One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)
Most children dream of becoming teachers, police officers, or doctors. My dream was different: I wanted to be a movie producer. Not a director, but a producer. Even as a ten-year-old, I sensed the difference. Directors guide actors and shape scenes, but producers carry the vision—bringing together story, cast, director, and resources so that the whole comes alive. I longed to do that work, convinced that I could see which films would flourish and which would falter. At the time, the Korean film industry was still in its early stages, with few directors who inspired confidence. I would read announcements of new projects and think, “This could never work with that director and those actors.” What excited me most was the idea of bringing the right people together so that something beautiful might be created.
Since then, I haven’t seriously pursued a film career or studied cinema. But my love for movies has remained alive through language learning. Having lived in seven countries for more than a year each, I’ve used films as my favorite method of language acquisition. In Ukraine, I watched many Soviet films. My favorite was Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears by Vladimir Menshov, a compelling portrait of three provincial women navigating love, ambition, and personal growth. Before moving to Italy, I watched Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, which encouraged me in my transition. Among French films, I love The Queen Margot by Patrice Chéreau, a sumptuous production about a turbulent period in French history. Even though I admire Ingmar Bergman, I would say my favorite Swedish film is The Sacrifice by Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Its message of hope feels especially touching, knowing Tarkovsky was dying of cancer while making it. Downfall by Oliver Hirschbiegel, depicting Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker, resonates more deeply now that I live in Berlin. Though I watch many serious art films, I also enjoy romantic comedies, and Notting Hill is my favorite British film, filled with witty dialogue and magical romance. Among contemporary Korean cinema (particularly works by Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook), I’d highlight Kim Jee-woon’s Cobweb as my new favorite because it captures what François Truffaut demanded every film express: “the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema.” Even though I’ve never lived in Japan, I admire Japanese films a lot. From Kurosawa to Kore-eda, Japan seems to produce an incredible number of great directors. My favorite is Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu. Roger Ebert said, “Sooner or later, if you care for the movies enough, you get to Ozu and Bresson and Renoir and stand among the saints.” This movie shows why Ozu was so much praised. Finally, Hollywood is the center of the world cinema, and Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is my favorite Hollywood movie. Even though it failed to attract enough viewers, its over-the-top depiction of the Golden Age of Hollywood is really interesting to me.
The Investment
In recent years, I have made a deliberate effort to watch films in the theater. Many people are content with the convenience of laptops or televisions, but that is like listening only to recordings and never attending a live concert. The energy of the hall, the scale of the sound, and the shared presence of the audience change the music entirely. So too with cinema. The big screen is not just a larger version of a TV; it is a canvas deliberately composed by the director.
I first saw Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas on a television, where the opening image of a lone man crossing a desert almost disappeared in the background. On the big screen, however, that same figure became the emotional center of the frame. The immensity of the wilderness swallowed him, and I felt his isolation in a way no small screen could convey. Scale is not an accident of cinema; it is part of its language.
This principle holds true for many films. Take the famous moment in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, when a rider slowly emerges from a shimmering mirage. On a small screen the figure is almost invisible, but on the big screen the suspense is breathtaking—you’re unsure if you are seeing anything at all, until the figure finally appears. The grandeur of the scene only works at scale.
The theater also demands focus. At home I am tempted to pause, grab a snack, or check my phone. In the cinema I must surrender my full attention, whether the film is two hours or five (I once watched all of Kieślowski’s Decalogue across two long sessions). That attention transforms the experience. I once tried to watch Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro on Netflix and gave up after twenty minutes, thinking it was dull. Later, I saw it on a big screen and was captivated. It instantly became one of my favorite Studio Ghibli films.
In art, you get what you invest. Reading the Iliad in translation is rewarding, but learning Homeric Greek, entering its cultural world, and studying its history yields something far richer. So too with film. Watching casually on a laptop requires little, and gives little. But to check showtimes, travel, buy a ticket, and give your full attention is to make an investment—and the reward is often a deeper encounter. Walter Benjamin once said that mechanical reproduction diminished the “aura” of a work of art, its unrepeatable presence in time and space. Seeing the Mona Lisa in person is profoundly different from seeing it on a postcard. The same is true of cinema. The scale of a Rubens or the detail of a Vermeer can’t be reduced to a jpeg file; they demand presence. So too films—many are made for the vastness of the theater.
