The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, Philosophy, and Film Philosophy, and Film

Abstract This is a book review of Joel Mayward, The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, Philosophy, and Film (Routledge, 2023).


Mayward, Joel. The Dardenne Brothers' Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, Philosophy, and Film (Routledge, 2023).
Near the end of Palme d'Or-winning filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike (2011), the viewer witnesses a possible resurrection. The titular kid, having been knocked out of a tree by a rock, is found seemingly dead on the ground. His attackers make a quick getaway plan, only to find the boy, though battered and bruised, suddenly alive. It is an ambiguous moment-either the boy was never dead, or he has truly risen; or, perhaps, it is both, like the raising of Jairus's daughter, about whom Jesus says, "The child is not dead but sleeping" (Mark 5:39 [NRSV]). By focusing on these spiritual/material moments of transcendent possibility and immanent reality, Joel Mayward's new book, The Dardenne Brothers' Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, Philosophy, and Film, seeks to carve a space in which to explore both the cinema of the Dardennes as well as the broader question of how films might actually do theology.
Mayward begins by sketching out an overview of his main project. Using Paul Ricoeur's understanding of parable as a postsecular hermeneutic for interrogating the works of the Dardennes, Mayward aims to give "a model for understanding not film and theology, but film as theology" (6), or what he calls a theocinematics. It is an ambitious project that demands a solid knowledge base in the aforementioned fields: film studies, theology, and philosophy. Throughout the book, Mayward offers a compelling and comprehensive look at the Dardennes' work through this lens, and while there are aspects that limit his work-in particular, Mayward's overlapping definitions of theology and postsecular philosophy-they do not detract from its importance as a valuable contribution to the field of religion and film, one that does an excellent job at allowing for the kind of interdisciplinary work of which the field has always been in need.
In Chapter 1, Mayward reveals how rarely these spheres of film-philosophy and film-theology intersect. They can even appear to misunderstand one another altogether. Instead, Mayward's methodology aims for "an egalitarian exchange of ideas marked by mutual giving and receiving from each scholarly field," or what he calls a "perichoretic" approach (14-15), applying a social trinitarian relationship between his three areas of study in order to avoid the kind of "theological imperialism" he argues too often offers theology "both the first and final word in the so-called interchange" (22).
In Chapter 2, Mayward explores what he means by cinematic parable, a term he applies to the Dardennes' cinema and to many other contexts. Although he reviews the treatment of parables within biblical scholarship, ultimately, he finds his definition in French phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur's understanding of parables.
Key to Ricoeur's concept is a spiritual and formal realism, Mayward writes, featuring "stories which could have actually occurred to people in everyday life, yet contain a peculiarity or eccentricity, not through fantastical or magical elements but precisely because of the parable's realism" (75). This, Mayward points out, aligns with André Bazin's thoughts on realism, as well as the work of other theorists such as Amédée Ayfre and Henri Agel. These thinkers, often fueled by phenomenology, personalism, and leftist Catholic theology, believed that realism was a key formal element to cinema's ability to not only re-create the world but restore it. In "The Myth of Total Cinema," for example, Bazin describes the realist style as "a recreation of the world in its own image, an image unburdened by the freedom of interpretation of the artist or the irreversibility of time" (21). Bazin, Ayfre, and others wished to see the world as it actually was; only then, could something transcendent be revealed.
Another key aspect for Ricoeur's parabolic form is limit-experiences, what Mayward describes as "those ineffable peak moments in life which include not only death, suffering, guilt, and hatred, but also creation, joy, grace, and love" (82).
These moments in the parable act as further connections between the narrative and the audience, or what Mayward calls, the world of the film and the world in front of the film (87). Drawing on Robert Sinnerbrink's cinematic ethics, Mayward suggests that such limit-experiences, and the realism that enfolds them, can draw the viewer into not only ethical experience but also a divine encounter. At times, Mayward's formulation of Ricoeurian realism sounds perhaps less like a Bazinian realism, and more like what one might describe as melodrama, with such heightened limit-experiences and emotion being key to the viewer actually experiencing change. Mayward does not touch on melodrama, but instead uses terms such as spiritual realism and, in the case of the Dardennes, transcendent realism. Melodrama aside, cinematic parables act as a form where the extraordinary is nestled within the ordinary, the transcendent in the immanent. By offering a realist formal space to encounter the divine, cinematic parables can teach us how to see "film as theology" (89).
Chapter 3 then brings us into Mayward's case study: the Dardenne brothers. Building off the work of liberation theologian Roberto Goizueta, as well as theologians Gordon Lynch and Antonio Sison, Mayward focuses in this chapter on the journey after the movie, as a viewer sees the final image in the dark theatre before heading out into the harsh light of day. Mayward's focus here is "how the interpretive movement from film-world to life-world might occur as the parable's formal and formative aspects intentionally provoke the audience (whatever the context) into reimagined moral praxis" (194). Over three themes-work, hospitality, and youth-he offers brief analyses of six of the Dardennes' films.
While these also briefly touch on the previous Blochian postsecular ideas, his focus here is more on how these films, and especially their final shots, might invite empathy for the Other while also critiquing the powers and principalities that cause suffering.
The book, which Mayward completed as his PhD dissertation while studying at the University of St. Andrews, is comprehensive, vast in detail and sourcing, and this scope is perhaps both a blessing and a curse, with its primary problems being those of definition. Mayward is trying to develop how cinema itself might practice theology, with cinematic parables being only one genre that Mayward says offers a "powerful contemporary way of cinematically 'naming ' and encountering God" (240). This is at the heart of his theocinematics, or how film does theology. Nevertheless, throughout the book, a question arises: just what is meant by theology?
As Mayward recounts in his conclusion, a theologian asked him this very question during a review session of his doctoral research (233). Mayward sees the question as a vestige of an analytic, paternalistic approach to theology, arguing that his perichoretic approach to theocinematics transcends such dynamics (234).
Mayward's definition resorts less precisely to the Greek equivalent of "words about god" (234), allowing him to treat films-even those which do not explicitly name God or engage religion-as sacramental spaces for divine encounter or religious reflection. While this is a perfectly valid definition, it does not appear to be what the films themselves are inherently doing, so much as what the viewer could be bringing to the film. The Dardennes' work is an exemplar of postsecular cinema, as Mayward rightly argues, using religious themes to fuel a secular humanist story in a world where faith in the divine has disappeared. And so, certainly, the films are doing postsecular philosophy, but it remains unclear whether this is the same as theology. Can everything that is loosely connected to or inspired by religious narratives be considered as doing theology?
Even with these questions in mind, however, the book still marks a significant leap forward in film-theology and film-philosophy discourse. While I have quibbles about definition and the consistency of approach, these are minor compared to the wide-ranging work that Mayward has done here. I would heartily recommend this book for any analyses of the Dardennes' work, as well as for investigations of film and theology or film and postsecularity.