Latest news with #AngelStudios'
Newsweek
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
'Sound of Freedom' Studio Releases New Films Taking on Woke Culture
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Angel Studios, the distributor behind the surprise 2023 summer hit Sound of Freedom, has released a new documentary series that argues the impact of woke culture on parts of the West amounts to a "soft totalitarianism" which is comparable to, but distinct from, the "hard totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union. The film Live Not By Lies! is based on the 2020 New York Times bestselling book of the same name written by conservative commentator Rod Dreher, who described himself as an "old friend" of Vice President JD Vance. Split into four parts, it had its U.K. premiere in London's swanky Belgravia district on June 30, where Dreher told Newsweek he believes Vance "could be the new Reagan." Why It Matters Live Not By Lies! fleshes out the argument made by Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February, when he shocked European audiences by arguing Western European nations face a bigger threat from "within," including perceived attacks on free speech, than from traditional rivals like Russia and China. This shows a powerful current within American conservative thinking which believes political freedoms are being weakened in Western Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom, in an attempt to accommodate "woke" ideology and multiculturalism. What To Know Live Not By Lies! was released by Angel Studios on its streaming platform on a weekly basis over April in four parts. The first episode, which was played at the London premiere on June 30, focused on dissidents who opposed what Dreher calls the "hard totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union from behind the Iron Curtain. A number of prominent British conservatives attended the event, including Mark Francois, a Tory MP and former minister, and ex-Mumford & Sons guitarist Winston Marshall, along with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, who co-host the popular Triggernometry YouTube channel which has 1.4 million subscribers. The U.S. premier took place in Washington and was addressed by Vance. A promotional poster for Angel Studios' documentary series "Live Not By Lies!" A promotional poster for Angel Studios' documentary series "Live Not By Lies!" Angel Studios Subsequent episodes argue parts of the West are now in the grip of a "soft totalitarianism," which has seen restrictions placed on free speech to avoid causing offense. Speaking to Newsweek, Dreher said: "The main message of the film is that we're living now in Western civilization in a time of soft totalitarianism which is to say it's not like the Soviet version which has a police state, nevertheless people are very oppressed by speech codes, by fear of saying what they really think, against the left frankly. "The message of the film is that it is important to find the courage to speak up to it for the sake of liberty and of the values that have been at the core of what it means to be a man or woman of the west for a very long time." The U.K. is held up as an "extreme example" of this, with Dreher saying: "As an American we look to Britain as our mother country, as the founding place of democracy and that this is happening in Britain is of course a horror to us but it should not happen." A promotional poster for Live Not By Lies! provocatively features CCTV cameras and communist flags emblazoned over British landmarks like Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament. Comedian Konstantin Kisin speaking at the London premier of "Live Not By Lies!" Comedian Konstantin Kisin speaking at the London premier of "Live Not By Lies!" James Bickerton/Newsweek U.K.-based cases featured in the series include that of Adam Smith-Connor, a former British soldier who in 2024 was criminally convicted after silently praying within a council designated "safe zone" outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, on England's south coast, and refusing requests to move. Smith-Conner was ordered to pay more than £9,000 in costs and handed a two-year conditional discharge, which he is appealing. Speaking to Newsweek at the premiere, Smith-Connor said: "I think our soft totalitarianism is a very comfortable one, but I think as more and more lies seep into our society and this culture of death with abortion up to birth and assisted suicide coming in, I think it's going to start encroaching into more and more fields of our life." Angel Studios In 2023 Angel Studios, a Christian film distributing company based in Utah, released Sound of Freedom, an action movie telling the story of Tim Ballard, who launched missions to rescue children from sex trafficking in Columbia. The film became widely popular, particularly with conservative audiences, bringing in more than $250 million worldwide against a budget of just $14.5 million. Speaking to Newsweek, Smallman said that "no mainstream