Until today, I’d never previously heard of Blue Like Jazz, which is apparently a book about one young man’s crisis of faith, and now it’s a movie. The reviews make it sound intriguing, if not uniformly good. For thought-provoking discussion of the film and its relative merits, here’s a smattering of said reviews: Jeffrey Overstreet at Filmwell, David Roark at Christ and Pop Culture, Kirk Bozeman, Christianity Today (Josh Hurst), The Village Voice (Benjamin Mercer), and The Onion‘s A.V. Club (Nathan Rabin). I didn’t cherry-pick positive reviews, per se; my method was to surf my blogroll, and then I used RT (on which the film has a definitely-not-good 39 percent) to click on publications I consistently read. What intrigues me is that everyone seems to agree that the film is no masterpiece, but that, in a market where “Christian films” are circled by the wagons of the faithful purely because it has the right message, this particular “Christian film” at least attempts to complicate that message. Just a bit. Having not read the book, I can only speculate about the film based on this secondhand info, but it sounds interesting enough that when it opens a little closer than Madison, I’ll probably soldier out to the theater to see it. Anyone out there who has seen it (or read the book) care to comment on what I might expect?
April 16, 2012
Looking at Blue
About mjschneider
April 19th, 2012 at 7:38 am
I’ve read the book, and found it thought-provoking and enjoyable. I think my closest friend went to see the film, but I haven’t seen her since she did, so I have no info in that area.
I recommend the book, though. Miller is a thinking person, who doesn’t seem to shy away from difficult questions and knows how to laugh at himself and those who share his faith, which is a rare quality in Christian writers :)
April 20th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Sounds interesting. If I have time, I may read it this summer or fall. The synopsis makes it sound like it’s right up my alley in the way that Craig Thompson’s Blankets was.