Films are mostly not made by people who have had an encounter with Messiah Jesus. As one whose life has been transformed by that experience, I wonder where the film moments are that show Christian salvation with genuine insight. Usually the Christian experience and Christians are depicted with agonizing awkwardness, expressing a range from naive misunderstanding to scoffing, and at worst, to willful corruption of the gospel.

I have a hobby of seeking out films or even film moments that are at once excellent and reflective of biblical truth, a rare combination making the hunt all the more exciting. (I have written about some of my cinematic encounters at http://baitstand.blogspot.com.)

Recently I watched "Becket", starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and enjoyed Becket's moment of submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, condensed into a single quiet scene of confession and giving up of self-will, with a witness spying from the wings who is transformed as well.

But the real buried treasure was in the bonus features.
One of the bonus features was a 1967 TV interview of chain-smoking Richard Burton with receding hairline and black turtleneck, his pock-marked face still stunning even though bruised by life, fiery and inpenetrable. The interviewer spoke of one of Burton's first stage roles as the boy prophet in the John Gielgud directed play, "Boy With A Cart", by Christopher Fry. He asked Burton to recite a speech he made famous from that play. Richard Burton's delivery with cigarette smoke relaxing around his face, an unhurried unfolding with aching pauses and helpless awe, were all so beautiful that I ached, and I will never forget it. Here at last was a glimpse of the Savior.

From "Boy With A Cart"
(Everyone but the boy has left the church building desparing at not being able to erect the king post. They return and the boy explains what has occurred.)

I was alone by the unattended pillar,
mourning the berieved air that lay so quiet between walls hungry for hammer blows and the momentous hive that once was there.
But gradually I was aware of someone in the doorway, and turned my eyes that way and saw carved out of the sunlight

a man who stood watching me.

So still that there was not other such stillness anywhere on the earth,
so still that the air seemed to leap at his side.

He came towards me and the sun flooded it banks and flowed across the shadow.

He asked me why I stood alone.
His voice hovered on memory with open wings and drew itself up from a chime of silence as though it had long time lain in a vein of gold.

I told him, "It is the king post!"

He stretched his hand upon it.
At his touch it lifted into place.

There was no sound.

I cried out,

and I cried at last, "Who are you?"

I heard him say, "I was a carpenter."