The author begins this book about the Christian’s attitude toward movies with his conversion as an adult to the truth of Christianity and his life-changing encounter with near-death as he experienced a heart attack in the lobby of his bank. Mr. Nehring then shares that he is and has always been a film geek. Great introduction.

Then, in what is called “Section 1” of the book, we get almost 100 pages of what’s wrong with Hollywood. This first section of the book felt repetitive to me and can be summarized in this quote taken from chapter 8:

“Though many filmmakers may not recognize this desire for God, they know how to take advantage of it. The creation of figureheads, heroes, and celebrities is central to everything they produce. These products, in turn, attempt to fill our need for the Lord’s guidance. . . . When people remove God from their lives, they must replace Him with something. Just as generations have done for eons, we replaced Him with ourselves. It is not too late for us to learn from those previous generations that this is a bad idea.
We may try to remove God from our lives, but that does not mean we will not miss Him. What distracts us from God can never replace Him.”

True stuff, and Mr. Nehring is repeating a message that our culture needs to hear and that I need to be reminded of. Nevertheless, Section 2 of this book, entitled “The Structure of Film: Seeing What’s Right in Front of You,” was the part that I most enjoyed.

Each story begins with a Central Question—Will the boy get the girl? Can the hero learn to forgive? Can you fight city hall? The hero struggles through various trials on his way to learning the moral of the story—and in that ending we see the Answer to the Central Question.

This section continues by giving the reader an introduction to plot development, story arc or structure, heroes, villains, and other archetypes. This exposition of how characters and plot work together to produce a good story, either in print or on film, is the meat of the book. Even though I’ve seen some of this material before in other places (books about writing), Mr. Nehring brings a coherent voice and style to his explanations, and he also includes a wealth of examples from all the movies he has seen and analyzed. The author says that after reading this section of the book you will never watch movies in the same way again; you will see where the story is going and often be able to predict what will happen next and why. You will be intrigued by the choices the screenplay writer and the director made, and a bad movie or story will be seen as bad for a reason: it doesn’t follow the unconscious “rules” that we expect to see in a satisfying work of fiction.

I agree with Mr. Nehring’s prediction. I have been watching movies and reading in a different way since I read this book. I want to go back and review Section 2, though, because I am not as skilled as I would like to be at picking central questions (or themes), following the protagonist’s rise and fall and subsequent “resurrection,” and discerning the other character archetypes and heroic traits in any given narrative. This book is a reference tool that critics and literary and film “geeks” can use to understand the structure and meaning of the stories we are consuming. It would also be a useful source for aspiring writers of fiction, whether they be screenwriters, playwrights, short story writers, or novelists.

Section 3 of the book gives guidelines and suggestions, not rules, for Christians who want to watch movies intelligently and and grow in their discernment about which movies to watch and how to watch those that we do choose to view. Finally, Mr. Nehring’s thesis is that “movies matter. Movies impact your life every day, even if you never watch one.” If this statement is true, and I believe it is, then it behooves us as Christians living in this day and time to learn what we can about the impact of our cultural icons (movies) on us and on those around us. And since we are further commanded to be salt and light in a fallen world, You Are What You See is a good resource for Christians becoming that salt and light in the area of cinematic culture.

Scott Nehring is a film critic whose reviews have been syndicated on Reuters, USAToday, Fox News, and The Chicago Sun-TImes websites. Mr. Nehring’s reviews are available at www.GoodNewsFilmReviews.com.