‘Finding Faith’ A Well-Meaning — But Substandard — Faith Melodrama
(REVIEW) “Finding Faith” deserves credit for making its characters suffer a lot for a faith-based film. Sadly, it wastes its premise and embraces too many faith-based film cliches.
“American Pure Flix” is both an old and new player in the faith-based film scene. “Pure Flix” has been making faith-based films for a while, having produced such films as “God’s Not Dead,” “Unplanned” and “The Case for Christ.” Pure Flix became synonymous with faith-based films that are family friendly, but not always the best quality. But the streaming service portion of the organization merged with Great American Media, becoming “Great American Pure Flix.”
The new CEO of Great American Pure Flix Bill Abbott told Religion Unplugged they are planning to use their TV experience and greater financial resources to attract more quality talent to work on their platform, therefore letting them appeal to the Pure Flix audience while upping their quality. (An approach that might be working. I put one of their originals in my top 10 faith-based films of last year.
READ: Horror Movie ‘Late Night With The Devil’ Brings The Satanic Panic To Life
“The element that is under the radar I think is how many people really do want to work in this space, and who are willing to put their names out there in association with this product,” Abbott said. “As talent matures, and they become either parents or they want to do good for the world, the mentality changes from people who are much younger and are focused on making a career and a name for themselves.”
“Finding Faith” is one of the Great American Pure Flix movies under this vision. And while the film clearly has its heart in the right place, and has some good qualities, it ultimately has most of the same problems as the faith-based films Great American Pure Flix is distance themselves from.
The film follows Victoria (played by Ashley Bratcher), a Christian advice columnist writing under the name Faith who begins to lose her faith after a series of life events, including the breakdown of her marriage. When she gets news that her mother is in the hospital, she goes back home and tries to figure out if there is a way back for her marriage and her belief in God.
The idea for this movie is a great one. A Christian advice columnist who helps others with their faith while struggling with her own is full of potential for dramatic irony (giving advice that she can’t take herself, making others happy while she’s miserable) is deeply relatable for a Christian.
Every Christian I know who has dedicated their life to helping others has wrestled with doubts and misery even as they help others which sometimes makes them feel like a hypocrite. This experience is — in a clumsy way — what the Mother Teresa movie last year was trying to do as well, and it’s a worthwhile one for faith-based projects to explore.
Film lead Ashley Bratcher is no stranger to faith based movies, being best known to Christian audiences as the star of the pro-life movie “Unplanned.” She echoes the advice columnist aspect of her character and a parallel emotional journey as one of the compelling pieces of the film.
“She's trying to guide people through their faith, she's struggling with her marriage, her family life, the loss of her mother, miscarriage, all kinds of things and questioning why bad things happen,” she said. “I think we've all asked that question before. And here she is asking all these questions while trying to guide other people through their faith journey. So that's an interesting twist on the movie. And it's all about hope, redemption, faith and marriage.”
The movie is also not scared to lean into making its characters suffer or making them flawed people. This is also something Bratcher said she really appreciated.
“There's been a lot of times in my own life where I feel like I've hit rock bottom and I've had those exact same questions,” she said. “This was the first movie I'd done in a couple of years, and when it came across my desk, I was immediately drawn to it because I could identify. And I really prefer telling stories that are vulnerable and not as easy sometimes to watch. They're not the kind of movies where everything's perfect because that's not life, right? I prefer to tell stories of redemption, whatever that looks like. And that just happens to be where I have worked with Pure Flix and Great American the most. I mean, if you look at my body of work, it's a little different than most of your traditional Christian films, really. And I've enjoyed being able to do that.”
When “Finding Faith” leans into the authenticity of how its characters deal with the tragedies and struggles in their lives, the movie often works. When Faith and her husband feel like a real married couple arguing through their problems, the movie works. The marriage counseling session has some of the best frustrated banter of the movie. When Faith and her father feel like a real father and daughter dealing with his revelation about his past, or her impending divorce or relationship with his wife, the movie works.
A lot of the authentic moments in the movie can be chalked up to when the casting works. John Shchneider has an easy gravitas that makes him deeply believable — even if his lines can be corny sometimes. There is a kind of relaxed honesty to some of his and these moments, when the movie works, that brings to mind the best of “disillusioned city girl goes back to her small town to rediscover who she is” stories.
Unfortunately, this movie leans into its cliches more often than its unique elements and feels forced more often than it feels authentic. Victoria’s writing in her advice column is pretty much abandoned after the opening montage, so we don’t see the contrast between her life and her writing much. In fact, the main way we experience irony is that Victoria tells us just that — the irony as a reason that she’s not writing anymore.
Instead of focusing on this potentially interesting element of the story, the movie focuses on cliches from this type of story we’ve seen hundreds of times before: Scenes like Victoria bantering with her sassy best friend about how, for example, she needs to get her head in the game in order to get her big break.
Far too often these conversations don’t feel real. Victoria doesn’t react to eye-rolling cliches that the pastor gives her with the eye rolls that someone who feels cynical like she is supposed to do. When she is describing her feelings, she writes it with the level of on-the-nose precision of how someone would write it in a script, not how someone expresses themselves out loud. When she and her husband argue, they bring up things when it’s convenient for that plot point. This is too bad because there is a real need for stories that show Christian characters really suffering.
This is especially poignant because Bratcher said that starting conversations with her non-Christian friends is one of the things she values most about being a part of faith-based films.
“I have friends who have all sorts of different beliefs that range across the spectrum,” Bratcher explained. “And being able to have conversations that are hard, like you said, people ask hard questions. And being able to have a real authentic answer can change people's lives. And my goal is ultimately to lead people to Christ, but not to preach at them. My goal is to say, here's what God has done in my life. Here's what God has done in other people's lives. Look at the Bible. The Bible is full of stories about people who were just a complete mess, and God transformed their life, and then he used them. And I think it's important for everyone to know that.”
In many ways, the movie feels like a throwback to how faith-based film’s used to be. The cinematography, music and editing are frustratingly substandard in a world where Kingdom Storybook Company has shown that care can be taken with those elements in a Christian film. Ultimately, I have hope that Great American Pure Flix will grow in the quality of its content.
For now, “Finding Faith” is firmly on the low end of modern faith-based film quality — and firmly within what we traditionally expect from Pure Flix. Loyal subscribers to the platform will likely find it suitably heartwarming. But for those not already subscribed, they’ll have to wait a little longer for the platform to give them a good reason to.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.