I think you can guess where I come down on this issue. I believe that showing scenes of violence is appropriate in a film made by Christians. I generally believe that pretty much any human activity is fair game to use in telling a story. Your citations of vivid descriptions of violence in the Bible make the argument for me.

I will say that I feel Christian filmmakers should be very careful about how human nature is depicted. I think there are ways to convey violence that helps to tell the story without showing everything. That is the key to me. The point of including violence, sex, or any other potentially offensive (or enticing) activities must be to tell a story. A filmmaker needs to walk a fine line between glorifying violence and showing things that needlessly offend or entice a viewer to act in a way that may be destructive, and showing so little that the audience doesn’t understand the story or character in a deep enough way.

If you study masterful filmmakers you can see this principle in action. Psycho’s shower scene is a classic example of using artful filmmaking techniques to convey everything that an audience needs to know without resorting to gore and explicit shots of violence. As I watch films today, I can often see what I would consider a lack of discipline or maybe trust in a audience. There are many films that could easily be edited to avoid explicit violent images without losing a bit of the story line or the impact that the violence is supposed to convey. And, there are certainly some films where the more bloody images work for me and seem appropriate. The Godfather comes to mind, where some of the more gory images serve to complete the horror of the event, and certainly don’t glorify the violence in a way that a normal viewer would want to imitate it.

Any filmmaker who is a Christian needs to examine his or her conscience at every stage of a creative process. Every film is different, every audience is different, and the callings of filmmakers is often different. I know Christian filmmakers who firmly believe that they are not called to make films of a certain genre, with certain themes, for certain audiences. I hope every Christian will be grace-ful to others as we work out our individual callings before God.
.-= Tom Khazoyan´s last blog ..Upcoming Film Screenings – March and April =-.