Review of Higher Ground (2011) by Steven C — 02 Feb 2012

In her directorial debut, Fargima does an excellent job of chronicling the displaced individual who slowly and sadly feels herself being drawn away from her faith and her community, but the portrait of the community itself is woefully two-dimensional; "Higher Ground" is refreshing as a look at a setting and characters we don't often see at the movies, but the commentary on and criticism of organized religion and evangelical Christianity, though achingly sincere sincere, still feels rather superficial.

Part of the problem is that faith is never fully contextualized--we see snippets (sometimes very powerful, vulnerable snippets) of these characters' lives spanning decades, but the cobbled-together structure that frequently works in memoirs doesn't, in this case, translate to the screen: instead of intimate snapshots that add up to some grand portrait, the loose structure results in loose characterization, despite the noble efforts of Farmiga and her cast.

Still, it's nice to see a movie for grownups that takes spirituality seriously, some of the scenes are really beautifully executed, and the final shot is effectively ambiguous and ambivalent enough to give the film a power beyond the simple sheep-following-sheep criticism of organized religion that otherwise tends to dominate throughout.