New Religion Dawning

I don't know exactly when I became such a non-fiction film junkie. But I must note that several of my favorite films that I've seen in the last year have been documentaries. From Milk in the Land to I am a Sex Addict to F*ck, I think some remarkable stylistic progress is being made in documentary filmmaking. No longer are these movies populated with nothing but talking heads and/or nature footage. They're dynamic and moving and funny and weird and often every bit as engaging as other types of narrative features. And so, to wrap up my discussion of the Nashville Film Festival, I want to talk about yet another little oddball that piqued my curiosity called The Urim and Thummim.

In the Bible, the Urim and Thummim (pronounced "oor-EEM" and "toom-EEM") is a mysterious oracle about which theological and Biblical scholars know very little. In this film, however, the Urim and Thummim (pronounced much more phonetically), appears to be a small incense burner carved out of black stone that three tile-setters from Kentucky found in a Goodwill store just north of Nashville in Madison, Tennessee. These three guys claim to be able to see visions within the little trinket. And they are, quite possibly, founding their very own sect of Christianity.

It would be so easy to discount these three nuts as just that-- nuts! Truly, they are over-the-top and earnest in their commitment to their belief in that thing-- in a way that is comical at the very least. But, ultimately, it is their commitment that makes it impossible to not be won over by these guys, particularly, the ringleader, Todd Walker. One of the most interesting parts of seeing this movie screened was trying to gauge the temperature of the room with respect to this Todd person throughout the course of the film. Several times, his enthusiasm reaches a pitch near lunacy, and yet we audience-members felt palpably uncomfortable laughing at him and his cronies, Dale and Dave. Judging from the audience's questions during the Q&A session with the directors, I would venture to say that, for the most part, we were all very busy being good little liberals--skeptical and a little edgy and maybe even a little scared-to-the-point-of-constipation when faced with subject matter that smacks of Deep South, Right-Wing, Evangelical religiosity, but also reluctant to dismiss such subject matter out of hand as crazy or Jesus-freaky or to apply some other connotatively negative modifier to it--because no lefty worth his/her granola-and-righteous-indignation EVER wants to be called "close-minded."

Yeah, Todd is a funny, weird, larger-than-life sorta guy-- and about all we could muster was a carefully stifled twitter now and again. And the directors said they were even a little disappointed that the audiences didn't seem to be able to put aside either their skepticism or their bleeding hearts long enough to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the idea that some paunchy Kentuckian thinks he found God in the Madison Goodwill. The screening that I saw was the second in the festival and, apparently, Todd, Dale and Dave were in attendance at the first (dammit all! Can't believe I missed 'em!). Dub Cornett, one of the two directors (the chatty one) said that those three were near hysterics with laughter throughout the screening because they are so fully aware that, for those who lack the faith in the Urim and Thummim, well, the whole affair is pretty silly. So, really, the experience of sitting through this film-- in rough cut, even--gives me something of a nagging twinge of dismay that, in this era of Jesus freaks and jihadists, that we may have lost our senses of humor about religion for good. Anyone up for a good priest/rabbi/Buddhist monk joke? Anyone? Um, ok, well, anyway...

So, with or without any issues of audience receptivity, I feel like the filmmakers did a rather remarkable job of withholding judgement, pro or con, on these guys. I mean, more or less, they just let the cameras run... and let Todd repeatedly make a jackass of himself and then repeatedly redeem himself. Among Todd's newfound followers, however, we find a former pro-wrestler-turned-evangelical-preacher and his wife (both of whom claim to have seen some very exciting things within the little cavity of the object) --and these two seem to have been plucked right out of the sort of small-town American landscape that likes to show its panties on Jerry Springer-like shows and, occasionally, do the same on the nightly news when somebody's dog attacks somebody else's backyard herd of goats.

And yet, these guys also make a little pilgrimage to Nashville's own Vanderbilt University in order to confer with assorted scholars about the sanctity and validity of their remarkable thrift-store-archaeological find. And to me, this is really where the film got most interesting. They encountered one Mormon scholar who was very nearly hostile (apparently, there is some discussion of the Urim and Thummim in The Book of Mormon and she felt a little like they were treading on her turf, perhaps) and an archaeologist who encouraged the guys to get the thing carbon-dated (they refused, ostensibly on grounds of expense, but also, probably out of fear that the jig would be up-- and, of course, they worried the scratch tests would damage the precious artifact).

But then, there was a mightily handsome rabbi and Hebrew scholar who was so steadfast in his refusal to speak to Todd and company as though they were anything less than legitimate and faithful religious seekers, much like himself, that I think I fell a little bit in love with him. OK, fine, I could never find happiness with a rabbi, I'll admit, due to my distrust of sets of rules--any rules--that get established once a group of people think they've found the one right and true path to God. And this guy in particular said something to the effect that he "really believes in Religion (capital R) as a concept that has the potential to guide people!" Which makes me think, "Yeah! It guides them right into my-way-is-better-than-your-way sorts of thinking and other varieties of problematic superiority complexes!" (Oh, heavens! Have I digressed?) And I also tend to think circumcision is a little bit medieval (all those little nerve endings go bye-bye-- so SAD for those boys! Oh, man. Am I really saying that one of the primary factors in my denying my Jewish heritage is my affection for penises? When did I get to be THAT hetero?). It just wouldn't do for a rabbi to have a spiritually frustrated and rebelliously agnostic wife, would it? Oh, well. So much for that fancy. However, this rabbi's earnestness rivaled Todd's own--and made him so completely appealing.

But Todd's interactions with the Vandy professors, as displayed in this film, walked a very tenuous tightwire. The fact that every time one of the academics gave Todd more information about the Urim and Thummim, (like, for instance, the fact that the words translate to "light" and "perfection"), he was all too willing to incorporate every little tidbit into his homegrown theology, as though he had already intuitively ascertained every ounce of Urim and Thummim scholarship in existence. And that aforementioned tightwire falls smack dab on the county line between Patheticville and Charming Heights. It's an odd note for a film to hit-- and a complicated one --but the filmmakers managed to prevent the overall timbre of these moments from falling into outright condescension. I feel pretty confident in accrediting their particularly soft touch with making the subject matter of the film simultaneously completely preposterous and completely authentic. It's as if preposterousness and authenticity were both so wholly parts of Todd's very soul that Cornett and his partner, Jacob Young, merely had to put them on parade to create that sort of tension on the screen.

Interestingly, though, the rabbi also said that Todd bore all the markings of a real religious leader--scoffed-at in his own time, extremely and passionately steadfast in his faith, and possessing of a charisma great enough to attract and maintain a handful of loyal believers (managers of Auto Zones and wrestling circuit has-beens, though they may be). And really, the possibility that Todd and Dave and Dale just might not be full of complete and utter shit is what makes the film, little artifact of Americana anthropology that it is, so resonant and fascinating. I mean, what if Todd Walker's thrift-store gewgaw (rigged up with mini-LCD light and magnifying glass, no less) really does hold so many secrets of the universe? All those secrets that these people claim to have seen within its cavity? Just suspending the natural skepticism just for a heartbeat opens up the window for this very possibility. For those of us disinclined to find comfort in any sort of organized religion in the first place, well, Todd seems no more or less viable a religious leader than, say, Pat Robertson or the Dalai Lama in exile, right? And who am I to begrudge him his faith?

Or to doubt that those of us in the audience of the screening of the rough cut of this documentary were witnessing the very dawn of a brand new faith?