elements" would touch his proposal for Live Not By Lies! "with a 10-foot poll," but that Angel Studios expressed interest. The company submitted the documentary series to what it calls its "Guild," made up of its customers, who green-lit the project and allowed him to raise "about $1.5 million from 3,000 people online who sent us money because they believed in the project." Vice President Vance Dreher told Newsweek he is an "old friend" of Vance, whom he described as "a serious intellectual Christian and a man of great stability." The writer went on to predict Vance "could be the new Reagan" adding: "I think if everything goes generally well with the rest of the Trump administration, we will have a President Vance because JD Vance has proved himself loyal to President Trump and his agenda." Referring to Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference, Dreher said: "When JD gave that speech in Munich, my smartphone lit up with texts from conservative friends from Bucharest, across Europe to London, saying, 'thank God somebody finally said it.' "Europeans who love their country, who love their culture and who love freedom of speech are looking to the American vice president as their defender. It's an incredible moment in history." What Happens Next Live Not By Lies! is available for streaming on the Angel Studios website.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Victoria Mahoney's Groundbreaking ‘Star Wars' Directing Gig Guided Her Work on ‘The Old Guard 2'
Director Victoria Mahoney knows a little something about stepping into a beloved franchise and coming out the other side. In between her lauded 2011 feature film debut 'Yelling to the Sky' and a wide assortment of TV directing gigs ('Queen Sugar,' 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'Claws,' 'You,' and many more), Mahoney was hired as the second unit director on J.J. Abrams' 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.' A 'Star Wars' gig? That sounds great for any director, but when Mahoney was hired in 2018, it came with some added weight: The position meant that she'd be the first woman to direct on a 'Star Wars' film ever. More from IndieWire You Can Now Buy Tickets for Angel Studios' Founding Father Biopic 'Young Washington' Before It's Even Shot Brad Pitt Says His Generation of Actors Were 'More Uptight': 'You Didn't Sell Out' with Franchises So, yes, Mahoney knows a little something about stepping into a beloved franchise. For her second feature, Netflix's 'The Old Guard 2,' Mahoney is once again taking an established (and adored) series and making it her own. Following Gina Prince-Bythewood's smash hit 'The Old Guard,' Mahoney's film picks up where the superhero story ended, and follows the exploits of a talented group of immortal warriors, including Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, and Veronica Ngô, plus newbies Henry Golding and Uma Thurman, and returning (human) co-star Chiwetel Ejiofor. The big question: What's her secret for putting her own stamp on everything from 'Star Wars' to 'The Old Guard'? 'Well, I think that I had a few bites at the apple on that,' the director said during a recent interview with IndieWire. 'Coming into 'Star Wars' and doing second unit on 'The Rise of Skywalker,' I had this wonderful experience of being on a franchise that I knew and loved since I was a kid. It wasn't just like, 'Oh, well, whatever, I guess I'll do this.' It was something I loved and I wanted to help protect. I wanted to be a part of it. It meant something. Characters meant something. Stepping onto the Millennium Falcon meant something.' Mahoney still speaks of her experience on 'Star Wars' with reverence. This was not just a job to her; even if it did help guide her next few years of professional choices, including boarding 'The Old Guard 2.' 'I held it with great duty and responsibility, and when you step into something of that magnitude, you get an immediate, immediate education in what it means to honor what audiences want and to betray what they want,' the director said. 'That's a crash course in how to navigate something that you want to do in a story that's so beloved. Between you and me and everyone who reads this article, nothing's going to compare to that. Nothing will ever compare to that level of reach.' And while 'The Old Guard' fandom isn't quite as large and devoted as that of 'Star Wars,' the films — based on Greg Rucka's comic book series of the same name — do have plenty of devoted watchers and readers. 'On this, the amount of people who love the first one and love the characters, they're very serious,' Mahoney said. 'How do you make sure that you are valuing and honoring each character and giving audiences their wishes? There's also something great about bringing people along with you to somewhere maybe they didn't know they wanted to go, and they arrive at that place realizing they were hungry for it the entire time. But it's all done with respect and care. I don't think you can thrust or demand. It's done with a very light, warm invitation.' Mahoney's fan-centric bent — and her desire to tweak expectations along the way — is borne from something very simple: She's a fan, too. She's a fan first. 