It's Always Quite a Fall
Director David Fincher's The Game
Read Mercer Schuchardt
October 1, 1997
The Game, Directed by David Fincher (Polgram, 1997), 128 mins. The primary reason I don't write movie reviews is because most of the movies I've seen are crap, and criticizing crap is all too easy. You simply say "It stinks" in as many clever ways as possible, and smugly move on. But every so often there is the beautiful exception that proves the rule, a film that is worth both reviewing and recommending, such as The Game. Not wanting to miss the opportunity at smugness, you should know up front that none of the reviewers at The New York Times, The Village Voice, The WashingtonPost, USA Today, or even The San Francisco Examiner or Chronicle (the location of the film's action) saw The Game for what it is. If you haven't already seen it, what you are about to read will ruin it for you. That said, it is well worth seeing twice in case you missed it the first time: The Game is perhaps the single greatest Christian allegory to come out of the motion picture industry since its inception. The problem with explicit attempts, no matter how earnest, to render the Christian story or the impact of the Christian story into film is that you can't avoid the goonness, the dogmatism, and the slightly disturbing depictions of theological complexity. You can never leave one of these films without being embarrassed by the casts' roles prior to portraying the founding fathers, or cringing as Jesus physically pulls his heart out to show his compassion. As a Christian you leave these films hoping that no one associates your ultimate beliefs with the schlock you've just witnessed. As a non-Christian, these films often serve to cement your ideas of why Christianity is strictly for losers. The late twentieth century's answer to Christian crap was Joseph ...
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