Whether it was Sally Field as The Flying Nun or Julie Andrews playing a novitiate in The Sound of Music, audiences used to watch priests and nuns and ministers — unremarkably — as part of American life on screen. But that all went away, and Rob Long is well aware why that is. Church attendance declined steadily for decades, and the stigma around religion has become unavoidable. Which made it all the more impressive how Rian Johnson brought faith to the screen in one particular scene of Wake Up Dead Man: an embodiment of what prayer does for people.

Transcript here.

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