Blue Like Jazz

In a post I made over a year ago, I discussed the making of a film version of Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz.  If you would like to, you can read that post here: http://thoughtsfromtheoasis.blogspot.com/2010/09/save-blue-like-jazz.html

Welcome back.  The Kickstarter campaign to save Blue Like Jazz worked, and the film was released in theaters earlier this year.  However, due to the independent nature of the film, it was only shown in select theaters, ours NOT being one of them.  But that’s cool, because it finally came out on DVD and I got to watch it.

I’m so glad I saved it.  I mean, I didn’t do it all, but I’d like to think that my $25 was what they used to buy the cross shaped piñata that was loaded with communion cups full of grape juice.  It was a good movie.  A really good movie.

But it wasn’t a “Christian” movie.  At least it wasn’t like any of the Christian movies that I had previously seen.

Every other film that falls under this category has a very different purpose, and so the filmmakers make some very different choices.  The other films that I have enjoyed were meant to be family films with an evangelistic intent, and so they portrayed a version of the world that would be safe to show in your church’s fellowship hall.  The world that Blue Like Jazz gives us is the real world, a depiction of “the most godless campus in America” where people talk and act like they do not have a relationship with Jesus, because they don’t.  That means the film very much earns its PG-13 rating due to its language and content.   They are not making a film meant for churches, but rather for people with the same kinds of questions about life and God that the characters in the move have.   And maybe you have some of those same questions where you live… in the real world.

If that’s you, then this might be a movie worth seeing.