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Does this mean that there is no such thing as a good or bad movie and that everything is relative? Certainly not. A double cheeseburger could do some good for a starving man, so it's not worthless, but let's not confuse it with a healthy meal. It's difficult to train ourselves to consider a film's quality: how it makes us feel, its flavor and what it all means. Taste is important, but so are the ingredients, their proportions, their preparation, the arrangement and presentation of the plates and whether or not the meal is nourishing.

Excellence matters.

These days, as a film critic, I am learning that a film succeeds when it makes me forget that I have a pen in one hand and a legal pad in the other. I long for those moments when I'm swept up in revelation, oblivious to all else. … The work carries us up out of our critical faculties and sweeps us to a galaxy far, far away … or to the "Old West" where a woman has an epiphany that bridges two cultures. It is something distinct to movies. We are presented with flickers of light preserved, one moment after another, motion and change reflected in a way that cannot happen in a painting, in writing, in music.

In that state of childlike attention, we are vulnerable to shocks both pleasant and discomforting, both instructive and damaging. We are open to revelations that change us. Receiving our attention, the artist bears some responsibility to behave with integrity, to serve the work and craft it with excellence, but even he may not anticipate what his arrangement of light and shadow will reveal. It's possible we will glimpse the glow of glory, truth that cannot be reduced to a simple paraphrase, glimmering through the screen darkly.

From Through a Screen Darkly, © 2007 by Jeffrey Overstreet. Published by Regal Books, www.regalbooks.com. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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