Alan Markfield / PureflixJon and Andrew Erwin really are the best thing going in the Christian movie cottage industry.
There’s your pull quote, and though it is faint praise, I will stand by it.
The Birmingham brothers have followed the game plan parroted by so many Christian auteurs: learn by doing and focus on making sure each film is a little better than the last. In the span of five years they have progressed from October Baby, an earnest but heavy-handed anti-abortion melodrama, to Woodlawn, a historical drama that at least grasps after crossover appeal.
Inspired by a true story, Woodlawn tells the story of a revival at an Alabama high school that parallels the resurgence of its football program. Like Mom’s Night Out, the Erwins’ latest film leans heavily on a genre formula.
But since I tend to like Christian films to the degree they seek to tell dramatic stories in addition to setting up sermons, I actually appreciate the Erwins’ willingness to wed Christian content to well established genres. After a prologue in which Alabama legend Bear Bryant (Jon Voight) sees his Crimson Tide outmatched by an integrated USC program, Woodlawn shifts focus to a lesser known coach, Tandy Gerelds (Nic Bishop). Coach Gerelds’s team is in disarray, and there are rumors that the program, indeed the school itself, may soon be shut down.
When a shadowy team observer, Hank (Sean Astin, with 70s sideburns), asks for permission to address the team, Gerelds isn’t thrilled. But he allows it. As Gerelds walks out of his office and down the dim hallways towards the gym, we hear Hank preaching that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The last line comes as Gerelds literally walks out of the darkness (of the hallway) and into the light (of the gym).
As player after player responds to the altar call, the camera zooms to a close up of the stunned coach. “What just happened?” he asks.
Alan Markfield / PureflixIf the storyboarding and camera work here are a bit obvious, the placement of the altar call near the beginning rather than at the end at least gives the film room to breathe. Will the players’ examples rub off on the skeptical coach? Will decisions made in that gym stand up to the pressures, animosity, and racism that lurk outside the gym?
Those are interesting questions, and Woodlawn’s interest in transformation rather than just justification is a major step forward for Christian films. Also, unlike some of their peers, the Erwins have used their early films to hone their technique and get the most out of smaller budgets. (Don’t take my word for it: film star Sean Astin said in a press conference for Mom’s Night Out that the Erwins’ films look better than some films he has been in with exponentially higher budgets.)
Given the film’s themes of racial reconciliation, I was ready to go up to 2 ½ or maybe 3 stars despite some structural problems that bog down the last act.
But . . .
You just can’t have “Sweet Home Alabama” in this movie. You just can’t.
I was willing to overlook some of the more on-the-nose song choices—“They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” and “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”—as easy shorthand for a 70s setting, but Lynyrd Skynyrd’s anthem seemingly endorses and embraces the segregationist culture that the movie condemns. (I am aware of Ronnie Van Zant’s defense of the song’s lyrics, but I find them unconvincing.)
What would our response be if Selma or Fruitvale Station unironically sampled “Cop Killer”? Heck, even if we take Van Sant at his word, recent events in Alabama and subsequent protests around the Confederate flag would seemingly scare off all but the most tone death or obtuse from using the band’s anthem in a film about the state’s tortured racial history.
Is it possible that Jon and Andrew have never listened to the lyrics all the way through? And why does it even matter?
Alan Markfield / PureflixMaybe because the film’s motto is “This is what happens when God shows up.” Sean Astin’s character is allegedly a composite based on several men, including the Erwins’ own father. If one of the film’s themes is that not all good men are conscious racists—Alabama coach Paul “Bear Bryant” is similarly represented as an enlightened white Christian—it is telling that the music selection is evidence of an obliviousness to the smaller—but by no means subtle—ways in which racism pervades a culture and touches all of us, to one degree or another.
For just a moment, in the middle of Woodlawn, it looked as though we were going to get a script worthy of its subject matter. When Coach Gerelds tells his African-American players, before witnesses, that “I have not done enough to stop [your persecution],” it seemed as though the film was going to link spiritual development with social consciousness in a way that is regrettably rare in contemporary Christian art.
In perhaps the film’s best scene, Gerelds backs his African-American star when the player refuses to have his photo taken with the racist governor and rival star, Jeff Rutledge. Rutledge, like Bryant, is presented as a decent guy, apparently untouched by the racism he has grown up in. I was glad to hear it, being a fan of the quarterback during his NFL career, but the overall trend of making any recognizable white character a good guy and the only racists nameless characters left the film looking like it was implying that segregation wasn’t all that pervasive.
By the end, the film slips back into sports movie clichés. Having bitten off more than it can chew and relegating all possible antagonists abstract (the rival teams, the racists in crowd), the film wanders through most of its back half searching for a conclusion.
The way it avoids the “Big Game” climax is, admittedly, brilliant. If the film had ended with Coach Gerelds revealing how the big game concluded, I would have given the Erwins major props, both for avoiding a formulaic end and for crediting the audience with enough intelligence to understand what the real triumph was.
Instead, we get not one but two postscripts. A star player calls the coach to reassure him (and us) that giving your life to Jesus really does guarantee athletic success. Archival footage of a Billy Graham rally shoehorns a second altar call into the narrative. The music crescendos (the music really is terribly, terribly overbearing) as the film cuts to a title card.
Because the film backs away from more serious self-examination, it can be instructively compared to one of this season’s stronger movies, Spotlight. Tom McCarthy’s film is able to differentiate its core characters from the more egregious sinners with whom they share living space, but it refuses to exonerate them completely.
Alan Markfield / PureflixWhen God shows up there can and should be genuine reconciliation, but that means something more than a clean slate moving forward. It means self-examination and hard questions. Repentance needs to precede reconciliation. While acknowledging that we all could have done more in the face of evil is a good start, it fails to address the ways that those in positions of privilege continue to benefit from injustices—even when they are not the most deplorable perpetrators of them.
Caveat Spectator
Woodlawn is rated PG for thematic elements. These focus on the racially motivated violence that sets the context for the story that follows. As one would expect from a Pureflix film, profane or obscene language is toned down or elided altogether. In an early scene, a white player tells an African-American that he must wait to use the locker room until after the white players are done showering. Some might object to the film’s mantra that “winning fixes just about everything,” but overall the content is sufficiently scrubbed for all but the most innocent ears.
Kenneth R. Morefield (@kenmorefield) is an Associate Professor of English at Campbell University. He is the editor of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volumes I, II, & III, and the founder of 1More Film Blog.
