Eight Inspiring Movies for Easter Weekend

No matter what your belief, these rich films will give you faith in humanity … and the movies

Jeffrey Overstreet,

AARP

En español

Published April 07, 2023

Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain hold hands while sitting at a table in the film The Tree of Life

(Left to right) Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain in "The Tree of Life."

Merie Wallace/Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection

As Nicole Kidman might have put it in her famous AMC Theaters promo video, “We turn to the movies at Easter for magic.” Whether we celebrate Holy Week or not, great movies can rekindle our hopes. When all seems lost, they can help us believe in dreams that come true, a love stronger than any trouble and, yes, even resurrection.

The Miracle Maker (2000)

When you think of actors who played Jesus on screen, who comes to mind? Willem Dafoe in Martin Scorsese’s 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ? Enrique Irazoqui in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 The Gospel According to St. Matthew? Jim Caviezel’s rigorous imitation of Christ and his physical torments in Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ? All memorable, but Ralph Fiennes’ voice acting in this British claymation adaptation of the four Gospels is a standard yet to be surpassed. Here’s a movie that makes the Jesus story accessible and engaging for all ages without sacrificing substance or visual artistry.

Watch it: The Miracle Maker on Prime Video

Babette’s Feast (1987)

Film offers no greater Easter feast than 1987’s Oscar winner about a French chef who gives everything she has to serve two aging Danish sisters who rescued her from counterrevolutionary terrors in 19th century France. When something like a miracle occurs, Babette sees an opportunity to bless her weary, troubled neighbors with something they’ve never allowed themselves to imagine: a true French banquet that just might resurrect their neglected taste buds and dazzle their atrophied imaginations. Will they condemn her as a witch sent by Satan? Or open themselves to the heavenly revelations of a wildly sensual experience? Babette dares to suggest that the meaning of life might be found not by rejecting our bodily desires but by embracing them. It’s hard to believe that a 1950 Ladies’ Home Journal story became such a cinematic marvel.

Watch it: Babette’s Feast on the Criterion Channel, HBO Max

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

After the children have found the Easter eggs in the yard, bless them with an Easter gift of Hayao Miyazaki’s glorious animated classic about a giant, fuzzy, egg-shaped creature called Totoro. When little Mei, preteen Satsuki and their father move into a fixer-upper at the edge of a mysterious wood, their business cleaning up the place is not enough to keep the girls’ fears at bay. Luckily, the woods are home to an otherworldly guardian surrounded by a flock of miniature Totoros and puffs of ash called “soot sprites.” With the help of a giant unit of public transit called Catbus, Totoro gives the girls hope that life can grow out of what seems to be nothing. When the girls bless Totoro with the gift of an umbrella in a rainstorm — one of the most joyous sequences in all of cinema — Totoro returns the favor with a vision of a great umbrella-shaped tree. It looks like a mushroom cloud, but it’s a subversive image representing life, grace and provision in a time of trouble and threat. This is a movie ablaze with the audacity of hope.

Watch it: My Neighbor Totoro on HBO Max

This Is Martin Bonner (2013)

Travis (Richmond Arquette) emerges from prison in Reno, Nevada, hoping to find his way back into a meaningful life. His only friend is Martin (Paul Eenhoorn), a former church business manager and recent divorcee who, suffering a crisis of faith, has left the church and begun a job equipping paroled convicts for societal reentry. It’s a story of unlikely second chances: Travis longs to restore his relationship with his estranged daughter. Martin haunts auctions hoping to spot items whose true value has been overlooked — and in doing so, he sharpens his vision (and ours) to see what might truly be possible for Travis, and for all of us who might hope to rise from whatever tomb-like circumstances hold us down.

Watch it: This is Martin Bonner on Prime Video

The Gleaners and I (2000)

In Agnès Varda’s great documentary, she’s a whimsical vagabond taking us on a journey across France to “glean” what others have missed — such as the esthetically imperfect potatoes dumped in open fields where malnourished people living in poverty can legally gather them. We wander vineyards after harvest and study damaged antiques repurposed into extraordinary works of art. We go dumpster diving for groceries. And we find people the world forgot — such interesting, idiosyncratic and lovable people! There is something Christ-like about Varda’s open-armed, open-hearted adventures. She welcomes everyone and saves her anger only for those who draw lines between “us” and “them.” She practices resurrection, raising up people some would rather keep buried. Varda is very good company at Easter time.

Watch it: The Gleaners and I on the Criterion Channel

Watership Down (1978)

Like World War I veterans C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, WWII vet Richard Adams served in the British army, then composed a grand fantasy epic haunted by war. This beautifully naturalistic animated adaptation concerns a company of rabbits whose home warren is endangered by human developers, so they flee into the wild English countryside. They face predators, automobiles, snares set by farmers and, worst of all, a fascist rabbit called Woundwort. The result is a rich and philosophical story in which the rabbits’ mythological and religious traditions play an essential role in sustaining their hopes. No spoilers — but there’s a spirit of resurrection about the film’s moving finale.

Watch it: Watership Down on the Criterion Channel, HBO Max

The Tree of Life (2011)

Has the angst on Sean Penn’s face ever been used to better effect? Terrence Malick’s meditation on the meaning of life stars Penn as Jack O’Brien (whose name is just one of the film’s references to the Bible’s Job). Deep in the furrows of Jack’s brow, we feel his disillusionment, anger and guilt over the death of his younger brother. A higher power (God? Ghosts? Therapy?) guides Jack’s mind through flashbacks of his childhood: He was the eldest of three brothers under the loving gaze of a beatific mother (Jessica Chastain) and a heavy-handed, hard-hearted father (Brad Pitt in what is arguably his greatest performance). The flashbacks reach back to Jack’s infancy, his conception — all the way back to the Big Bang of the cosmos’ creation. As the cosmic scope recontextualizes Jack’s questions about his father’s abuse, his mother’s naïve idealism and his own compulsively rebellious behavior, it becomes the cinematic equivalent of Augustine’s Confessions. Agnostic film critic Roger Ebert, who saw The Tree of Life as he battled cancer, called it “a prayer” — and one of the 10 greatest films ever made.

Watch it: The Tree of Life on the Criterion Collection, Prime Video

Ordet (1955)

In polarizing times, we need art that helps us believe in reconciliation — such as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s greatest masterpiece. A devout farmer’s sons are divided: One shares his faith, another adamantly rejects religious faith, and the third seems to have lost himself in the delusion that he is Jesus (they suspect he’s read too much Kierkegaard). A life-and-death crisis brings their differing convictions about faith and hope into stark relief. I’ve seen lifelong believers and stubborn skeptics alike moved to tears by the unforgettable finale. (And Babette’s Feast fans will see several of its stars much earlier in their careers.)

Watch it: Ordet on the Criterion Channel

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Jeffrey Overstreet, a former Christianity Today film critic and author of Through a Screen Darkly and the Christian-inspired fantasy series The Auralia Thread, writes at Give Me Some Light (jeffreyoverstreet.substack.com).