'There are different jobs that I've done where I'm asking a question or there's something that we're trying to figure out, and I present something in a certain way, and it's like, 'Oh, no one will notice it,' but I will notice. I will notice,' she said. 'I actually love this character, or I love this circumstance, or this story or whatever it is, and that'll bug the hell out of me. That's going to drive me crazy. And then I'm going to know you didn't care about me, and now I feel like, 'Oh, all the love I've given you is nothing and it's small, so you don't value me, so why do I value you and I'm not watching anymore?'' And, yes, Mahoney is also a dedicated fan of Prince-Bythewood's first film, which hit Netflix in July 2020, during some of the earliest weeks of the pandemic, and proved to be balm for film fans itching for original action. Mahoney is the first person to tell you: She watched it a lot. 'I did watch it, many times!' she said. 'Some people think, 'Oh, you're exaggerating,' but I really did. I thought the world was ending, and if I was going to die, I was going to die watching movies and TV shows and just watching stories and reading books and listening to music. I found the movie to have some kind of hope. There was a care and regard the characters had for each other, and the length of their care and regard blew me away … I found there to be a beautiful sense of hope in how they sustain those relationships.' There was also something else that tickled Mahoney: taking those relatable, earthbound worries (how do you take care of the people you love?) and sticking them inside a wild framework (and, oh, you're also an immortal being who has lived for thousands of years?). 'Part of why I found it exciting was [the question of] how to play with something that could be in the superhero realm, held above us and far away from us, and how to bring that into a realistic purview,' she said. 'Where I and anyone else who watched the movie could wonder what I would or wouldn't do if I were immortal. I thought the first film successfully did that and kept me curious in a way that I kept watching it.' When Mahoney signed on to direct 'The Old Guard 2' in 2021, she said she made a point to speak to Prince-Bythewood, who remained a producer on the project (the filmmaker was, at the time that the sequel was greenlit, just gearing up to make her 'The Woman King'). 'I have her to thank greatly on this,' she said. 'We talked, and a lot of what I wanted to know was how to sustain and preserve these incredible nuggets of truth and importance that she put forward in the first film. You can think, 'Oh, we could change that. Oh, you could do that. Oh, that doesn't matter.' But stepping into a second installment and franchise that I enjoy, [I had] the honor and the collaboration of spitballing with the first director about why they did what they did and that this thing that might seem like nothing to someone was so important and valuable and how I can help protect that or grow it. I valued her guidance and input and clarity and insight.' Mahoney's deep-rooted fandom is clear in every moment she talks about the film. Even a question wondering if she felt a particular sense of favoritism toward Layne's character, Nile (who really comes into her own in the sequel), was greeted with an unexpected answer. 'I have no favorites and I'm not being polite or political, because they all mean so much,' she said. 'They function as a whole. They're not individual entities. As far as storytelling goes, each one services a different need, and if you pull one out, the house of cards comes down. There's not one of them that services a lesser need. Each aspect of creative value, story value, character value that one of the nine [stars] presents at any given moment is the most important thing in the story. Whoever we're shooting that day, that minute, whatever shot, whatever aspect of story we're chasing, is the most important, right? Then we go to the next one, and then that's the most important. Wherever that camera is between action and cut, that's the most important thing in the world.' Given how long Mahoney has been working on the film — after coming on board in late 2021, Mahoney shot the film in late 2022, gutted her way through some serious delays from Netflix, shot additional material in 2024, and finally sees it released this week — she completely understands the fan fervor. She feels it even more acutely. 'Well, for me, being in it in real time is different from anyone who's watching it and waiting and wondering,' Mahoney said. 