ABSTRACT
Commentators wishing to convert the overwhelmingly secular majority of contemporary films to religion, or to discover a religious subtext within them, often declare any secularism merely apparent. Two hermeneutic operations for connecting film narratives to religious themes appear to be favoured by theologically-minded filmgoers: commentary on names that either originate in or recall the Bible; and the repeated discovery that the protagonist is a ‘Christ-figure’. The links established by these procedures, however, are quite weak, sometimes tenuous. Readers may often suspect the interpreter of failing to engage with, and hence obscuring, the real nature of the text, whose marginal elements are accorded a misleading centrality, or suspect the filmmakers themselves of applying a falsely dignifying gloss of Biblical connotation.
