Saved - Elizabeth Roy

Saved
Choice blog
Elizabeth Roy
4/23

The movie Saved is a film that explicitly and comically presents religious themes in order to entertain, but at the same time shows us a different kind of faith and religious practice. In Saved, a young teenage girl is attending a fundamental Christian (Protestant) school. She discovers that her boyfriend is actually gay, and believes that she has a mission to have sex with him to turn him straight. She subsequently becomes pregnant, and much of the film focuses on other peoples interactions with her and her gradual maturity. The kind of faith that most people in Saved have is shown in a highly critical light. Most of the people in the film are loudly and ostentatiously religious, which leads to them being very judgmental. These people are shown to be ridiculous, hypocritical, and unstable. However, the main character gradually comes into a different kind of faith. The other characters, along with the main character at the end of the film, have a faith that is centered on tolerance and understanding. These people are presented as less sinful and as basically better people. The filmmaker also seems to be saying that they are leading lives closer to what Jesus would have wanted – the supposed faith of the ostentatiously religious characters leads them to lie, vandalize, and manipulate. The faith of the other characters, however, leads them to tolerate, love, and grow.