It’s impossible to not get political when talking about a film like The Gospel of Revolution. An atheist himself, director François-Xavier Drouet started the project as a thank-you to those inspiring figures in Latin America who preached Liberation Theology in the second half on the twentieth century. Liberation Theology was and is a school of thought among Catholics and other Christian sects that social and economic justice are part of God’s will, and that believers must act accordingly to bring about an end to oppressive capitalist hierarchies. To put it perhaps more bluntly, God is on the side of the poor.
Drouet structures his documentary exceptionally well, interviewing the faces of movements in various countries across Latin America while cutting back and forth between very educational segments summarizing the history of Liberation Theology’s rise and plateau within each respective country. If I had any qualm about the editing choices here, I do wish that the purely historical segments were a bit more sequential. There are times where we’ll be whisked from one important event to another, but it’s not always made immediately clear what event or time period the archival footage is from.
In any case, the importance of this subject matter and Drouet’s passion for it shine through. The way the film lays out the global predicament we’re in and why and how religion can be more helpful than we might realize is outstanding in its clarity and calm delivery. Gospel builds nicely, too. It almost feels as though Drouet is turning up the intellectual, spiritual, and historical dials with each broad chapter. We start in El Salvador, tracing the history of the Farabundo Martí Liberation Front through the memories of one of its survivors. Then we travel to Brazil, taking a little time to acknowledge the successes and failures of current President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva before diving into the land occupation movement and the censorship it faced from the Vatican. We then spend time in Nicaragua, charting the 1979 Sandinista revolution and the influence of Ernesto Cardenal. Finally, we visit Mexico and get an in-depth history of the Zapatista revolution.
The final wrap-up is vitally important as well. Drouet basically takes us back through many of the places he’s visited, commenting on mass migration and its associated turmoil and violence. One migration counselor gives a particularly powerful speech about what should and shouldn’t be normalized, including, but not limited to, the threat of death and robbery which can meet those simply seeking a better life. What might have been had Liberation Theology been allowed to spread further? Would the Christian world perhaps have been less influenced by hyper-individualized Evangelism? Perhaps the levels of atomization we see in the western world today have a significant cost to the global south. At the very least, an important thing to remember is that we didn’t just end up here one day. The end of history has not arrived.
Lest you think the entire movie is a lecture, rest assured, it isn’t. It’s particularly inspiring if you’re open to its message. Sometimes, it does suggest the odd pearl of wisdom for keeping one’s own head in times of trouble. One leader, commenting on how they felt in their darkest internal moments (due to external factors) and how they got out of them, offers a terrific refrain: “Let’s save pessimism for better days.” | George Napper
In many different languages with English subtitles
