Watching Movies as Spiritual Practice

I used to wear around a T-shirt, now long frayed and discarded, from my local community movie theater. It had a picture of a nun in a habit standing behind a director’s camera and a caption above that read, “Movies are my religion.” I could say the same since I experience God every time I slouch slightly into a cinema chair and receive the good news—or terrible or complicated news—of that particular movie of the week. Technically, the religion in which I choose to apprentice myself is Christianity, but the shirt made a salient point. Movies are sacred. We can find God at the movies—just as we stumble upon God in life itself—if we allow ourselves to participate in a larger story. The marvelous combination of film reel, acting craft, musical score, screenwriter dialogue, and story arc, matched with a community theater (best-case scenario), has the potential to draw us out of ourselves to experience empathy, awe, grief, and enjoyment. Movies mirror life to us so that we can see life anew.

Photo credit: Photo by Noom Peerapong on Unsplash

It’s a spiritual practice for me and I try to go as often as I can. I’m fortunate enough to have the exquisite curation of my local art-house cinema to guide me to films that matter, both then and now, but I also love a trip to the multiplex with its luxury seats, surround sound, and large screen. I’ll watch anything, from Barbenheimer (I couldn’t make it work on the same day, but I did manage to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer in the same weekend) to The Equalizer 3 (I love Denzel) to Spider Man: Across the Spider Verse (absolutely jaw-dropping) to RMN, a Romanian movie about racism in a small village that included one of the tensest cinematic scenes I saw all last year.

Last week, I saw the French film Anatomy of a Fall, a gripping murder and legal drama that has enamored critics and audiences alike. Once again, film magic transfixed me by telling a story about other people’s lives, making me care and concerned about them. I left the theater feeling more alive and human—as I always do. Because it’s not just Anatomy of a Fall; it’s weeping at the evil of whiteness, Native erasure and Leonardo DiCaprio’s character’s idiot complicity in Killers of the Flower Moon. Or, it’s following around the brilliant Michelle Williams’s Lizzy in Showing Up as she tries to navigate her arts administrator job while quietly finding her footing as an artist.

Like any longstanding religion, going to the movies has its rituals. The popcorn and soda fill in for Eucharistic bread and wine, or trail mix and kombucha, if you’re like me. If I arrive early, there’s sometimes a prayerful hush during the pre-movie anticipation. Ads for the local dentist or bank might roll while I read over a printout of coming attractions. The lights darken as if calling us to worship, trailers prepare us for the main event, and we plunge into the experience for which we’re all there.

Watching movies is contemplative practice for me because of how they change me. Movies have always stretched my imagination and consciousness and helped me grow. Watching The Normal Heart rivetted me as I learned about the AIDS crisis that took place when I was in elementary school; Almost Famous electrified me with the energy and confusion of rock and roll; Malcolm X provided a perspective of Black Power that I had never yet heard; The Bourne Identity catapulted me into the desperate thrill of finding out who you are (amid fights and car chases); I’m pretty sure the first Top Gun contained the first sex scene I saw (my friend’s parent told us to cover our eyes, but of course we didn’t); Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master depicted the dynamics of cultic charisma and abuse; and on and on.

I also rest when I watch movies. Some call it escapism, but it’s more than that for me. The video loop of my constant thoughts pauses, and I feel my whole body relax. I’m thinking but not thinking for once, almost as if meditating. I’m experiencing how the characters’ words and decisions, along with the pulsing or peaceful soundtrack, impact me.

I’m convinced, too, that movies can create empathy—for those ready to watch them with an open heart. They invite us to witness a story different from our story, like the lovely Fremont, about an Afghan refugee who works in a factory writing sentences for fortune cookie inserts. The life experience of the protagonist Donya is so far from my own, and yet the film, like all good film, provides an invitation for me to relate. It reveals our inherent differences and inherent unity. The hope, of course, is that such identification will lead to greater inclusion and compassion in our lives. I let go of the ultimacy of my own story, I witness another, and I am more human as a result.

The religion of film can often bridge the gaps between us.  

I welcome any of your movie recommendations in the comments. What films have stretched your heart and mirrored humanity back to you?

Also: I’m having fun exploring Instagram in earnest for the first time! I’ve had an account for years, but only really used it for kid photos. I’ll be posting writing related material there going forward, and I’d love to connect with you @ordinary.mystic.