Blu-Ray) (1977)
8.5/10
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Anthony Quinn, Christopher Plummer, Claudia Cardinale, Donald Ple...
Beginning before the Nativity and extending through the Crucifixion and Resurrection, this mini-series brings to life all of the sweeping drama in the... Read more
Joan of Arc (Bergman) (1948)
6.7/10
Director: Victor Fleming
Starring: Cecil Kellaway, Francis L Sullivan, Gene Lockhart, Hurd Hatfield, Ingrid Bergman...
The life story of one of history's most remarkable heroines is boldly brought to the screen in this Academy Award winning production, an epic tale of... Read more
Joan of Arc (Jovovich) (1999)
6.7/10
Director: Luc Besson
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Faye Dunaway, Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich
Aka "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc". French filmmaker Luc Besson's ("The Big Blue") lavish historical biodrama about the visionary French pe... Read more
Joan of Arc (Sobieski) (1999)
6.7/10
Director: Christian Duguay
Starring: Leelee Sobieski, Peter O'Toole, Shirley MacLaine, Peter Strauss, Jacqueline Biss...
She was a visionary, a warrior, a heroine and a martyr, all before the age of 20. Leelee Sobieski stars as the French peasant girl whose devine vision... Read more
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)
6/10
Director: Hall Bartlett
Based on the popular book by Richard Bach, this warm and exhilarating film traces the life of a flock of seagulls, and of one bird in particular who l... Read more
Karol II: The Pope, The Man (2005)
Director: Giacomo Battiato
Starring: Piotr Adamczyk, Alberto Cracco, Dariusz Kwasnik, Michele Placido, Adriana Asti
The story of Pope Jean Paul II from his election as Pope in 1978 til his death in 2005. A human portrait of an extraordinary man who courageously con... Read more