'I have that with movies, I have that with TV shows that I love, I'm like, 'Where is the next one? What's the next season?' So I am right along beside fans in that aching and hunger for the thing that we love. … I was in it the whole time, from the moment I got hired to the moment that this film is released, it'll be three-and-a-half years. Other directors might have, at some point, moved toward another project because of the duration and just the hunger to get back on set. I did not want to abandon my post. I cared about the movie way too much. I wanted to see it through, and there was no other answer.' Mahoney's film leaves things wide open for a third feature, though one has not yet been announced. During production, Mahoney said, 'There were discussions just logistically, and rightfully so, about the what-ifs' that the second film might set up. As for a third film? 'Whatever discussions they're having, I don't know,' she said. 'And I will be a spectator along with everyone else, because I will be gone doing something else. Whatever happens on the third one, I will return to [it as] a viewer and a fan, and I will be waiting with bated breath for what comes next, and where they go, and how it plays out. I will be cheering everyone on.' With 'The Old Guard 2' under her belt and 'Star Wars' behind her, I asked how Mahoney reflects on the truly ground-breaking nature of her 'Rise of Skywalker' work, of being the first woman, let alone the first Black woman, to direct on a 'Star Wars' film. Despite her characteristically upbeat and thoughtful personality, even Mahoney got a bit morose in thinking back. 'It's interesting, because a lot of those factors that you just described are as poignant today on this movie as they were then,' she said. 'I don't know how many women have big-budget movies coming out this year. It's challenging. So, unfortunately, that particular part of the discussion is identical to the discussion that was in the 'Star Wars' press tour.' Still, Mahoney remains awestruck by the devotion of 'Star Wars' fans, and the born-and-bred New Yorker attempted to compare it to Knicks or Yankees fandom. 'I'll say 'Yankees' now, I'm going to lose people,' she said with a laugh. 'They're going to be like, 'Oh, she's a Yankee/Knicks fan. That sucks.' But when you went to the old Yankee Stadium, you sit down, and it's summer, it's warm weather, and the lights are going down and the sky is turning magenta, something magical happened. Even if you were jaded and you didn't like sports and you didn't believe in mystical moments and wonderment, you were taken over, and 'Star Wars' does that.' Even now, Mahoney said she's still struck when she sees little kids in airports sporting their 'Star Wars' PJs for a flight or adults playing lightsabers in a park with friends. 'There aren't words for what that does to your heart when you interact with people who have that kind of magic in them,' she said. 'And then on ['The Old Guard 2'], there's a feeling about immortality and living and loving the one you're with that has some version of magic to it. It kind of propels you into another space and mind.' 'And we're just talking about imagination here,' she added. 'But 'Star Wars' has a way of accessing one's imagination and putting you in this great what-if. What's fun for me about 'The Old Guard' and why I find it exciting is there are aspects of 'The Old Guard' that allow me, as a viewer and a storyteller, to access my imagination in a beautiful, welcomed what-if.' 'The Old Guard 2' is now streaming on Netflix. 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Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Faith-Based ‘The King Of Kings', ‘The Chosen' With Hatsune Miku Anime, ‘Pride & Prejudice' Re-Release Indie Standouts Easter Weekend
Faith-based films drew audiences Easter weekend alongside the re-release of Pride & Prejudice and an anime from GKids in a crowded market that was challenging for traditional indies. Angel Studios' animated is in the no. 3 berth on 3,535 screens with $17.3 million in week 2 for a $45.3 million cume. (Season 5) Part 3, from Fathom Entertainment, also in week 2, grossed $1.8 million for an $11.6 million cum for a no. 9 spot.. Season 5 is now the highest grossing installment of the series, generating $42.4 million at the domestic box office. Parts 1-3 have a projected U.S. weekend of $2.6 million. More from Deadline 'Sinners' Finds Salvation At Easter Box Office With $45M+ No. 1 Opening Win - Sunday Update 'The Wedding Banquet' Director Andew Ahn On Leaning Into "Optimism And Joy" In New Reimagining 'The Shrouds' Is A Milestone For Distributor Sideshow: "We're All Pinching Ourselves We Get To Work" With David Cronenberg - Specialty Preview GKids' sits at no. 7 on 800 screens with a $2.76 million opening, the anime by studio based on Hatsune Miku: Colorful! mobile game about high school students finding their true feelings through music in an alternate world. Focus Features' rerelease of from 2005 is no. 8 with $2.7 million Bleecker Street's by Andrew Ahn opened to a weekend gross of $922.9k at 1,142 theaters. This is a reinterpretation of writer James Schamus and director Ang Lee's 1993 arthouse hit. Moviegoers Entertainment debuted Hindi in 315 theaters to a debut of $742.7k as per Comscore. Adapted from Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat's legal historical drama The Case That Shook The Empire. Stars Akshay Kumar. Briarcliff Entertainment opened animated family film in wide release at 1,500 locations to a debut of $525k. IFC Films' debuted to $175k in moderate release at 501 locations. Limited releases: David Cronenberg's is looking at an estimated $52.1k on 3 to 250 locations next weekend. A24's adventure fantasy grossed $52.2k at four theaters. Best of Deadline 'Ransom Canyon' Book Vs. Show Differences: From Quinn & Staten's Love Story To Yancy Grey's Plot Everything We Know About Netflix's 'Ransom Canyon' So Far 'Ransom Canyon' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The New Netflix Western Romance Series
