What’s this all about? I turn 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m going to watch one movie a day for 30 days and spend 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2004. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003
“Saved!” is a satire of modern American Christianity in which a teen named Mary (Jena Malone) has sex with her boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) in an attempt to steer him away from his homosexuality, and winds up pregnant. Dean’s parents find out that he’s gay and send him away to a conversion camp, while Mary spends the rest of the movie trying to hide her pregnancy from her best frenemy Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) and the rest of her conservative Christian high school.
Throughout her pregnancy, Mary becomes friends with the social outcasts of the school, like Hilary Faye’s brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin), who is a person with a disability who uses a wheelchair, and Cassandra (Eva Amurri), American Eagle High school’s lone Jewish student. Oh, and she strikes up a new romance with the pastor’s kid (Patrick Fugit) and her mom ends up sneaking around with said pastor. And throughout the whole thing, Mary deconstructs her whole belief system and what it means to be “born again” before coming out the other side as a mother and as a stronger Christian. Heavy subject matter, but some really funny jokes. A lot going on here.
I first saw this movie in college, after I had already gone through my own deconstruction of my faith, where I took a hard look at what I believed and why, and made changes as necessary. I questioned my belief systems, changed denominations. I wasn’t too graceful about it in many ways, either. But that process only made my faith grow stronger. I still believe in God and Jesus, but my view of them is much different than the view of them I had at 13. I think that’s a good thing, and I think we all go through that, to a degree. “Deconstruction” is the hip word for that process now, but I think we all have moments that cause us to reconfigure our relationship to our faith. People have been deconstructing for centuries.
But I didn’t know that when I was 13, when this movie came out. Had I seen this movie when it was originally released, I probably wouldn’t have liked it. I was no stranger to change in my life, but my faith was something that never changed and something I never thought would change. To suggest otherwise would have scared me.
And it’s a good thing I waited to see this movie, eventually watching it my senior year of college with some friends. I was able to relate a little bit more to the characters and I was able to see that, underneath the irreverent humor (I think the “!” in the title is a tribute to “Airplane!” but I’m not sure), “Saved!” is a deeply Christian movie, concerned with talking about the ways we all deal with our faith when we’re introduced to things that challenge it. If more faith-based” movies took this much care to get the culture right and get its Christian message right, I would watch more faith-based movies.
Up next: One of my favorite movies to show people for the first time: it’s 2005’s “Sahara.”
Letter of Recommendation
Since we’re talking about Christian media, I know this recommendation is going to be very niche, but Christianity Today’s podcast about The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill has a lot to say about how the American church got to a point where it prioritizes celebrity over Christianity.
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This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
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