On Sunday, March 21, I will be taking a break from my normal Sunday night ritual watching the X-Files. What on earth could tear me away? It's the Oscars! Granted, I'll miss Billy Crystal's opening number. You know, the one where he manages to fit the name of every Best Picture nominee in a song. Instead, I'll have to settle for host, Whoopi Golderg. Still, the Academy awards are too important a cultural landmark for this culture vulture to miss.

That means I have to prepare. I have to decide which film I want to win. For me, the Oscars aren't the Oscars without a rooting interest. So how does your typical postmodern Christian choose what to root for (or against)? I see the movies and decide which one, if any, is most consistent with a Christian worldview.

Why Does Worldview Matter?

A film's worldview matters because the line between popular culture and everyday life is increasingly blurred, according to Neil Gabler in "Life The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality." In other words, people take their cues on how to act and what to believe from the movies.

Does the film affirm life or does it treat it cheaply? Does the film say that virtues such as bravery, loyalty, honesty and fidelity matter, or does its moral point of view blur the distinction between virtue and vice?

Better yet, does the film contain something that can help the viewer transcend his everyday existence and begin to glimpse that larger, albeit unseen, world? Yes, cinema can do that. I know people whose lives were changed by movies like "Ben Hur." And, my boss, Chuck Colson, has used Woody Allen's Crimes & Misdemeanors to help people understand the consequences of a worldview that has no place for God.

And The Nominees Are ...

The worldview of the nominees for Best Picture can be easily compared because they cover the same subjects. Three of them are about World War II — Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line and Life Is Beautiful — and the other two, Shakespeare In Love and Elizabeth, take a look at the Elizabethan era.

Let's start with a look at Hollywood's take on the Elizabethan era.

Ripping Bodices And Shiny Teeth

At first glance, the film industry's fascination with the Elizabethan era is surprising. Yet, it makes sense. Like our own age, the sixteenth century was a time of change in which the religious and cultural assumptions that had governed for centuries were swept away.

Thus, a filmmaker's interpretation of Elizabethan England can tell us how that filmmaker views our own time.

That's certainly true of Elizabeth. Director Shekhar Kapur tells the story of the woman known as "The Virgin Queen." In the film, Elizabeth goes from a lusty, red-haired party-gal to the dutiful, frigid, pasty-faced woman we're familiar with. What was behind this remarkable transformation? A Machiavellian plot that involved the only man Elizabeth ever loved, Robert Dudley.

Every respectable Elizabethan scholar calls this notion ludicrous. So why go to the trouble of inventing such a pathetic story, especially when the real Elizabeth's story was so gripping? Because, by taking liberties with history, the film is able to make its real point: Religion, in this case, Catholicism, is the source of much of the suffering and unhappiness in this world.

When the young Elizabeth tells her tormentors in the tower of London " ... Why [must we] tear ourselves apart for this small question of religion? Catholic? Protestant? We all believe in God," she's really speaking as a modern-day denizen of Hollywood, not a sixteenth-century Englishman.

Truth, especially religious truth, mattered dearly in sixteenth-century Britain. So much so that people such as Hugh Lattimer and Thomas Cranmer were willing to go to the stake over matters much "smaller" than the choice between the Protestant reformation or continued allegiance to Rome.

Putting these words in Elizabeth's mouth only serves to highlight the filmmaker's view that taking religion seriously only produces human misery and unhappiness.

This kind of "presentism," — reading contemporary values back into history — isn't limited to Elizabeth. It's an integral part of the other Oscar nominee set in Elizabethan England: Shakespeare In Love.

The Shakespeare of John Madden's film is a struggling playwright with a bad case of writer's block — one that can only be overcome by what Marvin Gaye would have called "sexual healing."

That is, Wil Shakespeare, struggling playwright, doesn't become the Bard of Avon until he meets, falls in love with, and beds Viola de Lessep, played by Gwyneth Paltrow.

I've written previously about this film for Boundless, and this seems as good a place as any to address some criticism of my previous comments about the film. While there is no doubt that Wil and Viola "love" one another, the "excessive" and "gratuitous" (a correspondent's characterization, not mine) depiction of sex in the film might lead a reasonable person to conclude that love equals sex, or, at least, love is best, if not only, expressed in the bedroom.

This might not matter if it weren't for what this love does for Wil and Viola. It ennobles them in comparison to the rest of the characters. For instance, they are the only ones who take art seriously. Not only that, it does wonders for their dental hygiene. The message is clear: Sexual love is the sine qua non of genuine human existence. Without it, human existence is impoverished.

Now, even without the sexual element, this idea is pure nineteenth-century romantic flapdoodle.

As historian Thomas Cahill has written, Western Civilization itself was borne and preserved by men who specifically took vows forswearing romantic love: Irish monks.

