Flashes of Panic

Not something I plan on doing often, but this has been percolating in my head since I saw it yesterday. And perhaps I should be doing it more often, if Tony is to be believed?!?

The key to Saved! is a throwaway line about halfway through. Pastor Skip is talking to someone who isn’t listening, and he tells a story about someone else telling him, “I can’t tell the difference between Christian rock and rock rock anymore.”

Put that together with the fact that the allegedly-Christian rock band at the “prom” is “playing” nothing but Replacements tunes, and you’re making progress. (Lip-syncing the actual recordings, in fact, not even a studio-band cover. “We’ll inherit the earth, but we don’t want it” is hardly an anthem for the born again—am I the only one who recognized it? This is a band which recorded songs like “Androgynous” and “Gary’s Got a Boner,” folks.) And the detail that Michael Stipe is a co-producer shouldn’t be left out either. I wonder why, in my area, it’s playing at the Pleasant Street Theater and not the big multiplex, but that might be my paranoia coming out.

Despite some of the (muted) uproar, this isn’t an anti-religion movie. It’s a lot more about the way a certain fraction of religious people choose to practice their religion, and the ways it can lead them into ignorance (pregnancy? Who knew?) and self-contradiction. None of this is new (I hope); what Saved! does differently is package it in a contemporary teen-movie wrapper for popular consumption. Run through a few plot points and you can see the candy coating: uncomfortable budding sexuality, check. Competition between “friends” for desirable person of opposite sex, check. Stuck up high school girl, check. Rebellious girl, check. Oblivious single parents, check. Resolution at prom, check.

The danger is that it will be seen as hateful by one side (it’s not—there’s not a hate-able character in the movie) and too lightweight by the other (it may be.)

Jena Malone does a good job with the main character; most of what she needs to do is look pensive and pretty, and she does that well. Mandy Moore is surprisingly good, as is the subplot of Macaulay Culkin and Eva Amurri. Pastor Skip is a stellar foil, but the real talent is in the scriptwriting. They hit all the high points, and hide some perceptive stuff in the cracks and crannies. (The suggestion that, for instance, a “Mercy House” for backsliders like gay teens or unwed mothers “is less for them than for the people who send them there.”) It’s a time bomb; it plants a lot of subtle bits you won’t think about until much later.

That said, if you’ve thought through religion issues before, you probably won’t find much new in there; it’s purpose isn’t to advance the discussion, but (I expect) to start it, hopefully in a less-than-confrontational manner.

Now playing: We’ll Inherit The Earth from Don’t Tell A Soul by The Replacements