Forbes
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Christian Films Dominate Box Office This Easter Week — Boosted By Conservative Influencers
Christian movies are dominating the box office this week, led by the animated hit 'The King of Kings,' which is backed by the studio behind the controversial 2023 smash 'Sound of Freedom' and is being promoted by right-wing influencers on social media, who have billed it as an anti-'woke' movie. "The King of Kings" grossed more than $14 million in its opening weekend. 'The King of Kings' finished second behind blockbuster 'The Minecraft Movie' at the box office this past weekend with $19.3 million, which is only about $200,000 behind the opening weekend of Angel Studios' 'Sound of Freedom.' Four of the top 10 films at the box office this week are faith-based movies, according to Box Office Mojo's latest daily totals, including all three parts of the television series 'The Chosen: Last Supper,' which distribution company Fathom Entertainment released in theaters. 'The King of Kings' is an animated film featuring a star-studded cast that follows writer Charles Dickens as he teaches his son about the life of Jesus Christ, while 'The Chosen: Last Supper' is the fifth season of the historical drama series that depicts Jesus's life. 'The King of Kings' had the biggest box office weekend for a biblical animated film, surpassing the Oscar-winning animated movie 'The Prince of Egypt,' which earned $14.5 million in its opening weekend in 1998. Some conservative influencers have championed 'The King of Kings' on social media, many of whom Angel Studios has reposted on X, though it's unclear whether the studio is working with them (Forbes has reached out to Angel Studios for comment). The studio has reposted four posts on X from right-wing commentator Benny Johnson over the past week, and the company's Chief Content Officer Jeff Harmon appeared on Johnson's YouTube show last week. In one of Johnson's posts, reposted by Angel Studios, he said the 'demand for faith-based, non-woke entertainment is undeniable,' citing the film's positive audience scores. In his interview with Harmon, Johnson repeatedly described 'The King of Kings' as counterprogramming to Disney's remake of 'Snow White,' which debuted in theaters last month amid a storm of controversy as conservative critics slammed it as 'woke.' Harmon criticized the 'race swapping' of 'Snow White' in his interview with Johnson—Disney cast Latina actress Rachel Zegler to portray the titular princess, who is white in the original movie—and criticized Hollywood for recycling 'junk food stories.' Angel Studios also reposted a post from Joey Mannario, a conservative commentator who has more than 600,000 followers on X, who said the studio 'NEVER misses when it comes to bringing quality entertainment without any wokeness.' The studio also reposted Anna Lulis, a conservative user with more than 80,000 followers, who said the film's success is evidence that 'culture is shifting.' 'The Kings of Kings' benefits from a famous cast—Oscar Isaac voices Jesus, while Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Marc Hamill, Pierce Brosnan and Forest Whitaker also star—but distributor Angel Studios has also employed some of the marketing tactics that made 'Sound of Freedom' a smash. The studio has employed a 'pay-it-forward' program, which it has done for many of its releases, that allows moviegoers to purchase a ticket for those who could not otherwise afford it. The studio also offered free tickets for children attending the movie with an adult for a limited time. Angel Studios co-founder Jordan Harmon told Variety the studio succeeded because 'people haven't been fulfilling this massive of an audience for that long in terms of the animated space.' Though 'The Chosen' is a television series, which are not commonly released in theaters, distributor Fathom Entertainment has found success with faith-based releases, including episodes of the popular show. The distributor released two episodes of the third season of 'The Chosen' in theaters in 2022, grossing $14.6 million, and it grossed $14.8 million in theaters last year after releasing three episodes of its fourth season in theaters. 