The Medium is the Message
One of the reasons I am so captivated by movies is that they are a combination of so many different artistic parts. Richard Wagner famously envisioned his operas as a total work of art, which combined beautiful music, compelling literature, acting, lighting, and stage design into one all-embracing form. While opera is a powerful medium, it is also an old one whose popularity has declined. This decline is due in part to the high cost of production—opera houses are expensive to maintain, and the highly trained singers and orchestra players command high salaries. Furthermore, unlike a film, each opera performance is fundamentally irreproducible, meaning it must be performed live over and over again to be seen by many people.
Movies, on the other hand, are the total work of art of our time. They are more accessible and reflect the tastes of our generation. They are also a truly all-embracing art form, combining elements of visual art, music, literature, and performance. Consider Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The script, written by Kubrick in collaboration with the renowned science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, asks deep questions about human nature, the origins of our species, the future of humanity, and our relationship with artificial intelligence—questions we are only now fully grappling with, almost 60 years after the film was made. The film’s aural landscape is just as important. Kubrick famously abandoned an original score in favor of classical music, making Strauss’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” forever synonymous with the opening fanfare of the film and its theme of cosmic dawn. “The Blue Danube” waltz, a piece already famous before the film, gained a new meaning, becoming a symbol of the graceful elegance of space travel and the weightlessness of the cosmos. Visually, the film is a masterclass. Made in 1968, it relied entirely on analog and practical effects, such as front projection, rear projection, and incredibly detailed model work. Despite this, the visuals are more stunning than those of most science fiction movies made today.
The film also contains one of the most iconic and memorable transitions in the history of cinema. The movie opens with a group of early hominids discovering that a bone can be used as a tool and a weapon. In a moment of triumph, one ape throws the bone high into the air in a slow-motion shot, emphasizing the significance of this primitive technological breakthrough. As the bone spins upward, the film cuts sharply to a similarly shaped object in space: a sleek orbiting satellite. The seamless visual rhyme between these two shots, separated by millions of years, powerfully conveys Kubrick’s message that modern technology is merely an extension of the same primitive tools of aggression. This is a message you cannot convey with the same impact through writing.
As Christians, we are often quite blind to the art of filmmaking itself. We tend to focus solely on a movie’s story and its overt message. Most Christian books on film deal only with the content, completely ignoring the medium. This approach means we don’t understand movies as a unique form of expression; we simply see them as channels for a message. Marshall McLuhan, the father of media studies, famously declared, “The medium is the message.” He argued that the choice of medium is as important as the message itself. For example, if you break up with a significant other via text message, they will be hurt not just by the breakup, but by the fact that you trivialized your relationship by using such a casual, impersonal medium. The same message conveyed through a book is not the same as when it is conveyed through a movie.
Christians and the Arts
Among the various forms of art, Christians seem to understand and appreciate music the most. Christianity has always been a musical tradition, and music conservatories are full of Christians. The Christian music market, particularly in the United States, is enormous, and the history of music is filled with great Christian composers, such as J.S. Bach. We also have a decent understanding of literature, with a rich tradition of Christian poets and novelists from John Milton to T.S. Eliot. Fine art has long been accepted and utilized by the church, largely for its communicative power. During the Middle Ages, when most of the population was illiterate, art was considered “the literature of the laity.” Cathedrals were adorned with biblical scenes to educate the masses. However, this raises a question: do we respect fine art as an art form in its own right, or do we simply use it as a tool for communication? Dance, however, has had a more difficult time. In the past, it was often rejected by the church because it was seen as being too closely connected with the body and a potentially carnal expression. Only in recent decades, particularly in Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, has dance begun to be embraced as a form of worship.
Film, however, remains the most contested. Our unease is partly inherited from the early church’s suspicion of theater. Augustine condemned plays as dangerous distractions, filled with lust and idolatry. That distrust lingered, and when cinema arrived, it was often judged with the same severity. A Christian film industry has since emerged, but too often its products are valued only for delivering a safe message. As Frank Schaeffer observed, believers sometimes settle for works that are morally correct but artistically poor—preachy, predictable, and lacking the depth of their secular counterparts.
