Blue Like Jazz
(the movie)
2014
Steve Taylor directs
Donald Miller writes
I’m one of those who grew up in the Nazarene church watching every Christianese film ever made in the 60s and 70s. All of the Billy Graham films, the films about “God’s Preacher” in the streets of NY on skid row - David Wilkerson, and all the teen “scare” flicks about drinking and running with the devil that always ended with some kid dying and the other kid getting saved. It was very much the same as the small missionary books that we read every week. They were almost mathematically predictable in their formulaic way of presenting missionaries that struggled with some people group that had not heard about Jesus, the hardship that the missionaries themselves went through to reach these people, and then some breakthrough would happen, and as a resolution something wonderful would come from a tragedy or a seemingly unbreakable barrier.
SCCR is the acronym used by Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz, the movie, for the arc of the story, Setting, Conflict, Climax, Resolution. When applied neatly in those films and books, it took on a predictability that even a teenager could have written themselves. But when used artfully, as in this film, Blue Like Jazz, Steve Taylor does a mash-up job of twisting it around so that those characters we think are going to end up dead have another lease on life, and those seemingly alive, make ghostly disappearances into an alternative lifestyle, for awhile at least.
So in other words, “This ain’t yo daddy’s church movie boy!”
I really did love it. It was funny, poignant, and successfully convincing, all those things that most of those early films and books from the fledgling Christian media age were not. Yes, this is a Christian story, written by an author that is outspokenly Christian, and directed by a music and media whiz that is the same, but with a new sensitivity to reality, and no fear of truthfulness. Like the book, Blue Like Jazz turns the tables on the secular world without dismissing the people that are secular, and making the apology for the church that has been so long in coming to our skeptical modernists and post-modernist majority of today.
It really does work well.
Ok, in antithesis to all that I do have to say that there are juvenile filmmaker marks here and some mistakes, like continuing to run the music soundtrack when it would be better to have it off (like the conversation in the bike hut when the Texan and the blonde main characters are having it out about their viewpoints). Would have been better to sometimes just turn the “musak” off and have dialogue, because then when music IS on, it’s much more impactful. Consistent music throughout, especially filler music, is dreadful. But other than that, this was a really well-made film, and hopefully they will collaborate to make more. I agree with the 4-star marking on Amazon. Nice job Steve and Don.
