The Cross (2009)
directed by
In case you haven't been following along, Hallie & I are watching most of our DVDs in order to simply watch many we've bought and never put on (we mostly buy them cheaply in thrift stores) and then decide whether or not to keep them. Based on the way we've shelved them, we're watching 5 "regular movies", 1musical, 1 religious movie/documentary, 1 Hitchcock, 1 sci-fi, 1 Western, 1 war, 1 documentary, and then 1 music movie/video collection. We're on the third span of "regular" movies, but I've got a bunch of catching up to do.
We're not even sure where this film came from, maybe Hallie's aunt. It's a fascinating, if a little hagiographic, documentary about the life and travels of Arthur Blessitt. He was a charismatic preacher who set out to evangelize young people in LA in the late sixties. With a church next to a go-go club, he became known as the minster of Sunset Strip.
Starting on Christmas, 1969, he began traveling the world with a large, wheeled cross, preaching and talking to anyone and everyone. Since then, he's traveled to every continent, almost every country, and walked 43,000 miles.
His first international trip was to Northern Ireland. In 1982, he ended up in Beirut during Operation Galilee and prayed with Maronites and Yasser Arafat. From things he says he clearly made no political judgments - I'm not even sure if he has any sense of politics. His story of traveling through Central America is pretty nuts (and disgusting). He comes across as a modern version of the holy fools from medieval Russia, wholly dedicated to Christ and almost oblivious to the mundane world around him.
Verdict: keeper. I don't know when I'll ever watch it, but it's an interesting story. Also, that section is so small we probably won't ditch any of them.
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| Arthur Blessitt |
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