David

I traveled a couple hours, round trip, to see this movie yesterday – the animated musical David, from Angel and whatnot. Without any big-name stars in the voice cast, it is well-acted, with beautiful art and superb animation that brings to convincing life so many details, from the weave of fabric to the dust and scrubby vegetation of the desert, the movement of hair and the rustle of wind in the grass – not to mention the way clothing moves against flesh. The animated characters are striking to look at and none of them particularly suffer from that "uncanny valley" that has so long bedeviled computer-assisted animation. And its depiction of young David's early rise from shepherd boy to king of Israel, while not always spiritually deep – especially during most of its musical numbers – at least doesn't leave me feeling like theologically spitting something out, as did (for example) the recent animated Jesus movie, Light of the World.

I thought the David and Goliath bit played excellently. David taming Saul's madness with music was fairly well done. Characters like the flamboyantly wicked King Achish of Gath and even some of Saul's minor hangers-on left definite impressions. You'll remember Saul's hairy-armed armor bearer, a nervous courtier, a lazy little brother, a vivacious baby sister, some of David's comic-relief lieutenants and other members of a colorful cast, with some family drama livening up the storyline. Above all, there is a sometimes villainous, sometimes sympathetic Saul, a loyal friend in his son Jonathan, and the especially striking portrayal of the prophet Samuel. And boy, are those Amalekites creepy!

I would almost say I have no complaints about this movie. But, while I'm not going to ding it doctrinally, as I did Light of the World, I do feel it went a little soft on its portrayal of David after his bout with Goliath. I mean, outside of a musical montage depicting him and Jonathan kicking enemy butt up and down the borders of Israel, it doesn't really show David doing anything. While he and his cronies do put on Philistine uniforms (supposedly in a ruse to attack them from the rear as they meet Israel in battle), the film shies away from depicting the one year and four months David spent actually serving under Achish according to 1 Samuel 27 – though, to be sure, David only pretended to be raiding the Israelites when in fact he was exterminating his people's enemies. I guess that would have been too harsh for a kids' movie, or perhaps too complex for the desired pacing of the story. But I think the movie could have done better than just have him pull back from the battle (conflated with Saul and Jonathan's fatal campaign) and do nothing.

Then there's the way David saves his families and those of his comrades from the Amalekites. In the Bible, he actually raided them and delivered the captives, including (ahem) his at the time two wives. The movie scrubs the wives from the storyline and replaces them with his parents and younger siblings, and all the other women, children and elders who were captured from Ziklag. It also scrubs anything that David effectively does, replacing the raid (which would have been, you know, violent) with a bit of business where he gets captured and is about to be executed when the captives cowboy up and deliver themselves. And him. It left me struggling to see why the kingdom rallied to him, when he never really did anything.

A third opportunity this movie misses, probably on purpose, is a potentially spooky scene in which Saul conjures Samuel's ghost, resulting in a prophecy of death. That would have been vastly more impressive than the way the movie conveys what came between Samuel (before his death) and Saul. But it does establish a theme involving a piece of the king's cloak being torn or cut off, which pays dividends later.

I call these instances of the film shrinking back from the jagged edges of the story, childproofing them to a fault, and thus (if you think about it, as I unfortunately tend to do) robbing it of a goodly share of its dramatic power. It could be a more inspiring and thrilling film, on a deeper level, I think. And the lyrics of its songs could be a little more to the point, sometimes. I do appreciate the use of such psalmic language as "Why, God, have you forsaken me" at low points in David's career. I appreciate that the film at least doesn't paper over the dismal and depressing times that even heroes of the faith have to go through. And overall, I give this movie my seal of approval, for what it's worth.

And there are really Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The whole Goliath sequence. (2) David, pursued by Saul, has an opportunity to sneak up behind him and stick a sword in. That he doesn't, and why he doesn't, is spot on. (3) David's raiders (including his until-then often unsympathetic oldest brother) show up just on time, with the sunrise, in a scene that I like because of its clear and welcome allusion to the arrival of Gandalf, Eomer and his cavalry at the crucial moment in the battle of Helm's Deep. Yeah, so it's a Tolkien moment in a Bible movie. I loved it.