'The Chosen' has a large viewer base: By the end of 2022, at least 18 million people had watched at least part of one episode, the New York Times reported, and the show's production was crowd-funded by thousands of people. 'The King of Kings' received generally positive reviews and has a 64% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Multiple positive reviews described the movie as a 'serviceable' adaptation of a well-known story, while the New York Times review accused the filmmakers of capitalizing on an 'audience who senses a moral obligation to purchase tickets for every single retelling of Jesus's life.' In his interview with Johnson, Harmon alleged the Rotten Tomatoes score used to be as high as 80%, but accused reviewers who 'hate Jesus' and had a 'bad experience with religion' of writing bad reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a near-perfect 97%, and it is one of only 128 movies in history to receive the highest-possible A+ score from Cinemascore, which surveys moviegoers. Angel Studios notched its biggest hit to date in theaters in the summer of 2023 when 'Sound of Freedom' shocked the industry by becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of the year at the domestic box office with $184 million in North America and $250 million worldwide. The film was boosted by right-wing influencers and many Republican politicians, including President Donald Trump, who praised it on Truth Social and hosted a screening at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. The movie drew scrutiny from critics who noted its star Jim Caviezel had reportedly spoken at events for QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the political and Hollywood elite are actually Satan-worshipping sex traffickers. The film depicted the anti-sex trafficking organization, Operation Underground Railroad, though a Vice investigation found in 2020 the group had exaggerated its role in rescue missions and that law enforcement agencies described their relationships to the group as 'insubstantial.' It Was a Very Good Box Office Weekend for Jesus (IndieWire)
Telegraph
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Charles Dickens wasn't a good Christian – but he's turned Jesus into box office gold
Angel Studios' new animated film The King of Kings is an unusual Biblical biopic that depicts the life of Jesus in the form of stories told by Charles Dickens – voiced by Kenneth Branagh – to his young son Walter. I am not surprised that it has done record-breaking business for a Biblical animation in its opening weekend, taking almost $20 million in the US alone. It's not just that those two bearded master-storytellers, Jesus and Dickens, are both always good box-office in their own right. It's that the combination of the two is so appropriate: anyone with even a glancing knowledge of Dickens's works will feel that few novelists were more attuned to the values of Christ. Dickens would have thoroughly approved of this film as a means of familiarising children with the life of Jesus. The tots who spent Sunday enjoying the colourful animation and the exuberance of its voice cast – Oscar Isaac as Jesus, Mark Hamill as Herod, Pierce Brosnan as Pontius Pilate, Ben Kingsley as Caiaphas – will have very different memories of their childhood introduction to the Bible than those of Arthur Clennam, the hero of Dickens's Little Dorrit. 'His mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a Bible – bound, like her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards, with … a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves – as if it, of all books! were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle intercourse.' The young Arthur is left with 'no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament than if he had been bred among idolaters'. Dickens despised the acts of wrath and spite that pervade the Old Testament: 'Half the misery and hypocrisy of the Christian world (as I take it) comes from a stubborn determination to refuse the New Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament into alliance with it', he once wrote. The New Testament was his constant companion – 'It was the book of all others he read most and which he took as his one unfailing guide in his life,' recalled George Dolby, the manager of his reading tours. 'One of my most constant and most earnest endeavours has been to exhibit in all my good people some faint reflections of the teachings of our great Master, and unostentatiously to lead the reader up to those teachings as the great source of all moral goodness,' he wrote in a letter in 1861. 