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In a piece of spirited dialogue, Nicole Kidman's larger-than-life Virginia Woolf implores her husband, Leonard, to let her be. "Only I can understand my condition," she pleads. "This is my right. If it is a choice between Richmond and death, then I choose death." And so she does, serenely walking into a watery grave, hallowed by a verdant English countryside. She chooses death irrespective of the consequences for her husband.

So does Richard (Ed Harris), who chooses suicide over death by AIDS. So does Julianne Moore's Laura Brown, the poster-child of 1950s wifedom purgatory, the emblem of American personal rights:

I left both my children. I abandoned them. … It would be wonderful to say you regretted it; it would be easy. But what does it mean to regret when you have no choice. It's what you can bear. There it is. No one is going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.

She chose "life"? Only at the expense of her own children, and for that she was praised by film critics as courageous. Balderdash. It's false! Christianly we understand that this kind of selfishness only results in a worse death, the misery of self-centeredness. Contrary to Laura's impression, there is a Forgiver. How he forgives is a mysterious thing. But for the filmmaker the responsibility to depict the truth—the message of forgiveness—is a holy one that requires great suppleness.

Annie Frisbie, adjunct professor of screenwriting at Messiah College, observes that "all writers of fiction are responsible for telling the truth as we see it, but the Christian writer has a further responsibility to also tell the Truth." Anticipating the impulsive reaction of the edgy, progressive Christian filmmaker, she goes on to say, "And that's really, really hard to do."

Indeed it is. It's hard to portray the truth winsomely. It's hard to escape cliché s and shibboleths. It's hard to grasp the complexity of life with a transparent eye. It's ugly out there—and we're implicated in that ugliness. But God help us, we must avoid the danger of tidying things up. A filmmaker has a responsibility to portray the truth in an honest manner—with a message even—but never at the expense of the lush, multifaceted mystery of life.

In the end, the best way to convey the truth is by telling a really good story with a lot of rich metaphors and honest characterization, remembering also that the greater power of art resides in the suggestion of truth, not its proclamation, in the beckoning hint, not the feeble platitude.

Part 3: In Defense of Mere Entertainment

David Taylor is the Arts Minister at Hope Chapel in Austin, Texas, and director of The Ragamuffin Film Festival, held August 6-8 in Austin.

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