How 'Sound of Freedom' took on Hollywood — and won
National Post, 22 July 2023
After getting dumped by Disney, an independent religious studio used the film to beat Hollywood at its own game
A culture too enthralled by commercial criteria measures the success of a movie by box office receipts. It’s like considering Beyoncé better than Beethoven because she sells more albums.
Yet that is how the industry measures success, and this summer’s most surprising film on that score is “Sound of Freedom,” starring Jim Caviezel, who’s most famous for playing Jesus nearly 20 years ago in “The Passion of the Christ.” The picture is about rescuing victims of human trafficking. “Sound of Freedom” was made by two Catholic filmmakers from Mexico, Eduardo Verástegui and Alejandro Monteverde.
On its opening day, July 4, it beat out the latest Indiana Jones instalment, in which Harrison Ford finally does the inconceivably fantastical and runs for president at age 81. “Sound of Freedom” currently sits behind the latest Mission Impossible film, but ahead of the latest in the Spiderman franchise.
It’s possible that moviegoers simply want to be told a story that they have not been told before, multiple times. The next impossible mission for Tom Cruise may well be to persuade a Hollywood studio to commission a new script.
Yet even a creatively bankrupt Hollywood pays attention to the bottom line. “Sound of Freedom,” which was made on a budget of less than US$15 million (C$20 million), is proving to be fabulously profitable. There is something of a comeuppance in that, as the film was originally completed some years ago for 20th Century Studios. When Disney acquired that studio in 2019, it cast “Sound of Freedom” aside. Disney then spent nearly US$300 million on Indiana Jones, a project on which it will likely lose money.
The box office success of the religiously motivated filmmakers of “Sound of Freedom,” due in part to religious moviegoers, has caused grumbling from some newspapers, which have spent more time muttering about the producers than covering the film itself. After all, those outsiders are suspicious sorts, not conforming to the cozy cinema culture in which Harvey Weinstein or Woody Allen are comfortable.
“Sound of Freedom” is an artistic story, but also a business one, and it reveals the changing nature of the film industry. After Disney dumped the project, it was eventually picked up by Angel Studios, a new player most famous for producing “The Chosen,” a massively successful streaming series on the life of Jesus, which is now in its third season, with a fourth coming next year.
“The Chosen” can be watched for free, and has been funded by donations from faithful viewers. It’s no community theatre YouTube video, but film-making of the highest Hollywood production standards, with much better writing.
Angel Studios is advancing a new approach to artistic patronage, which is the way great art — and poor art — has been produced down the centuries. The creative corruption of the big Hollywood studios, stuck in the rut of making ever more lavish cartoons for middle-aged children whose imaginations ceased developing in elementary school, has meant that serious patrons of the arts need to be sought elsewhere.
Kings are few and far between, modern bureaucratic governments are incapable of even designing a passport and the churches commission much less art than they used to, when it was thought that spectacular stained glass and splendid sculpture was to be made accessible, for free, to any poor soul who entered God’s house. Now the soaring Notre Dame of Montreal sells tickets to it’s sound and light show, its glorious art considered somehow insufficient otherwise.
Continue reading at the National Post.