'All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament: all my social abuses are shown as departures from its spirit.' Such was Dickens's reverence for the New Testament that in the late 1840s he wrote his own version of the narrative: a document of 100-odd pages entitled The Life Of Our Lord, which is the basis for the new film. As he boasted to a friend, he would read it to his children 'long before they could read, and no young people can have had an earlier knowledge of, or interest in, that book. It is an inseparable part of their earliest remembrances.' A Child's History Of England, another work that began as something Dickens wrote for his own children, became a published book. But Dickens not only refused to make money out of The Life Of Our Lord, but seemed to feel that something of its sacred nature would be spoiled if anybody outside his family so much as glimpsed it: he stipulated that after his death nobody should 'even hand the manuscript, or a copy of it, to anyone to take out of the house'. The manuscript was left to Dickens's son Sir Henry Fielding Dickens on condition that he not publish it in his lifetime. Sir Henry died in 1933 after being hit by a motorcycle and, just seven weeks later, Time magazine reported that his widow had sold the manuscript to the Daily Mail for $210,000; it became a bestseller when published in book form in the US. With its narrative largely derived from the Gospel of Luke and the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew, the book is not always theologically sound: 'And because He did such good, and taught people how to love God and how to hope to go to Heaven after death, he was called Our Saviour', Dickens writes at one point, skipping over the fairly important detail that Jesus saved us by atoning for our sins through his own death. The emphasis throughout on Jesus as a source of wisdom and a doer of good works rather than a divine figure was perhaps a necessary simplification for children, but also seems to have reflected Dickens's own priorities. He seems to have wrestled with his faith far less than most intelligent people of his age. If he would have found his contemporary Tennyson's notion of 'faith in honest doubt' incomprehensible, this may have been because he regarded Christ as an exemplar rather than a redeemer. Jesus's wisdom was not valuable as a proof of his divinity; his divinity was of value in that it was the origin of his wisdom. Unlike Arthur Clennam's mother, Dickens's parents had had little taste for Biblical instruction or anything much to do with religion, and what seems to have drawn him to Christianity were the kindnesses he witnessed carried out in the name of faith, not least by the Anglican clergyman who taught him to read as a boy. A prodigiously energetic philanthropist, with an especial zeal for assisting in the reformation of fallen women, he regarded the doctrinal disputes that preoccupied the clergymen of his era as wasting time that could be spent on practical good works. Of course, Dickens could not always live up to his Christian ideals. He treated his wife Catherine abominably (incidentally, as voiced by Uma Thurman, she is depicted in the new film as a wasp-waisted, contented helpmeet to Dickens rather than the usual put-upon drudge) and committed adultery with his much younger girlfriend Nelly Ternan. Far from honouring his father and mother, he caricatured them mercilessly as the selfish Mr Dorrit and the wittering Mrs Nickleby. And his insistence on Christ-like forbearance even towards the wicked did not stop him calling the police on people for swearing or urinating in the street. Still, there was more than a practical aspect to his Christianity. He said his prayers twice a day and was a far more regular churchgoer as an adult than he had been in childhood. For a time he attended the Essex Street Unitarian chapel in the Strand, although his waxing and waning Unitarianism seems to have depended on his admiration for various specific ministers. For the bulk of his life he practised as a conventional Anglican. He did not much care for Roman Catholicism, even – despite his personal loathing of Henry VIII – making the Pope the villain of the piece in his account of the Reformation in A Child's History of England. (He wrote the book, he said privately, to prevent his son from getting 'hold of any conservative or High Church notions'). He had little time for dissenters too. However much he intended to promulgate New Testament teachings through the 'good people' in his novels, the fact is that nobody takes much notice of his 'good people'; we read Dickens for the comic characters, the hypocrites, villains and self-deceivers, and so the characters who go about religion the wrong way are often far more vivid than those who practise his ideals. He came up with one of his most memorable examples in his very first novel: Stiggins, the perpetually drunk Methodist preacher in The Pickwick Papers. (On being offered a drink by Sam Weller: 'I despise them all. If – if – there is any one of them less odious than another, it is the liquor called rum. Warm, my dear young friend, with three lumps of sugar to the tumbler'). It is a sure sign of Stiggins's misplaced values in the eyes of Dickens, who believed very much that charity begins at home, that he has established a 'society for providing the infant negroes in the West Indies with flannel waistcoats'. Then there is the Reverend Mr Chadband, the gluttonous, penny-pinching, blackmailing Evangelical clergyman in Bleak House, with his