Christ plays in ten thousand places
While many Christians produce mediocre Christian movies, non-Christians occasionally produce excellent Christian movies, to the shame of the Christian film industry. One of the most striking examples is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew. This film is a depiction of the life of Jesus that hews remarkably close to the text of the Gospel of Matthew. Unlike Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, there is no humanistic reinterpretation; it is simply a faithful, almost documentary-like portrayal of Jesus as the Bible describes him. If this were the only thing you knew about Pasolini, you might assume he was a devout Christian. But in reality, he was an openly homosexual communist who was in a fierce struggle with the conservative Catholic establishment in Italy. He was a deeply controversial figure who also directed Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a film depicting extreme sexual depravity and decadence. So, how could a man who made such a shocking film also create a moving Christian movie that the Vatican called “the best film on Christ ever made”? I believe it shows that God can use anyone, regardless of their personal beliefs or lifestyle, to communicate his truth.
Another Christian masterpiece made by a non-Christian is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Word. This intense and masterful film meditates on faith and spiritual transcendence, culminating in the victory of faith over hopelessness and death. Dreyer, however, was not a Christian in a traditional sense. His relationship with Christianity was complex; he was more of a spiritual seeker who had a profound respect for faith, but also a deep skepticism toward organized religion. He had no intention of preaching the gospel through his films. But his powerful storytelling, stark visuals, and unflinching focus on the human soul created a work that is undeniably a Christian masterpiece.
The great American director Steven Spielberg is a well-known and proud Jew, and his Jewish identity led him to direct Schindler’s List. However, in his film Amistad, there is a scene that is a profoundly Christian moment. Illiterate Africans are given an illustrated Bible, and they begin to understand its story. One African, explaining the images to another, says: “Their people have suffered more than ours. Their lives were full of suffering. Then he was born and everything changed…” The man’s description of Jesus is so simple, pure, and biblical that if you didn’t know it was directed by Spielberg, you might think it was made by a Christian.
This phenomenon is not new in the history of art. Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser tells the story of a minstrel knight who struggles between the earthly pleasures of Venus and his longing for spiritual redemption and true love with Elisabeth. After being condemned for praising Venus, he seeks forgiveness on a pilgrimage to Rome but only finds salvation through Elisabeth’s sacrificial love and prayers. In a sense, Tannhäuser represents us humans who are so deeply steeped in sin that we feel we are beyond redemption. Even the Pope, the symbol of established religion, cannot forgive people like him. Yet, as the pilgrims sing, salvation by grace is granted to the truly penitent. No matter how great our sin is, God offers forgiveness when we repent. It’s remarkable that a man like Wagner, who himself struggled with immense personal and spiritual demons, would spend years writing an opera with such a profound Christian message. Was he, in a way, searching for his own redemption?
We often make the mistake of neatly categorizing artists into two groups: Christians and non-Christians. We assume that Christian artists, like Bach, Tolstoy, and Michelangelo, produce only edifying works, while non-Christian artists, like Picasso, Hemingway, and Joyce, produce only corrupted ones. But as we’ve seen, the line between these two groups is often blurred. You cannot simply judge a work of art by the creator’s faith. As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “Christ plays in ten thousand places,” and we often encounter him in the most unexpected of places—in a communist’s faithful film about Jesus, in a spiritual agnostic’s movie about faith, in a Jew’s depiction of the gospel, and in a troubled opera composer’s plea for grace.
What is Art?
When I was deciding what to study in college, I knew that whatever path I chose would not define my life’s single calling. So, I decided to study the broadest, most general topic that could equip me for whatever I might do later: aesthetics. Aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty and art, and I thought it would be a fun and engaging way to explore these topics. It was not. The focus of our study was often a dry, linguistic philosophy of art that was completely disconnected from the actual experience of art. We debated questions like, “If the frame of a painting is beautiful, is the frame itself art?” The discussion was largely removed from the passion and beauty that first drew me to the topic. Eventually, I avoided taking aesthetics classes and instead took classes in other departments like English literature, fine art history, and psychology, which I believe enriched my life far more.
One of the central challenges in defining art is distinguishing it from craftsmanship. In many ways, they seem similar. A craftsman learns techniques, and an artist learns techniques. A craftsman tries to be creative and make something beautiful, just as an artist does. But if they are the same, does that mean the best way to become a painter is to start as a house painter? Another equally difficult challenge is to separate entertainment and art. Woody Allen once said that Mozart and Shakespeare were the entertainers of their day, and he’s not entirely wrong. Many works now considered great art, such as Charles Dickens’ novels or the movie Casablanca, were originally produced as pure entertainment for a mass audience. So, is art just a very high level of entertainment? Still, most of us can intuitively tell the difference between the two. When you go to Disneyland, you are seeking entertainment. When you go to an art museum, you are seeking an aesthetic experience. But the philosophical boundary between the two remains elusive.
