Roland Joffe Explores Faith in 'There Be Dragons'

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

(RNS) British film director Roland Joffe calls himself a "wobbly agnostic." But in his Oscar-winning 1986 film The Mission about Jesuit missionaries in South America, and the upcoming film There Be Dragons, faith takes center stage.

There Be Dragons, which opens on Friday (May 5), is a historical epic based on the life of Spanish St. Josemaria Escriva, who founded the secretive and powerful Catholic order Opus Dei.

The 65-year-old director spoke about faith, free will and what it takes to become a saint. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Your film The Mission is a particular favorite for many Catholics. Do you see any connection between it and There Be Dragons?

In a sense, both movies are about the place of love in the world, and love, of course, is deeply connected with God. In some sense that's the most powerful connection. I also think they both deal with the full richness of the human experience, particularly evil and free will.

How do you mean?

Free will is a very powerful concept, even as we debate what it is, and whether we can exercise it. When I was making the movie, an odd idea struck me: In some ways the emotions you feel when watching a movie may reveal the ways in which God responds to us. Like God, movie spectators cannot intervene. If you intervene, you take away choice.

Why do you call yourself a "wobbly agnostic"?

I was brought up to have an inquiring and curious mind. This film got me to consider very seriously the idea of faith. Faith gets a bad rap from hard-line atheists, who treat it as a belief system free from questions. In fact, faith is an act of extraordinary effort and exquisite beauty. It's the application of reason to human experience, and the understanding that life is asking us to answer certain questions. The struggle to answer those questions is what faith is. It's actually a great human labor.

What made you want to make a movie about Josemaria Escriva?

One thing that really struck me is Josemaria's belief that the spiritual -- the ability to approach God -- could be found in every dimension of life. I wondered, "How could one find God amid the (Spanish) Civil War?"

So, is there a message in this movie?

I think this movie says we all live spiritual lives whether you like it or not because there are two aspects to every person: mental and physiological, and they perform different functions. This movie doesn't preach, this movie just describes. I think sometimes religious movies may be in a panic that they are fighting a receding tide of interest so they have to preach.

The Da Vinci Code painted a pretty grim picture of Opus Dei. Do you see your film as a counter to that image?

I think my film certainly comes up with a different understanding of what the founder's intentions are. It's not a publicity stunt for Opus Dei at all, but it is an attempt to find what Josemaria was all about. What I tried to express is the question of what faith is to each individual, and this central idea of Josemaria's -- that God is to be found among the living.

People have raised questions about Opus Dei's role in financing the picture. Did the group have much of an influence on the film?

Their role in what the movie says is very, very small. Some Opus Dei members read it, but they did so just to see if I was making stuff up that had no relevance. Storytelling must always blend with history. They left me completely free with that. There isn't an Opus Dei line (in the movie); it's only a platform for thinking about individual consciences.

How would you like audiences to react to your film?

A movie reflects what's inside people. If it's not in there, a movie cannot put it there. But one of the things Escriva said is that every human being is capable of being a saint. What he is saying is that in their treatment of the pain in other people's lives, human beings can draw on the resources of love and forgiveness. Inside each of us is the potential for extraordinary things.

Comments

[Dan Jighter]

03:38 PM on 05/06/2011

"Faith gets a bad rap from hard-line atheists, who treat it as a belief system free from questions."

That's not really correct. Most atheists, myself included, do not think religion is free of question. In fact, many theological traditions consider very profound questions and can involve very sophisticated reasoning.

What hard-line atheists say about religious faith is that it is belief without or in spite of evidence. Thus religion is free of evidence, not questions. Evidence and question are very different things.

Moreover, religious faith seems to permit lots of questioning, but only on certain types of questions. One may hold very deep questions about the nature of the soul or the afterlife or God's will. But one seems to seriously question whether souls, an afterlife, or God exists. Now I should clarify, as there is discussion and doubt regarding God's existence. Theologians have various proofs God exists, but I regard them as rationalizations that fall short of a valid proof. Believers will have personal crisis of faith where they doubt God, but often this seems merely personal and eventually their faith is restored. None of this seems to reach harder hitting analysis of the evidence for God's existence. It all seems a bit like having a deep intellectual tradition on the nature of the Wizard of Oz, but never mind the man behind the curtain.