G*U*A*D*A*L*C*A*N*A*L

The conceit of presentism is also on display in Terrance Malick's The Thin Red Line. Like the 1970 Robert Altman film, M*A*S*H, and the television series by the same name, Malick's film looks at WWII through a decidedly Vietnam-era lens.

In Malick's vision of WWII, every decision by military higher-ups is tainted by the kind of "ticket-punching" careerism that marked military actions in Vietnam. And, like in M*A*S*H, soldiers in the film express the kind of skepticism and uncertainty that would have been alien to my father's generation. While I was never certain what on earth the United States was doing in Vietnam, even this survivor of the 1960s understands what the United States was doing on Pacific islands such as Guadalcanal.

Even stranger was the way even toughened veterans in the film talked to each other using the same vocabulary Monica Lewinsky used with Barbara Walters. Men under constant threat from the enemy and wildlife find time to talk about their feelings: The sergeant frets over being emotionally "frozen up," and is urged to admit that he "cares" about his men.

Sergeants probably did "care" about their men, but I doubt that anyone actually talked that way in Guadalcanal. Putting the language of psycho-babble in the mouths of WWII soldiers shows us how our culture has replaced the language of morality — duty, honor, justice — with the language of therapy and feelings.

Let's be real: If feeling were all that mattered, very few men would leave their families and homes behind to fight in a war thousands of miles away. Fortunately, people are, or at least were, governed by more than their feelings. That's what enabled the GIs to defeat fascism and build the world we enjoy today.

War and Remembrance

The novelist Willa Cather once wrote that three or four stories keep repeating themselves throughout human history. Chief among these stories is the willingness to sacrifice yourself for another, inspired, of course, by the story of the "lamb slain before the foundation of the world."

You know the plot of Speilberg's film: Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks leads a search party behind the German lines charged with saving private Ryan (Matt Damon). Why go to all this trouble? Ryan's three brothers have just been killed in action, and private Ryan is being sent home as consolation to his grieving mom.

Of course, this begs an important question that haunts the movie: What has Ryan done to deserve this treatment? Why are eight men risking — and ultimately, sacrificing — their lives to save one man?

It's a good question for which Ryan has no answer. We see this at the end of the film when Ryan, now fifty years older, visits the graves of the men who saved him. He tells them that "I lived my life the best I could ... I hope in your eyes I've earned what you've done for me." He then turns to his wife and begs her to tell him that "I'm a good man."

If this awe before another person's sacrifice sounds familiar, it should. It is the question all of us must ask in light of what Christ did for us: What is our response to unmerited favor? This isn't to say that Saving Private Ryan is Christian a film. But, as Willa Cather might have said, it's a retelling of that basic story, written before the foundation of the world, that keeps repeating itself through history.

In Life is Beautiful, director and star Roberto Benigni also forces the audience to look beyond the surface and see those spiritual realities we don't always notice. This remarkable film tells the story of Guido, a Jewish waiter in Mussolini's Italy. Guido courts and eventually marries the woman of his dreams, the local schoolteacher.

The first part of the film is positively hilarious. Benigni, who has been called the "Italian Charlie Chaplin," creates a joyful and comic character who is impossible not to love. Then the Nazis come. But, just as you expect Guido and the film to take a turn for the tragic, surprise, the tone really doesn't. Even being shipped off to a concentration camp doesn't stop Guido from smiling and joking with his son.

It's not that Benigni is making light of the Holocaust, as some detractors of the film have alleged. It's that Benigni knows something that many of us have forgotten: there's more to life than our immediate circumstances — things that make our circumstances shrivel into insignificance. Being aware of these realities enables us to not only endure our trials, but to remain joyful in the midst of trials.

In Guido's case, he doesn't have the luxury of despair because there's something more important to him than his circumstances: his son's survival. Guido knows that even if he dies, as long as Giosué lives, his suffering will have been worth it.

I'm not going to even pretend to be impartial. I know, first hand, what Benigni is talking about. I've got a son who is also named Giosué—actually, David Giosué—and who is autistic. Like Guido, I've learned that avoiding despair and bitterness requires looking beyond my immediate circumstances. Not only for my sake, but especially for David's.

If Saving Private Ryan reminds us of the debt we owe God, Life Is Beautiful reminds us of why Jesus went to the cross. As Hebrews puts it, he suffered for us because of "the joy set before Him ..."

This reminder of what really matters is what elevates Saving Private Ryan and Life Is Beautiful far above their rivals. Both of these films can change your perspective on life if you let them. That's rare in today's movies and should be celebrated.

Which do I prefer? Let's just say that this Roberto is rooting for the final Oscar acceptance speech to be delivered in accented English by someone who reminded me that La Vita é Bella.