Eventually, anyone who tries to define art becomes frustrated. This led some aestheticians to find a more creative solution: to stop focusing on the nature of art itself and instead focus on its social context. This theory states that art is simply whatever the art world calls art. This approach easily explains why Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, which he titled Fountain, or John Cage’s silent composition 4’33”, during which the pianist does not play, are considered works of art. It’s not because they have some intrinsic merit, but because the community of critics, artists, and curators—the “art world”—has labeled them as such. This also conveniently solves the problem of separating art from craftsmanship and entertainment: whatever the art world accepts as art is art; whatever it rejects is merely craftsmanship or entertainment. This theory, however, leads to more troubling questions: What is the art world, and who gave it such authority? Are we just supposed to accept something as a great work of art because a select group of people says so? This view suggests that art is nothing more than a social construct, a kind of pyramid scheme by and for the art world. But of course, that’s ridiculous. We all intuitively know that art is, and should be, much bigger than the art world.
Passion and Respect
In a sense, trying to define art is a fool’s errand. There is no single characteristic that unites such a wide variety of human activities as cinema, poetry, and sculpture. They were only categorized together as “art” relatively recently through a historical process. A more productive approach is to focus on two core aspects of art: the passion of the artist and the respect of the public.
First, if you are an artist, you are driven by an intense passion for your art. There are many great craftsmen who are highly skilled at what they do, but are not necessarily passionate about it. They may see it as a job or a trade. But if an artist lacks passion, we are surprised and disappointed. When a person decides to become an artist, it is always because they feel an undeniable passion for their chosen medium. I remember when I first decided to try black and white street photography. I spent a considerable amount of money to buy a second-hand film camera, and I traveled to big cities like Paris and London just to take photos of interesting people. I was poor, but buying film and developing materials was a higher priority than buying food. When I was away from home and didn’t have access to a darkroom, I would go into a closet and develop films there. Was I trying to be the next Henri Cartier-Bresson? Maybe that was a distant hope, but the potential for greatness wasn’t the point. I was simply passionate, and I felt a deep need to follow that passion. Plato said that when a poet writes a poem, he is possessed by the Muses. This “possession,” or inspiration, is the key to art. An artist is someone who can be easily inspired and who has the drive and discipline to act on that inspiration.
Second, the public has a deep respect for art. In most countries, governments actively promote the arts, building museums and opera houses, and honoring artists with medals and awards for their contributions to culture and society. People respect art so much that museums consider artworks almost holy and would never sell them. Since old artworks are rarely sold, the rare ones that do come up for sale fetch astronomically high prices. In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for approximately $450.3 million. And it’s not even definitively proven that the painting was genuinely painted by da Vinci. Imagine how much the Mona Lisa would be worth if it were ever sold. The Louvre Museum, which houses 12,000 paintings, is worth as much as a big tech company.
Art is respected because it is how we transcend this world. We live in a world that can often feel boring and frustrating, filled with the mundane details of daily life. But once in a while, we have a glimpse of another world, a world so much more beautiful and meaningful than this one. It is what Franz Schubert’s song, To Music, celebrates:
1. O gracious Art, in how many a bleak hour,
When life’s fierce tumult wraps me round,
Hast thou kindled my heart to warm love,
Hast charmed me into a better world!
2. So oft has a sigh, escaping from thy harp,
A sweet, blest chord of thine,
Unlocked for me a heaven of happier times.
I see the world that never knew life’s sadness.
O sacred Art, my thanks to thee for this!
Art is a gateway to another world, and an aesthetic experience can be a profoundly spiritual one. When we are moved by a piece of music or a painting, we are experiencing something beyond the material world—we are experiencing the presence of God. This is why so many artists are deeply spiritual, even if not conventionally religious. As D. H. Lawrence wrote, “One has to be so terribly religious to be an artist.” The producer David Puttnam echoed this when speaking of composer Ennio Morricone: “Even if you struggle with the idea of God, you hear Ennio’s music and think, there is something out there.” When you listen to the haunting melody of “Gabriel’s Oboe” from The Mission or the tender “Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso, you are filled with a sense of longing and a deep, bittersweet beauty that stirs your soul and lingers long after the final note. It is difficult to believe in a meaningless world of chance after having such a profound encounter with something so beautiful.
