An Interview with God
"It’s about time God hit the front pages."
Director: Perry Lang
Lead Cast: Brenton Thwaites, David Strathairn, Yael Grobglas
Screenwriter: Ken Aguado
Producers: Ken Aguado, Fred Bernstein
Editors: Steve Jacks, Jamie Kirkpatrick
Musical Director: Ian Honeyman
Cinematographer: Frank Prinzi
Genre: Drama, Religious
Distributor: Giving Films
Location: New York, USA
Running Time: 1 hr 37 min
Technical assessment: 3.0 ★★★✩✩
Moral assessment: 4.5 ★★★★✬
CINEMA rating: V13
MTRCB rating: PG
New York City newspaper reporter Paul Asher (Brenton Thwaites) used to have a strong faith as a Christian. But when he returns from covering the war in Afghanistan and finds his wife (Yael Grobglas) having an affair, his faith is challenged. As he desperately tries to patch together his crumbling marriage while grappling with nagging questions about life, immortality, free will, et al, his faith begins to shake. Then he gets a mysterious invitation to interview God. Thinking like a journalist, he grabs the opportunity — who would not want that kind of scoop? Asher first meets God (David Strathairn) in a park — grey hair, grey suit, looking like the gentleman next door. There’s a complete but untouched chess board between them, and two elderly men chatting at a nearby table, but no burning bush or radiant cloud in sight. Soon he tells his editor about the encounter and his intention to write a story of it. The editor laps up the idea; thus two more appointments are set with God.
Thwaites is intense as the beleaguered young man, and Strathairn performs within the limits of his role — and perhaps to Perry Lang’s expectations. An observant viewer would see that the movie is produced in part by “Giving Films” that “…fund life-giving stories and donate all profits to charity.” If one knew further that Giving Films is the same outfit that made Paul, Apostle of Christ and 90 Minutes in Heaven, one would rightly guess that Interview with God is another movie made by Christians for Christians. As for the intention of the movie, the newspaper editor’s remark (when Asher sounded him off about writing a story of his interview with God) was a dead giveaway: “It’s about time God hit the front pages.” Said with a smile, it’s not the typical response from a typical hard-boiled newspaper editor, but there you are. That explains the sacrae theologiae delivered in catechetical snippets, which may indeed be engaging and entertaining for those familiar with the bible, but may fly over the heads of people who’d rather not hear the words “God” and “salvation” outside of a church.
Are there any take-home nuggets to be found in Interview with God? There have been at least 13 actors who have played the biblical God in Hollywood movies, ranging from Groucho Marx (Skidoo, 1968) to Whoopi Goldberg (A Little Bit of Heaven, 2011). While it may be a consolation for believers that filmdom is not yet totally “Godless”, viewers must be cautioned against swallowing the portrayals hook, line and sinker lest they be misled by the Gospel According to Hollywood. In Interview with God, the questions that Asher asks God are those that man has grappled with since the day Eve bit of the apple in Eden, and of course, Asher is never satisfied. Acting like a brat who doesn’t think God deserves reverence, he demands air-tight answers from God, and bristles when God touches his marital issues because in truth, in the back of his head is the intent to turn his encounter with this man who claims to be God into a newspaper story. Talk about investigative journalism!
Behind the obvious pedagogy in the movie is a truth for Anyman to glean: God is accessible. God wants to help, to lead us by the hand. God is a friend who wants to listen to us. God so loves us that He is ready to be mocked, willing to wear a suit and tie just to appear acceptable to us, to speak our language just to be heard, to stoop to our level and play tricks to be believed. Doesn’t that offer us a glimpse of salvation history — God becoming man to lead us back to eternity? But most of us are like Asher, self-sufficient and smug until reminded of our mortality, then, we cry out to God to be heard. Interview with God will have served a unique purpose if the viewer finds in it a vehicle to lift his faith to the next level, a portal that silently leads him to the Kingdom within, or a whiff of grace to turn interview to innerview. — TRT
