A Movie About an Honorable Catholic Priest that Atheists Might Well Enjoy. [View all]

My son came home to visit us at Christmas; my wife was helping her sister recover from fairly major surgery; my other son was working and doing stuff with his girlfriend.

So I told my son that in our one on one Father/Son evening, I'd take him to dinner and a movie at the Princeton Garden Theater.

Our dinner was very pleasant over a beer and dinner, part scientific talks about metal properties and radiation physics, little tales of our family history, scientific history, his girlfriend, his Mom, his brother, his gone forbearers and relatives.

He's an impressive young man and I love him very much. It is a privilege to have such a son; I wish I could have made my father as proud of me as I am of him.

Anyway.

The movie we went to was the third in the "Knives Out Series."

This is it: Wake Up Dead Man, a good Priest/Bad Priest movie.

I don't mind religious people who are sincere about their faith's positive aspirations; Christianity in my view as some such aspirations, although I have no use to the metaphysical anthropomorphic superbeing ruling the world, or that matter Jesus, Yahweh, such and such and so on in permutation after permutation.

In this way the young Priest portrayed in the film was admirable, because his faith was directed not toward controlling people, but helping people, even when he was suspected by everyone of committing the murder.

For clarity, the movie actually portrays a resurrection, or so it seems...hence the title.

However, the hero of these detective series, Benoit Blanc, (played by an excellent Daniel Craig), is clearly depicted as an atheist, without explicitly saying so. His rants against mysticism are classic; his passionate call to reason and facts, worthy. When invited to participate in religious activities, he acts with a kind of horror mixed with humor, excusing himself with a bemused yet clear display having no interest in any of it.

The acting is superb, particularly a role played by Glenn Close.

You may enjoy the film, atheists.

In the end, everything has a rational explanation, so no, there's no miracles, only sleights of hand.