This was a small little indie film from 2011 directed by Vera Farmiga, of The Departed and Up in the Air fame. She plays a woman who grew up acquainted with church, but after essentially abandoning her faith in her adolescent years becomes “born again,” joining a small evangelical Christian community with her devout husband. This is a movie that deals with faith in a fascinating way. Farmiga’s character is one who desperately wants to believe in the God that her church brothers and sisters believe in, but she is thwarted time and again by questions she can’t get a square answer to, and policies she can’t abide, such as the secondary role of women.
The subject of religion is well handled in Higher Ground because it doesn’t cast judgment on the believers, nor the non-believers. It treats its characters sincerely, presenting them as earnestly devoted to the beliefs they have arrived at based on their lives and experiences. For some, it’s not something that requires any questioning, but for Farmiga, faith is something that needs to be questioned constantly to have any value. It presents faith in the Lutheran sense I think, as though the ability to believe is something that you attain, through efforts not entirely your own, and in the end, Farmiga’s character, and probably Farmiga herself, haven’t seemed to have received this gift of faith, but remain open to it. I don’t think I’ve seen another movie deal with faith in this critical a way before.
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