The Talent
When God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful” in Genesis, he was not only expecting them to have children. He was instructing them to develop their potential and reach a high degree of maturity and complexity, since a fruit is the result of growth and development. Art is precisely this: the highest degree of human development and creativity. Of course, our “fruit” isn’t limited to art; all human endeavors—including science, engineering, and philosophy—are part of this legacy. Still, art is one of the most magnificent results of our mandate to be fruitful. We respect artists so much because they are fulfilling a calling we all share, and without them, our collective human achievement would be much poorer.
From the earliest parts of human history, we have been creating art. The paintings in the Lascaux Cave in France, for example, date back to the most remote past. And they are not primitive at all. They display a high level of artistry, with sophisticated techniques such as the use of perspective, shading, naturalistic detail, and an early understanding of three-dimensional space. The artists spent a great deal of time and effort to develop these skills. But why? Artistic skills are not practical. It seems that our ancestors’ time would have been better spent practicing with spears and arrows for hunting, skills that would have had an immediate evolutionary advantage.
The human desire for art puzzles scientists. To have a desire, they believe, it must have an evolutionary advantage. We want to eat sweet foods because they provide calories, which aid survival. We want to have a healthy partner because that raises the chances of having healthy children through whom we can spread our genes. But having an artistic skill doesn’t directly help you survive. Jared Diamond tried to solve this puzzle by saying, “The evolutionary advantage of having an artistic skill is that you have a better chance of finding a partner. When you have an artistic skill, women like you, so you have a better chance of spreading your genes.” But this only changes the puzzle from “Why do we want to have an artistic skill?” to “Why do we want a partner with an artistic skill?” The true answer, I believe, lies in our innate, God-given desire to be fruitful.
We want to develop our artistic skills because we are called to be fruitful. God has given us undeveloped skills and abilities, and he expects us to make them grow. This is the lesson of the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). In this parable, the master gave five, two, and one talent to his servants. Many people imagine talents as coins, but a talent was a unit of weight, and it was a massive sum of capital (around 30 kilograms of silver or gold). The master trusted his servants with a significant portion of his wealth, and he expected them to multiply it. Today, we use the word “talent” to mean a natural aptitude or skill because of this parable, and that is a correct interpretation of the lesson. The talent God entrusts to us is the aptitude or skill we are born with. Some are born with a talent for painting, others for programming, and still others for music. We are all born with something. And we are expected to develop it, just as the good servants multiplied their talents. Many artists are not very skilled when they begin. Spielberg’s first feature film, Duel, is a simple thriller that gives little hint of the massive scale and emotional depth he would later achieve in films like Saving Private Ryan. But the seed is already in Duel. As he continued to develop his skills, he could bear great fruit later.
The great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is famously quoted as saying, “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” This means when you begin taking photos, you’re a bad photographer by definition. Only after taking around 10,000 photographs might you become competent. Today, everyone takes more than 10,000 photographs on their phones, but at Cartier-Bresson’s time, photography meant film photography. Films are expensive—one roll of 36 exposures costs around €10. To take 10,000 photographs, you’d need to spend almost €3,000 on film alone. But that’s the price you need to pay to develop the talent God has entrusted to you if you are a photographer. Whatever your talent may be, you must go through the development process. Only then can we multiply our talent and be fruitful.
Also, fruit is an expression of the nature of the tree. You don’t know what kind of tree it is, but you can know it by seeing the fruit, as Jesus said (Matthew 7:20). In the same way, you don’t know what’s inside people, but you can know it by seeing how they behave. John the Baptist said, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Matthew 3:8) Many people responded to his message of repentance, but for John, saying “I repent” didn’t mean much unless their lives were changed concretely. In the same way, we need to express what we have in us. For example, many people say they are artistic. I’m sure they are, but I have to ask, “So, how is your artistic nature expressed? Did you create a work of art?” Without a concrete expression of our talents, we are not fruitful. That’s why we cherish human achievements, from works of art to digital devices. They are the fruits we offer God in obedience to his commandment.
The Parable of the Talents teaches that we are accountable for the gifts we receive. In the same way, God will one day ask what we have done with the talents he has entrusted to us. This book is my response to that calling, born from a profound awareness that I must use my gift for writing. What frightens me is not the fear of judgment itself, but the thought of appearing before God empty-handed. May we all arrive at God’s throne with an abundance of beautiful fruits, and may we never be lazy in developing the talents we have received from Him.