How, to take any of this as saying religion is without any questions or effort is incorrect.

[lifeinfullcolor]

02:01 PM on 05/06/2011

I was working with Cambodian refugees when The Killing Fields came out and I said, one day I want to meet the man who made this film, because I believed and still believe that the media is the modern day messiah, it informs and teaches the masses. I did get the opportunity to meet Mr. Joffe when The Mission came out and was again impressed with his work. I've had some magical experiences in my life, unanswerable, I choose to see the magic, at least I live in an era where I can make a choice, to believe or not to believe. I have faith that the atheist physicist and I can discover how to untap answers to resolving the social and political will to work on sustainable development! I'm looking forward to seeing this film, to see if he entertains and informs, it's quite a balancing act, but oh what beauty when you accomplish it!

[James Brown]

07:09 PM on 05/05/2011

You said - "Like God, movie spectators cannot intervene. If you intervene, you take away choice."

As in for example if everyone in the seats pulled out there slingshots and peppered the screen the movie would plot somehow change. Lassie wouldn't go get the sheriff; the Black Swan lives through the dance...

Is that what your saying?

[Ytrus]

09:49 PM on 05/05/2011

I think he's saying, "there is no good explanation for why God hasn't interacted with the human race for the last 2000 years, so here's a shallow argument that will hopefully avoid any real skepticism."

Of course, if anyone tries to call you out on it, it's best to call them "condescending" or "rude."

[James Brown]

10:17 PM on 05/05/2011

(you think we should mention to him that it may be a lack of existence?)

[researcher]

05:08 PM on 05/05/2011

There is faith in self, faith in the universe, faith in beliefs, faith that science will find the answers, both the religious and the materialist have turned their faith into truths. Then it becomes blind faith.

As far an everyone can be a saint well that may be true but some just take longer than others. What would life be without variation? Hint: there would be no life just Isness. Ok too big of a hint scratch that previous sentence.

Variation is the stuff of life. The greater the variation the greater the stuff of life. As some have stated god must like a good play, as there is a lot of human drama in the world.

The religious see a big daddy in the sky full of wrath and unconditional love that is perfect but screwed up with his (yes god is a him) creation and then demanded an atonement and those that don’t believe this are sent to a very hot place for eternity.

Then we have the materialists that are here because of a grand cosmic accident and consciousness is simply a function of their materialistic brain. And awareness; well don’t discuss that one. And qualitative evidence for life after death: Does not count because blind faith in scientism says so.

Take your pick or find a new path less traveled and know that you will be rejected by both but in that rejection comes a whole new world of discoveries.

[iLdoRight]

04:21 PM on 05/05/2011

As I understand it there is a major religion that claims to be Christian that has actually put people to death in the past for owning a copy of the Holy Bible, and even though Revelation 20:6 says, "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection on such the second death hath no power. but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." Priest in the future, after their death and resurrection to Heaven, not before, so they can continue doing their work as John 14:12 indicates "true" Christians would be doing the work of promoting "true" Christianity. Can anyone but Our Creator elevate one to "sainthood"?

[frank day]

01:52 PM on 05/05/2011

The Mission is one of my all time favorite films.

I will look forward to the one.

[rationaljimmy]

10:09 AM on 05/05/2011

This thing must have been "edited for clarity" by an intoxicated monkey. Actually, it's very clear, it's just not about an agnostic. No agnostic would say "...love is deeply connected with god". And he certainly wouldn't go on to assume the existence of god in every subsequent paragraph.

Many religious people want to be called agnostic so that they seem more open to reason. Many are deluded.

[davidthomasphd]

08:28 PM on 05/05/2011

So, you believe you speak for all agnostics?

[rationaljimmy]

10:39 PM on 05/05/2011

Just extrapolating from the currently generally accepted definition of 'agnostic'. If one assumes god exists, then one likely isn't an agnostic - wobbly or otherwise. One might very much want to be an agnostic, but one might be wrong.

