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A Summer of Movie-Discussion Nights[Part One: "The Truman Show"]
By Steve Lansingh | I've always wanted to start a movie-discussion group, but I've never had more than one or two friends who were into movies as much as I am. Since moving online and discovering how many more Christians there are like me, I've had some excellent discussions with readers and colleagues, but I'd still never experienced the energy and insights of a freestyle group chat.
When our church small group started looking for a new topic for the summer, I was inspired by a Seattle small group I'd read about where members just gathered and shared what God was teaching them in their life. I thought I could share with the group how movies are one way I find God speaking to me, and suggested a summer of watching movies and discovering how they relate to Scripture.
Our first meeting, on June 3, was to watch "The Truman Show." I was very pleased with how everyone in the group jumped into discussion and made a real effort to place their own journey alongside Truman's. I'm not going to divulge the content of our conversations, since we want to keep the group a safe place to share ourselves, but I thought I could at least share some of the questions I used to get conversation started. Perhaps you can use them in a movie-discussion group of your own, or perhaps you want to email me with your answers, which I can post at the end of the article for others to read and respond to. (A discussion is now underway in the reader response section below -- scroll down and join the converstation!)
If you are interested in starting your own group, I suggest two ground rules -- one for the group, and one for the leader. The first ground rule I gave the group is to forget for a moment whether they liked the movie or didn't. Instead we tried to discuss what we thought the filmmakers were getting at, even if we didn't think they were entirely successful. The second rule, which is primarily for the leader, but could also be given to the group as a whole, is to let people speak their mind. There aren't really any rights or wrongs here; God speaks to people in different ways, and the idea here is to search for that voice rather than arrive at a "definitive" interpretation of a movie.
One last note: Because we're used to studies of 90 minutes or so, and because several people in the group have young children being babysat in another room, we watched only the second half of the movie. (I started it at 53:20 into the tape, and gave a plot summary for the people who hadn't yet seen the movie. For future sessions, I'm going to announce the title in advance and people who want to see the entire film beforehand can do so.) This method seemed to work well for us; your group might want to see the whole movie that night, or have everyone see it in advance and be ready to discuss when you meet.
OK, one more last note: I asked people to write down their favorite movie(s) at the start of the meeting, and will be choosing from that list for the rest of our topics. My idea is that it's a lot more powerful to discover God in a movie that you already love and has moved you; we'll see how that turns out.
Now, it's study-guide time -- eight questions after viewing "The Truman Show":
(For more discussion fodder, sink your teeth into the three reviews of the film on our site: Voyeurism of the Soul, Five Movies that Made My Year (1998), and Finding God on the Big Screen.)
Stay tuned for updates on our experiment, and for discussion guides for other movies!
Dan Buck
This film had me worried when I first saw it. I looked like a real move away from a sovereign understanding of God. "Yeah, he's there, but you need to break free of the institutions and boundries he puts on you." But one moment quelled my fears and blew my theory out of the water (happily). Just as Truman was about to walk out of the door of the "dome" his estranged girlfriend (while watching at home) looked up and said "Thank you God!" or "Please God!" or something to that effect. Suddenly, an entity bigger than Christof existed. And it was God. The film immediately became a thematic Frankenstein from my point of view. A sort of "When you try to do God's job it just doesn't work out."
The question I'd like to pose is the idea of Truman as a Messianic figure. Of course at first glance it seems like the author is making a scriptural tie to Christof - but of course Christof merely means "King of" (does anyone remember his last name?) and of course we've seen one or two examples of Kings too big for their britches. However Truman becomes the next focus of some sort of Jesus reference. He is the only one in his world who is one hundred percent authentic (again note the name "True Man"). And even Christof acknowledges his significance...
Truman: Was none of it real?
I throw it to the wolves to disect or digest. What do you think?
Added 6/11: Oh yeah, and let's not forget that Truman walks on water in one scene.
Use the form below to respond to this article.
READER RESPONSES
First, kudos and big time "I know what you mean" on the long-time desire to start a movie discussion group.
Christof: You were real.
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