I’d really hate to be a Christian filmmaker who’s actually known as a Christian, making films for the Christian audience.  It would be almost impossible to please anyone. From the outside, you’d be criticized for preaching to the choir; from within you’d hear talk about making films for the Christian ghetto; and, of course, you’d be certain to get criticized from the ghetto choirloft itself about the “theology” of your film no matter what doctrinal persuasion you espouse.  Nothing you made would ever be quite Christian enough. 

Of course, all filmmakers are subject to such scrutiny.  But from what I’ve seen, it’s a little tougher to aim for the Christian niche than to go more broadly secular.

One criticism leveled by Christian critics at Christian-market films is that they are too triumphalist—that is, like the work of born-again Pollyannas, “Christian” films pander too much to the name-it-claim-it crowd, painting the walk of faith as all roses all the time, with plot-point hiccups as mere mile markers.  The Sherwood Pictures films—Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof—are often cited as examples.  My own view is that no single film is capable of capturing the entirety of the Christian message and experience—not even The Passion.  So it’s unrealistic to expect one single film to present more than a slice or two of what it means to come to, or to follow, Christ.

So if Sherwood has managed to carve a niche out of demonstrating what it means to admit one’s faults and discover the first fruits of God’s blessings to the faithful, A Greater Yes adds a full-throated second or third act to the overall storyline of faith.

Though the film is bracketed by a voiceover that assures us there’s more to teenager Amy Newhouse than meets the eye, there’s no doubt that as this “true story” begins, our plucky 16-year-old heroine is living the Christian life large.  She’s one of three girls in a perky rural Texas Christian family; she’s active in high school volleyball; she’s got a fine, upstanding Christian boyfriend; and she’s off to spend the summer in Africa on a short-term mission trip.  She’s on fire for the Lord, folks, and she seems pretty justified in claiming, as she does, that God always answers her prayers.  (Like, when she starts raising the $3K she needs for her trip, her first visit yields a check for the whole wad.)

Fast forward to her return home from Africa.  She’s seen what it’s like to be a dynamic representative of the Kingdom, and she’s determined to wreak the same influence back in her own neck of the woods.  Alas! the poor girl is just naïve.  Americans are far too preoccupied with themselves and the Good Life to be too much bothered about being on fire and all… it’s quite a comedown.  And when something in her side catches as she’s lowering a volleyball net, her little ol’ rosy world starts turning awfully dark and oppressive.

Thank God that Amy’s heart is in its indefatigable right place!  With the power of prayer and God always on her side she can weather any… What’s that?  You mean God isn’t the Santa Claus of the Skies?

I don’t want to get into too many details about Amy’s crisis of community courage, or about the physical challenge she confronts.  What’s important is that Amy’s story doesn’t yield the outcome she—or the audience—expects.  In this respect, dealing with the film rather feels like dealing with God.  Toward the end of the story, Amy makes her rather well-known titular observation that when God tells us “No,” it’s usually because he’s got “a greater Yes” in mind.  That is, if God doesn’t grant our heart’s desire to become the Next Big Thing of Evangelism, it’s perhaps because he has in mind that we should have a very concentrated, dynamic impact on a handful of people—maybe only one or two, even—instead of converting thousands.  Interestingly, I think this is precisely the effect this niche film will have by failing to pander to a wider market.

A Greater Yes deserves to be singled out on three scores, I think.  First, it’s bold enough to portray spiritual disappointment in a fashion that compares favorably to seminal entertainments like Robbie Benson’s stunning turn in Death Be Not Proud.  Second, I think I’ve rarely seen an inspirational film that’s designed to be more therapeutic for those left behind than those who’ve survived.  And third—I’ve gotta say that this is a pretty remarkable directorial achievement for young Bradley Dorsey, who can’t be much older than 24.  He knows what he’s doing with a camera, and with actors.

PureFlix did the right thing in picking this low-budget indie up for distribution.  I haven’t been so thrilled with some of their latest acquisitions, but this one is real find.

One complaint here, and it’s frankly a big one.  Dorsey was obviously plagued on this production by one of the great bugaboos of on-location shooting: poor audio quality.  Staring with Facing the Giants, the Sherwood gang licked this problem by spending about 90% of their budget on ace sound and camera technicians who know how to avoid the kind of pitfalls faced here.  In far too many scenes, Dorsey was forced to trim the “white space” between lines of dialogue to eliminate background sounds and hiss; and while the film was nicely edited with backing tracks to mask much of the resulting audio discontinuity, the effect is still highly distracting.  It’s the kind of technical flaw that keeps many a low-budget flick from ever seeing the light of day.  As it is, Dorsey manages to overcome this Big No with Greater Yeses… but the film would have benefited greatly from some professional looping on at least a few key scenes.

Still, if you watch this film—and go it into knowing that this probably won’t turn out to be the rosy pick-me-up that you expect to find at the Friendly Neighborhood Christian Merchandising Store—I think you’ll be quite pleasantly surprised… no matter what petty barbs you may have in mind for Christian filmmakers.

A Greater Yes is unrated; but aside from some fairly mature thematic matter—think, perhaps, of a Real World Bambi story—this is material safe for the whole family.  But please—think twice about sitting down to watch this with a terminally ill person.

Courtesy of a national publicist, Greg screened a promotional DVD of A Greater Yes.