Culture Clash: Madonna vs. 'Fireproof'

The tabloids and celebrity entertainment programs were ablaze with the latest news that Madonna and her British movie director husband Guy Ritchie were getting divorced after eight years of marriage. Since this was Madonna, the commercial timing of this second mangled marriage was excellent, in time to promote her latest concert tour and her debut at directing a movie, titled "Filth and Wisdom," about a rock singer working as a cross-dressing dominatrix.

But if Madonna really wanted to save her marriage, she could have seen the movie "Fireproof," the new movie starring Kirk Cameron as a firefighter who tries to save his marriage by getting rid of his selfishness and recognizing his need for Jesus. This might not seem like Madonna’s kind of popcorn movie, but it sells an absolutely revolutionary message: that love is not merely a feeling, some giggles and a good time, but a choice a person makes, a set of actions a person takes, to love someone regardless of how much they are rewarded in return.

The movie’s deepest theme reminded me of a passage from C. S. Lewis that my wife likes:

Love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each even those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you don’t like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be "in love" with someone else. "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love allows them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it. [Mere Christianity, chapter 6.]

If that message sounds so contrary to the Hollywood formula, it’s because the film wasn’t made in Hollywood. It was made in Albany, Georgia, by the Sherwood Baptist Church, for a tiny budget of a half million dollars. (They also made a small $10 million sensation with the home-made football movie "Facing the Giants" in 2006.) In its first three weeks, "Fireproof" grossed almost $17 million and landed as high as number four on the weekend top-sellers chart, despite the fact that it was only shown on about 850 screens nationwide, about one-fourth the number of your average blockbuster.

Kirk Cameron worked for no salary and no residuals (just hotel and travel expenses and a donation to his Camp Firefly charity). At the end, when Cameron kisses his movie wife, he insisted on kissing his real wife, actress Chelsea Noble, in silhouette. That’s very much in keeping with the movie’s theme and its estrangement from the plasticity of Hollywood.

Cameron plays Caleb Holt, captain of an Albany fire station, who faces a crumbling marriage to his wife Katherine, a hospital public-relations executive. After seven years of marriage, they are clearly worlds apart, with separate dreams, separate budgets, and soon separate bedrooms. They fight over tiny things like who was supposed to shop for groceries. They fight over big things – Caleb has been saving for years for a boat, while Katherine’s mother needs a wheelchair and hospital bed in her home to recover from a stroke. Caleb also seems to have a problem viewing Internet pornography, which Katherine cries over and calls "humiliating." Katherine begins flirting at the hospital with a young doctor who flatters her at lunch.

As the couple prepares to begin the legal proceedings of a divorce, Caleb’s father challenges his son to commit to a 40-day experiment he calls "The Love Dare." Caleb agrees, but mostly to please his father. He half-heartedly follows the book’s advice to avoid harsh words, to listen to his partner, to "study" her again and learn her needs and wants. But Katherine suspects this sudden effort as a cynical plot to butter her up before a legal settlement.

Halfway through the forty days, Caleb asks why he should continue to love someone who constantly rejects him, his father insists that’s what God has done for Caleb. This is where the film overtly evangelizes for the saving power of Jesus, and you clearly know this is no Hollywood production. Only then does Caleb put his full heart into saving his marriage and proving with his actions that he’s permanently putting aside his selfishness.

"Fireproof" is entertainment, not just a message movie. There’s not only the drama in fighting fires. The film might surprise viewers with its humor, especially how Cameron’s Caleb keeps embarrassing himself with angry fits in his front lawn as he’s observed by a stolid, elderly neighbor who thinks he’s "weird."

The film’s surprising box-office showing is a demonstration of the post-"Passion of the Christ" commercial potential for films with an uplifting Christian message. If the movie theaters offer this product, viewers will come. Audiences want to "vote" for these movies to be offered, to encourage the movie industry to offer films that aren’t all about surrendering to lust or bad marriages crumbling into murder.

Alex Kendrick, the pastor at the helm of these Sherwood films, wants to make movies that "tell stories that middle America can relate to. America has two cultures. There’s New York City and California -- and there’s the way the rest of the country lives."

That sounds right, but for decades now, New York and California have been talking the rest of the country into living their way. It’s inspiring to think of Albany, Georgia making this a two-way street, sending counter-cultural films that send a very different message into the most sybaritic city elites.

By the way, this movie has succeeded with very little televised publicity. The only network coverage I've seen was a September 23 interview with Cameron on the 10 am hour of NBC's Today.