Post-World War II Italy was a place of abject societal decay. Everywhere, there was unthinkable poverty and brokenness — and the added shame of having been on the wrong side of the war, which meant the side of Hitler and death camps and Gestapo mass executions of neighbors and friends.  

The formerly elite community of Italian filmmakers who are given credit for having birthed art cinema had to come to grips with the fact that the state-sponsored cinema was over. They had no money and, because most of the studios had been bombed out, nowhere to shoot movies. Even more, as artists who survived so much horror, they were driven to process the big questions about life and meaning.  

The answer for Italian cinema in the 1940s and ’50s was a movement called “neorealism.” Constrained by the lack of resources, it was a stripped-down storytelling, usually without sets, effects or glamorous actors. Their themes were serious: What is man? How do we reckon with the devastating failures of secular society?  

Some of the most powerful and influential movies of the 20th century came out of this movement, including the heartbreaking classics Rome, Open City, and Bicycle Thief.  

Filmmakers today are also reckoning with a similar institutional loss as the Hollywood-based entertainment industry continues to collapse. Christians in the business have rarely had any real money, but as nearly all the studio money has dried up, there is suddenly the opportunity of a level playing field between secular storytellers and those who want to make a case for transcendence. 

Just like the post-war theatergoers, the global audience today is desperate for stories to help process these frightening times in which it seems everything is broken and there is no one to follow.  

There are lessons to be gleaned from the withered visual storytelling that has peppered movie screens this summer. If faith-based filmmakers could read the storytelling signs, there are clues as to what a Christian neorealism could offer the world of our time. 

There were a few bright lights in the summer movie mix, namely Ethan Hawke’s brilliant and creative biopic Wildcat, about Flannery O’Connor, and the surprising little film Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot.  

Based on the true story of a small Black church in eastern Texas, which ends up adopting 76 troubled kids out of the broken foster system, Possum Trot packs some very powerful emotion into its two hours. It is refreshing because it doesn’t shy away from the high cost of trying to save kids who are victims of neglect and abuse. That cost is actually what the movie is about.  

While the film starts a little too early in the true story, making the movie run long, most of the performances are strong, and the filmmaking is adept. The movie is very convicting that in order to do real, lasting good, a commitment to sacrifice will be required.  

But overall, the summer 2024 movies have been an embarrassing slog for the once-great American cinema industry.  The glaring sign of a real problem is in the obvious and cowardly retreat from creativity itself that can be seen in the profusion of stylish but ultimately vacuous sequels like Twisters, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Inside Out 2, Furiosa, A Quiet Place: Day One, Alien: Romulus, MaXXXine, Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Force of Nature: The Dry 2. And that’s just a partial list of the retreads we saw this summer. Sequels feel safer to an industry, which cares not about enlightening but just about turning a profit.  

The entertainment industry’s impulse to wring dry every good idea it ever had keeps seeing the global audience shrink and shrink. AMC, the nation’s largest theater chain, just reported that 2024 box-office receipts are down $300 million from a year ago, with attendance this summer showing a 25% decline. The lesson here is, “In terms of storytelling, you can have safe or good. Pick one.” 

 

Disappointing and Troubling 

Pixar’s much-anticipated sequel to its brilliant movie from 2015, Inside Out, manifests the key truth that “a sequel needs a new story.” That is, there should not be a sequel unless there is some new meaning to share. While Inside Out 2 wasn’t horrible, in the end, it didn’t have much of anything fresh or wise to offer — and in fact put out there some downright lies. One big lie in the movie is the illusion it paints of a nearly absolute — and yet perfectly functional — female world. The only men in the movie are the characters Anger and Sheepish Embarrassment/Helpless, while the two short scenes with Riley’s father just demonstrate his irrelevance in his daughter’s life. 

The bigger lie of Inside Out 2 is the suggestion to adolescents that the way out of social anxiety is to squeeze your eyes shut and repeat over and over, “I’m a good person.” The remedy here has to be a self-cure, because the woke filmmakers at Pixar today cannot admit the possibility that there might be some real help for lost kids from, you know, God, or their parents, or anywhere outside themselves.  

The unfortunate subtext of the spate of this summer’s young-adult movies is “a catalogue of angst isn’t a story.” This genre used to be called “coming of age,” but that was before, when it was okay to suggest that there was a thing to be aspired to called “being a grown-up.”  

Film after film in 2024 parades across the screen beautiful young actors with sullen or vacant expressions. They give their bodies to whomever is standing around in always more inordinate ways but rarely commit their hearts. As a case in point, Challengers sets out to explore two guys and a young woman experimenting with a three-way relationship, which is problematic to begin with and not a new concept, but the film fails on all levels because the characters have no real care for themselves or each other.  

Great movies are creatively ambitious with strong points of view about good and evil. Today’s offerings for young adults simply want to say that rebellion against traditional values exists as an option, but they shy away from asserting where that rebellion truly leaves a human person. 

The subtextual truth to be gleaned from the execrable and brutal dystopian production Civil War, is that “even when going to dark places in storytelling, there needs to be a glimmer of hope.” Instead, Civil War seems to be rooting for the whole planet to dissolve into fiery anarchy. There is no solution proffered to the audience, and it suggests through the lead, played by Kirsten Dunst, that the only way to live amidst what’s coming is resolute cynicism.  

 

2 Bright Lights 

The fact that two of the best films of the summer were made on tiny budgets and far outside of the Hollywood entertainment universe should actually be marching orders for Christian filmmakers to create our own version of neorealism cinema. The lesson is: “If you want to do fresh, meaningful visual storytelling, don’t wait for permission from the entertainment establishment.”  

Unlike the majority of summer 2024 movies, both Wildcat and Possum Trot are built around important, thoughtful ideas that underlie their plot and characters and style. As the best of the post-war European filmmakers came to understand, it is the theme that ultimately unifies all the different art forms that go into a movie. What should be the theme of faith-based filmmakers in this cultural moment?