[TheWM]

09:21 AM on 05/05/2011

Honestly, the more I hear from and about agnostics, the less I like them. I'm one of the "hard-line atheists" Joffe misrepresents in this interview.

"Faith gets a bad rap from hard-line atheists, who treat it as a belief system free from questions."

That's ridiculous. Of course faith is not free from ALL questions. It's just that one religion, Christianity, forbade CERTAIN questions for over a thousand years upon pain of horrendous torture -- other religions at other times may have been just as bad in regard to freedom of inquiry, I don't know -- and that religions in general are weak in SOME areas of inquiry. For example: taking an honest look at themselves. But almost all people are bad at that. Including most atheists. (I, of course, am special and unique and a rare exception to this rule.)

[quorthon]

10:22 AM on 05/05/2011

Non-belief works along a spectrum, in the same way that belief does. To me, "hard-line atheism" does not take its non-belief far enough--it wants to do away with the notion of "God", but retain the possibility of a god's-eye-view, i.e. the hypothesis that everything can be explained, but by scientific inquiry. I reject that as well. Once we give up the god's-eye-view, we give up the idea there will never be exactly one true description of reality, a consequence that I am fully willing to embrace.

[hayness]

02:03 PM on 05/05/2011

That's not true that atheists or materialists believe science can explain everything. There are a number of areas in which we now say "we don't know and we may never know." That doesn't lead us to assume that an invisible, magical being whose only apparent purpose is to fill in the gaps in our understanding (and to ensure we experience eternal bliss or punishment according to our beliefs) is responsible.

[Jon Polm]

06:36 AM on 05/05/2011

Joffe is one of my all-time favourite directors!!!! It'll be nice to see this film, as I am myself an Agnostic with a Catholic upbringing. Woot woot to intelligent debate and inquiry!

[lifeinfullcolor]

03:24 AM on 05/05/2011

I've been pondering faith for quite a while, I believe that faith is what moves humanity forward! If not for faith in the ability to find answers to questions of science, of the whys and what fors, we'd be simply waiting for answers, versus resolving them. I once met a young boy from Equador who came here to get his heart fixed, his mother was from a small village, she handed her son to a person who told her they would help her son. I remember thinking what kind of faith that must have taken for her to put her sick child in the hands of virtual strangers! We in the first world generally aren't put into positions where we tap into the power of faith, because the real power of faith comes from love.

[Stokes]

06:55 AM on 05/05/2011

It is a difficult process to give up the emotional feelings of the flesh, but the pure love of the Spirit of God within each of us, will pave the way. How be it though, but never without a fierce battle as the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.

[TheWM]

09:26 AM on 05/05/2011

"faith in the ability to find answers to questions of science"

Is NOT the same as religious faith. The word "faith" has several different meanings.

Sheesh!

[Stokes]

09:41 AM on 05/05/2011

+And we have the free will to accept whatever meaning we choose. Peace.

[davidthomasphd]

03:14 AM on 05/05/2011

The Mission, from this director, was a great movie. Check it out. Another movie with a religious theme, Of Gods and Men, is now showing in selected theaters, and it is a current great movie. See it if you have a chance. Or rent it when it goes to DVD. I'm looking forward to seeing There Be Dragons, too. And to writing a critique about it.

[FearlessFreep]

01:12 AM on 05/05/2011

Joffe's THE KILLING FIELDS is a masterpiece. I liked the scene where the Khmer Rouge official said, "I fear for the future." (It takes a visionary to fear for the future when the present is that terrible!)

[Bittern1980]

09:49 PM on 05/04/2011

This guy smells a lot more like a theist in "wobbly agnostic" clothing.

[TheWM]

09:24 AM on 05/05/2011

No, no, that's what wobbly agnostics smell like.

[Ytrus]

08:29 PM on 05/04/2011

"If you intervene, you take away choice."

This is not and never has been true. When we intervene, we can offer choices, not just take them away. If this were not true, then we would never educate our children, since we'd be "taking away their choices" by intervening. It's a silly argument and makes no sense whatsoever.