Admirers and Followers
Here’s a rule of thumb: whenever an artist, storyteller, or some other creative type shows up in a narrative and talks about his or her craft, pay attention if you want insight into the writer’s own beliefs about why we tell stories—and the responsibilities, possibilities, and potential pitfalls this entails.
For example, re-watching Terrence Malick’s film A Hidden Life (2019) the other day, I was struck again by the scene in which Franz Jägerstätter observes the painter, Ohlendorf, adding or touching up images in the chapel of the village. If Malick ever made an autobiographical statement about his vocation in a film, it would be here.
Ohlendorf acknowledges there is a danger that stories can leave people unmoved while giving them the false assurance that they have been moved. He says, “I paint the tombs of the prophets. I help people look up from those pews and dream. They look up and they imagine if they lived back in Christ’s time they wouldn't have done what the others did. They wouldn't have murdered those whom we now adore.” That is, the biblical stories he paints on the walls could confirm people in their complacency rather than shaking them out of it.
But the work he does also poses a danger for the painter himself. “I paint all this suffering,” he says, “but, I don't suffer myself. I make a living of it.” While he “paint[s] their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head,” he can profit off the pleasant, uncomplicated feelings it creates in the viewers. Ohlendorf, like any other storyteller, could be praised for being a truth-teller while never saying anything that upsets the lies people love to tell themselves. And, if he wasn’t honest with himself, he’d be in danger of deceiving himself that he has experienced “what I haven't lived.” This is why he hasn’t “venture[d]” to “paint the true Christ.” He doesn’t want to fool anyone, especially not himself, that because he has created a portrayal of Christ he knows something about following the true Christ. He worries about letting himself off the hook, just like he is worried his paintings let viewers off the hook. Making or receiving art about Christ cannot fulfill or exempt from the “demand” that “Christ’s life” makes upon everyone.
Through Ohlendorf, then, Malick is challenging us, and challenging himself. We could be inspired by Franz and Fani’s sacrifices to resist Hitler for the sake of Christ, and go right on paying to Caesar what isn’t Caesar’s to maintain our comfortable lives. Malick and his collaborators could be tempted to think that, because they have poured so much care and thought into telling us Franz and Fani’s story, they have been changed by it as a matter of course.
But while Ohlendorf’s words caution that stories—even good, true, noble ones!—can be used to insulate us from the call to practice hard virtues, his words also suggest they can nudge us toward answering that call. Notice I used the word ‘nudge,’ not ‘push.’ It’s very easy for storytellers and the popularizers of stories (critics, teachers) to overstate their importance, to believe things like, “If only we could put the right stories before audiences, the culture would change!” For one thing, the Parable of the Sower tells us that even the truest and best story of all, the gospel, often falls on unreceptive ground. How much slimmer are the odds that any man-made story could change a heart!
Appropriately skeptical, then, Ohlendorf’s view of the storyteller’s role is modest, restricted. He says, “What we do, is just create—sympathy. We create—we create admirers. We don't create followers.” Some might hear those lines as a dismissal of storytelling, or art generally; if it can’t create followers, if all it can do is create sympathetic admirers, it can’t be worth much. But before someone can become a follower, he must first become an admirer of the person to be followed. And how does one become an admirer? Through sympathy. And sympathy is what narratives are so very good at creating. Stories are empathy-workouts. They draw us into caring deeply about characters, sometimes like us and sometimes very unlike us.
It’s significant, surely, that it’s after this meeting with the painter that Franz makes his final resolution to turn himself in for refusing to make an oath to Hitler. I’d suggest the painter’s images and words prompted him to consider, in a new or sharper light, the true Christ. The painter stirred Franz’s sympathy for the sufferings of Christ—and perhaps spurred a recognition that Christ will reciprocally sympathize with him in his sufferings for His sake—and this sparked a greater admiration for Christ, and that compelled Franz to follow Christ, even unto death. The painter didn’t make Franz a follower of the true Christ, but he did help make him a greater admirer. And that counts for something.
As a former filmmaker, an amateur film critic, and a scholar (and soon-to-be teacher) of literature, all my life I’ve been asking why stories matter. Does it make a difference what kinds of stories we tell or receive? What can our stories do in the world? The answer Malick gives to these questions, in this scene, is that stories shape our affections. That’s what sympathy and admiration are: expressions of what we love. Once an affection becomes strong enough, through repeated exposure to a story or a set of similar stories, actions will follow. This is why it matters which stories we tell ourselves. For a negative example, look no further than the mayor of Franz’s village, who spews hatred because he has been shaped by the mythology of Hitler.
Watching A Hidden Life will not, in and of itself, inspire someone to follow the Jägerstätters’ example. But if the film, in concert with other stories about sacrifice, can establish sympathy and then compel admiration, maybe some day they will have followers.