surreal sermons about the need to find inner truth (emphatically pronounced 'Terewth'). Rather than give practical help to young Jo, the orphaned crossing-sweeper, he attributes his lack of money, and indeed parents, to his impiety: 'I say this brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is that light?... It is the light of Terewth.' People who use religion as an excuse for cruelty are satirised by Dickens in the form of the Murdstones in David Copperfield; David recalls going to church with Miss Murdstone as a boy, she 'mumbling the responses, and emphasising all the dread words with a cruel relish … If I move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, [she] pokes me with her prayer-book, and makes my side ache.' This is not at the level of the terrifying cruelty carried out in the name of religion by, say, the schoolmaster Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre, but in its low-key way it reminds us how easily religious hypocrisy can make a child's life a misery. 'What such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance,' observes kindly Dr Chillip to David, 'And do you know I must say … that I DON'T find authority for Mr and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?' Such mockery of religious hypocrisy led, as it always does, to accusations that Dickens was mocking religion itself. He defended himself, with the prickliness typical of his responses to any criticism, in a preface to a reissue of Pickwick: 'Lest there be any well-intentioned persons who do not perceive the difference between religion and the cant of religion, piety and the pretence of piety… let them understand that it is always the latter, and never the former, which is satirised here.' It is perhaps easier to laugh at Dickens's religious hypocrites than it is to take seriously the gobbets of pious reflection with which his novels are flecked. There is something repellent about Dr Woodcourt badgering Jo into reciting the Lord's Prayer as he lies dying in Bleak House ('Jo, can you say what I say? … Our Father…' 'Our Father! Yes, that's wery good, sir'). Some people will find it touching when the dying Dick cries 'God bless you!' to Oliver Twist ('it was the first [blessing] that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through … his after life, he never once forgot it'); others will find it emetic. There will be similar mixed responses to the religious framing of Pip's belated recognition of decent values, including the worth of good old Joe, in Great Expectations ('I lay there, penitently whispering, 'O God bless him! O God bless this gentle Christian man!'') But most readers will be won over by Dickens's conspicuously decent Christian characters: the church organist Tom Pinch, whose delight in music as an expression of faith recalls that of Trollope's Mr Harding as a rejection of puritanism; the kind clergyman who rescues Little Dorrit when she gets lost in London's mazy streets and is rewarded hundreds of pages later by being permitted to marry her to Arthur. Dickens's most church-centred novel was his last, the uncompleted Mystery of Edwin Drood. His ambiguous attitude to organised religion is summed up in his portrayal of those who work at Cloisterham Cathedral, a troubled and forbidding place. But if the choirmaster John Jasper turns out to be an opium addict, sex pest and probable murderer, the muscular Christianity of the Minor Canon of Cloisterham, Mr Crisparkle, is presented as wholly admirable, especially when dealing with the grasping professional philanthropist Mr Honeythunder. Politically radical in so many ways, Dickens nevertheless believed that it was at least sometimes possible for the established church to embody the true values of Christ. 'This curious and sentimental hold of the English Church upon him increased with years,' noted GK Chesterton. 'In the book he was at work on when he died he describes the Minor Canon, humble, chivalrous, tender-hearted, answering with indignant simplicity the froth and platform righteousness of the sectarian philanthropist. He upholds Canon Crisparkle and satirises Mr Honeythunder. Almost every one of the other Radicals, his friends, would have upheld Mr Honeythunder and satirised Canon Crisparkle.' Cloisterham is the name Dickens used in the book for Rochester, where he spent his final years and died in 1870; although he had expected to be buried in the cathedral there, public opinion demanded that he be interred in Westminster Abbey. As for The King of Kings, I think Dickens would have been very pleased with it. He had an ego to match the size of his genius, and could even brag about the depth of his humility: 'There cannot be many men, I believe, who have a more humble veneration for the New Testament, or a more profound awareness of its all-sufficiency, than I have,' he wrote to a clergyman acquaintance in 1856. The idea of 21st-century children learning about Jesus through Dickens would have delighted him; the idea of them learning about Dickens through Jesus perhaps even more.
