“Awake, My Soul” – a review by Kenneth R. Morefield

It is a privilege to welcome film critic Kenneth R. Morefield back to Looking Closer with a review of what sounds like a must-see. Let’s just hope that it will be accessible to all of us soon.

 

Awake, My Soul

a review by Kenneth R. Morefield

The either/or fallacy surrounding “Christian” art (be it music, fiction, or even filmmaking) is the assumption that artists must somehow choose between artistic excellence and Christian content. There have been, to be sure, periods in history where an antipathy towards the arts has flourished in Christian thinking and, as a result, the participation of Christians in them has suffered. There have been Christians, however, whose artistic endeavors have been motivated by their faith rather than practiced in spite of it. When religious devotion causes a prospective artist to want not merely to express himself (or herself) but to do so well, to paint, or write, or sing, or film as one’s work unto the Lord, the results can be a specimen of “Christian” art that is something more than just a pale imitation of the secular style du jour.

I bring this up because Matt and Erica Hinton’s 2006 documentary about Sacred Harp singing  — Awake, My Soul — is not just a good “Christian” documentary; it is a good documentary, period. The advance of video technology has been a boon to budding filmmakers, but it often results in works — especially Christian ones — that are more earnest than accomplished. Formal training (or even informal training) means studying the works of accomplished artists to learn technique, creating a sort of catch-22 for the Christian apprentice. A subculture that discourages access to the majority of its broader culture’s art usually retards the learning of its members and hence makes it hard for its members to create works of quality that can stand beside the best works of their secular counterparts without suffering by comparison. So when I say that one of the first things that jumps out to the viewer about the Hintons’s documentary is its technical, professional competence, I absolutely don’t mean that as a back-handed compliment.

The directors know to shape raw footage, how to extract an excerpt of an interview where the subject is on point and integrate it with others, how and when to let the music continue in the background, how (as silly as this sounds it is important) to keep a consistent sight line amongst his subjects so that the viewer feels as though he or she is talking to the subject rather than watching the subject from a weird camera angle. If they give us the slow pan over a still photograph a bit often, well, Ken Burns made a career out of filming archival material that way, didn’t he?

It is also nice that the technique supports the subject matter and fits the individual scenes rather than merely being utilized to show the directors’ proficiency. A nice example is in the section talking about the democratic nature of a singing meeting in which members take turns leading. As various interviewees discuss what it is like to be near the center of a powerful form of worship, the film uses seamless cuts to give the illusion of one continuous performance as the person in the center changes, giving us a montage suggesting the passage of time. Not exactly radically experimental or new technique, but it works precisely because the directors are in control of their technique and are able to use it to support what is happening on screen rather than to call attention to themselves.

The technical proficiency of the documentary is fitting because the subject matter of the film — shape note singing — is a style of singing that developed in part out of a movement to train people who were going to sing in church to do so in a manner that was orderly and (musically) literate. Raymond Hamrick says of the church atmosphere that gave rise to Sacred Harp that “the church singing had disintegrated to the spot where it was nothing… it was chaos.” One historian of the musical school adds: “The purpose was to have musically literate singers in churches so the church music would improve. The result was that musically literate singers wanted to sing something more elaborate and engaging…” It is significant, in that respect, that Sacred Harp singers still use the designation “singing school” to refer to the training of initiates in the style and that the hymns begin by singing the names of the notes (“sol,” “la,” “fa,” etc.) all the way through before singing the words to the hymn.

Those origins may make Sacred Harp singers sound elitist or condescending. Nothing could be further from the image of them projected in the film. “Sacred Harp singers have a lot of love for each other…and it shows” says one singer. Indeed, it does. One of the interesting things about the documentary is how much footage it includes of people singing and how the people look genuinely engaged. They don’t have that self-conscious constipated look that so many evangelicals do when they are filmed in their own worship services. The documentary makes the point that there is no applause after a leader’s rotation is completed because neither the conducting nor the singing is considered a performance.

What we get, then, is an image of a worship service that is all the things that main-line, evangelical services are supposed to be but so often aren’t. It’s member-driven with everyone participating and with a core of people who genuinely want to be there. Although this isn’t a major point of emphasis in the film, I couldn’t help wonder if there is a connection between the level of commitment that the participants had and the camaraderie created by the commitment to craft. My spouse once had a friend express surprise that she would drive a couple hundred miles once a month to attend a peer discipleship group. She replied that dedication is usually an indication that that a person finds an experience rewarding and not merely that she has the character trait of commitment in excess to everyone else. The closing credits of the film crawl over the scene of the inside of a car driving at night. Inside a couple (faces not shown) practice the note singing. The point is made throughout the film — the people who practice this art form love this art form and for them driving hours to spend a day in a small church singing hymns is not a surrender of a weekend or of some free time but a sojourn to that which energizes them. A service or worship form that requires something of them beyond simply showing up paradoxically engenders more commitment than a program-driven form of passive, consumer worship.

Most good documentaries (most good films, actually) are about more than one thing. The history of Sacred Harp entails a good deal of local color and provides a lens for viewers to examine cultural differences from different geographical regions. So often in American literature (and history) those from the American South, especially those not of an aristocratic class, are presented as backward, dumb, or fanatical. It is especially interesting when the documentary characterizes the rejection by the European musical establishment of this American style as the rejection by those with culture of those who lack it. When the narration describes the music as “fiery, uncompromising, [and] inelegant” it may as well be describing the people who sing it, and it is to the film’s credit that it sees in those traits not just a failure of refinement (which inelegance can sometimes be) but also a strength and authenticity of character that refuses to substitute the judgments of another more prosperous segment of the culture it inhabits for its own.

Awake, My Soul is regrettably not yet available via Neflix (that has to change), but it has been picked up by a number of public television stations across the country. A partial list of broadcast dates is available at http://awakemysoul.com. The DVD is also available at Amazon.com, though it is a bit pricey at $26.99. [Then again, that’s less than a pair of tickets and a popcorn combo at many megaplexes these days.] Ironically, when I checked out the Amazon page for Awake, My Soul, I saw that one could get a discount when buying it with Philip Groning’s Into Great Silence. I was wondering while watching the DVD if I was the only one who thought these two films would make a powerful double feature; I guess I wasn’t. It is strange that the meditative silence of the monks and the fiery, uncompromising, and inelegant songs of the lay people could both, in their way, be expressions of the same devotion to the same God.

Strange…but wonderful.

My Grade: A

Kenneth R. Morefield is an Assistant Professor of English at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina.

NOTE: You can visit the film’s official website here.