Belief  /  Film Review

Kneeling for Hollywood

How Hollywood portrays religious prayer.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Ominous prayer by Muslims has long been a staple of Hollywood, so much so that twenty years ago The Siege (1998) used viewers’ presumed associations with Muslim prayers against them. As the movie opens, after we have seen a terrorist leader abducted from his car in the desert, the scene fades into a shot of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. His voice, beautifully intoning “Allahu Akbar,” is the background to other shots: of people praying in a house, and then of a large group of men in a mosque. We see a close-up of the muezzin’s face, and then the camera pulls out to show the city skyline. We are no longer in the Middle East after all, but in New York, and the film plays with what it expects to be our shock. Islam is already here, the film tells us. And terrorism is on its way.

Prayers are a visual shorthand in television and film, a way of marking a specific religion and signaling viewers’ response to it. Americans come to their cultural texts familiar with the “right” kind of prayer, educated in the codes of ordinary sainthood by the decades of Christian prayers that Hollywood has bountifully provided for fans, from Ozzie and Harriet at dinner to Bonanza, where the silent-but-good cowboys gathered around the table. Not surprisingly, then, Christians generally make a better showing than other believers. In war movies, in particular, the good guys pray sincerely and righteously, if sometimes inelegantly. Think of Mel Gibson’s supposed-to-be-heartwarming prayer in the Vietnam-era saga We Were Soldiers(2002), where he and a young Chris Klein kneel at the altar in a chapel, with stained glass of Mary and the baby Jesus watching over them, and ask God to protect them in battle. In Glory (1989), Morgan Freeman offers the prayers for a group of black soldiers fighting for the Union in the Civil War. He sounds like a preacher, his cause is impeccable, and his humble prayer tells us that our heroes are honorable.

People pray, and their prayers are signifiers. From children’s bedsides to every awkward Thanksgiving scene where somebody prays—cruelly or humorously or sanctimoniously—characters invoke God, but reveal themselves. We learn from the style of prayer, the lighting, and the tone of voice whether this praying person is to be trusted, whether goodness or terror or simply silliness is their likely next step.