How to Talk to a Movie: Movie-Watching as a Spiritual Exercise (Reel Spirituality Monograph)

Watching a movie is more than an opportunity to be entertained. Watching a movie is an opportunity to meet with God. In a few brief chapters How to Talk to a Movie will forever change the way you watch movies by opening your eyes and ears to what movies are saying how they are saying it and how God might be speaking to you through them. The writer Frederick Buechner once said that the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop look and listen. When we truly listen he says we discover that life is a vastly richer more mysterious business than we might have initially suspected. Davidsons book helps us to do just that: to listen to what our neighbor is saying through a movie and to discover the mysterious business of Gods voice there too. --W. David O. Taylor Fuller Theological Seminary Deceptively brief and simple How to Talk to a Movie is a great read--whether for students taking classes on film for Christians wanting to lead a film discussion group or for any and all film lovers who recognize that a films presence extends outward beyond its screening to conversations with others and perhaps the Other. --Robert K. Johnston Author of Reel Spirituality; Coeditor of God in the Movies Talking at a movie is easy. Talking to it requires a different attitude and a more refined set of skills. In How to Talk to a Movie Elijah Davidson instructs the reader in that skill set and also makes the persuasive argument that this approach to cinema is one that Christians in particular should embrace. I wholeheartedly agree. --Josh Larsen Editor Think Christian; Cohost Filmspotting; Author of Movies Are Prayers How to Talk to a Movie offers thoughtful spiritual reflection worth considering for anyone who wants to engage with movies beyond the surface. This would be required reading if I were teaching any theological film analysis course. Highly recommended! -- Avril Z. Speaks Film/TV Produce; Director; Educator Davidson responds to cinema with both heart and mind and builds a raft for people of faith to explore something beyond the light on the screen. Asking what shape the meaning in the movies can take in our own lives his is a warm and enthusiastic invitation to a better way of experiencing art and soul. --Gareth Higgins Founder moviesandmeaning.com and theporchmagazine.com Elijah Lynn Davidson is Codirector of Reel Spirituality a Brehm Center initiative of faith and film at Fuller Theological Seminary. He covers multiple film festivals hosts the Reel Spirituality podcast and reviews more than one hundred films each year. He also really likes pie.