A Stunning Cinematic Tribute to Catholic Faith

O ur outer bodies may fade and decay, Mark Wahlberg explains in the movie about Father Stuart Long, but our inner lives can be renewed each day, if that is what we choose. Stuart, like the actor who portrays him, opened himself to Christ, and both men’s sincerity, humility, and devotion radiate from Father Stu, a stirring depiction of faith’s journey that will be spiritual balm for many of those who see it. For Catholics, it’s an essential film, and Christians in general will find much to rejoice over in it.

Wahlberg and Mel Gibson, a pair of Catholics who have publicly sinned and given much thought to grace and the possibility of redemption, are ideal conduits for the dramatization of the life of Stuart Long, a fast-talking Montana redneck who in the 1990s moved to L.A. to seek work as an actor after his boxing career began to wobble. Gibson plays Stuart’s abrasive dad, a bitter and sarcastic boozer who lives in a trailer park and hates God for taking Stuart’s brother Stephen as a child.

Wahlberg’s Stuart is an impish and genial blunderer who is utterly convinced that working behind a meat counter and asking customers whether they’re in show business is the path to stardom. He pursues a Mexican-American Sunday school teacher he meets in the store, but Carmen (Teresa Ruiz) thinks he’s a trifler and points out that she doesn’t believe in pre-marital sex anyway. Stu agrees to try Catholicism as though it were a change of clothes, and even agrees to get baptized . . . as the soundtrack gives us the erotic Conway Twitty song “You’ve Never Been This Far Before,” suggesting that Stu is perhaps missing the point of the rite. The sacraments are supposed to amount to more than a dating app. But the silly chatter Stu keeps throwing Carmen’s way starts to make her smile, and as this is Mark Wahlberg, the audience can’t help smiling too.

First-time director Rosalind Ross (Gibson’s romantic partner since 2014), whom Wahlberg also hired to write the script, infuses the film with an earthy, honest quality that at its best reminded me of Tender Mercies, another wonderful film about the pursuit of Christian redemption, but she makes some dicey choices, such as suggesting that Stu meets first Jesus Christ in a bar, then the Virgin Mary in the road. The film threatens to become corny or mawkish. But Wahlberg’s puppyish ingenuousness knocks down all resistance. He’s just so open to inspection — so direct, so earnest, so American — that as we see Stu’s story through his eyes, it’s impossible not to be carried along in his version of events. For Stu, faith is, as it is with so many others, a personal relationship with Christ. As Stu once fought other men in the boxing ring, so he resolves to put as much intensity into delivering the Word.

His father scoffs at all of this, because his father is a scumbag and would be disappointed if his son didn’t take after him. As for the virtuous Carmen, she finds herself out-virtued. Not without reason, she thought she was the prize and Christ was merely an approach to her, but Stu tells her his mind is made up. He’s entering seminary. Or he would, if he weren’t being rejected by the frosty rector, played imperiously by Malcolm McDowell, who sees Stu as a lightweight or a chancer.

Although Easter weekend often brings a not-great movie that is aimed greedily at “the Christian market,” the best that Catholics can usually hope for from Hollywood is to be treated without open hostility. Father Stu pushes back hard the other way, making a muscular, impassioned case for the Catholic faith. Although both Wahlberg and Gibson (as well as Jacki Weaver, in a somewhat screechy turn as Stu’s atheist mom) get plenty of room to act, the purpose of the movie is to advance the cause of Christ rather than the careers of the actors. The movie shimmers with an urgent spiritualism that feels like a rare gift.

Neither Wahlberg nor Gibson should expect any awards to come his way, and Father Stu is bound to be dismissed by sophisticates because it is in effect an utterly heartfelt homily. Other films with Catholic trappings rarely delve so deeply into discussions of what faith means and how it works as this one, which ponders questions of man’s inevitable suffering and gratitude for the gift of life. The film also makes the case for Catholicism as practical guidance: While a seminarian, Stu makes a visit to a prison and connects with the inmates by speaking in the language of the street, and it’s a wonderful moment that positions Wahlberg as a successor to Spencer Tracy and Bing Crosby, each of whom famously portrayed priests as earthy men who bonded with the meek and the miserable.

I wish I could think of more recent examples of movies about Catholicism that had such a galvanizing effect, but there hasn’t been such a reverent and healing Catholic film featuring this level of star power for many years. Thanks are due to the one man who made it happen by rejecting everything Hollywood thirsts for these days: “I’ve always talked about my faith, which is good and fine and dandy and people know that,” Wahlberg told America magazine. “But then at the same time, you’ve got to kind of put your money where your mouth is.”