- Author(s): Stanley Rothman
- When: 1996-04
- Where: The American Scholar
In recent years at least two films have treated the Christian religion and those who practice is with reasonable respect. Black Rate (1991), a film about Jesuit missionaries to the Indians in what is now Canada, treats a Jesuit priest, one of the major characters in the film, as a person of sincere humility and deep be-lief. On the other hand, the Hurons. the recipients of his mission, are all but destroyed as the result of his efforts to convert them. Shadow lands(19911), a fictional biography of C. S. Lewis, takes Lewis and his Christian beliefs seriously, though he is something of a maverick, and the Christian message he delivers periodically to audiences of middle-aged women is presented as thin and contrived. Theoretically, it will be less so in the future (as the picture ends) because, after a tragic loss, he, the Lewis of the movie, finally opens himself to life.
