Finding the Bourne Intelligence

A few weeks ago my church had their annual Parish Retreat up near Sylvan Lake. I’ve attended these retreats for three years in a row and they are always a fun, relaxing and spiritually engaging time. I was especially excited this year as the theme of the weekend was ‘Movies!’. In the words of Monty Python, “Say…no…more!”

The idea of the weekend was to see how God can speak to us through mainstream Hollywood movies, even though the movies themselves may not (and usually don’t) intend to have any kind of specific Christian message. There are times when our Pastor likes to use movie clips to help emphasize a point in his sermon and I’ve often heard a specific movie quote or watched a specific scene and thought ‘That would be a good clip to use in a sermon’. But on the whole, I rarely examine an entire movie closely to see if there are any specific themes that could relate to Christianity. It was a fun and interesting exercise to spend the weekend watching films, trying to identify scenes that God could use to illustrate a point or communicate a message.

Our first film was Finding Nemo. One of my wife’s favorites (which was too bad since she was not able to attend). I’ve seen the film a number of times but had never really looked for specific Christian themes. As it turns out, when you go looking for such themes they are all over the place. The father and son relationship, the determination and dedication of the father searching for his child, lost sheep, letting go, trust, love, faith, hope; they’re all there. At the end of the film we got into groups and wrote down the numerous moments we recognized as having a Christian theme or message. I wish I had a copy of that sheet because there were far more than I would have expected. I’m sure that if you go looking for any kind of theme in a film you’re likely to find it, but it was a unique and eye-opening way to watch a movie. Not to mention the fact that Finding Nemo is just a terrific movie on its own. I highly recommend watching it and letting yourself see those moments that maybe you didn’t recognize before. God can speak to us in so many ways.

The next day we watched The Bourne Identity. One of my favourite films. I was really excited about this one simply because Jason Bourne has got to be my single most favourite spy character around. And once again I was amazed at the number of thematic elements that could easily be interpreted with a Christian message. Searching for one’s self, examining past actions/sins and seeing how they form who we are today and who we want to be tomorrow. Forgiveness, redemption, truth, sacrifice, good, evil. I found this exercise of looking for such themes to be a very satisfying addition to an already enjoyable film. Our group started to dig a little deeper in our analysis of The Bourne Identity and started asking ourselves ‘What defines me?’, ‘Who am I?’ One of my favourite films had become one the most engaging and thought provoking.
I found out what the last film of the weekend was going to be a few hours before we actually saw it. And I have to admit that when I was told it was going to be A.I. Artificial Intelligence I was very disappointed. A.I. was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. I had high expectations for it (Steven Spielberg directing, how can you go wrong with that?) and that probably made my disgust even more acute after wasting a good 3 hours of my life on it. I was not at all happy to learn that I would be wasting another 3 hours watching it again.

Fortunately the exercise of looking for thematic elements and quotes made it much more bearable. It’s still a terrible, terrible movie, but at least I got something out of it this time. Another soul searching film that explores who we are and what our purpose is. The relationships that the robot boy, David, forms can be linked to many of the relationships we form in our own lives. Ultimately, however, the film is about unconditional love and the quest to become that which we were created to be. David was made to love and he soon realizes that he must become something different in order to love as fully and as completely as he was created to. It was an interesting way to view a Christian theme that can often be overlooked or underestimated in our daily lives. Who were we created to be and how to we change in order to fulfill that destiny?

As I’ve said if you go looking for any kind of theme or message in a film you’re likely to find it or something very close to it. The point of the weekend wasn’t to prove Hollywood movies are filled with subliminal Christian messages. It was to show that God can speak to us through anything and that He will use anything and everything to remind us of His love for us. It was a very fulfilling exercise and I strongly encourage all my readers (all 6 million of you) to take the opportunity, the next time you watch a movie, and look for some themes or messages you didn’t know were there. You’ll simply be adding to an already wonderful experience.

Your search is over. ‘Finding Nemo’ trivia can be found here.
I could tell you that ‘The Bourne Identity’ trivia is here, but then I’d have to kill you.
Intelligent, but not artificial trivia for ‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence’ can be found here.