A Great Awakening

This is a great movie that certainly awakens the heart. It begins in the childhood of the two main characters, Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield, who are separated in age by about nine years. Ben worked in the chandler shop of his father in Boston, who hoped the boy would grow up to be a preacher, while “Georgie” worked in his mother’s tavern in Gloucester, England (where there were stage performances) and so it was presumed the boy would grow up to be an actor. But the actor got Born-again and became a dramatic preacher, while the candle-maker became a master communicator through the printed word, and one of our country’s greatest Founding Fathers.

The movie touches on the decades leading up to and through the American Revolution, and the persuasive preaching of Whitefield was most influential to that end. Depicted is the spirit of those times, when child labor was a fact of life, slavery was in full swing, and the nation’s future was not so certain. The period of the film helps present a nice time frame for many famous characters of history: in Franklin’s political circle were the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton, and in Whitfield’s were the Wesley brothers and Edwards.

The film is not especially violent except for some pushing and bullying, but one uncomfortable scene has some miners hurling chunks of coal at the unwelcomed preacher’s face. He bleeds, shakes it off, and then winds up baptizing them.

I counted two scenes of Franklin imbibing; they are brief, and he is not intemperate. The credits list one drunken sailor character that must have just flown past because I was unaware. Then, there is the aforementioned tavern, so patrons drank, but no smoking or drug use is depicted. There were also prostitutes identified in the credits, but the one I suspect is included was not lewd or obviously of that occupation, she was simply leaning against a post in the middle of the bustling town. There is little sexual anything in this movie, except that Franklin’s infidelity is suggested when he appears at the theater with a woman not his wife. He also invented a collapsible catheter which made for an awkwardly amusing moment when someone asked its purpose.

Franklin was a person who found God seldom in anything, if at all, as everything to this polymath could be explained without Him. But in the end, after a whole film of Whitefield’s thunderous evangelism, Franklin yielded to the possibility that America’s problems could best be remedied by invoking his distant god’s aid, and so it was. The minced oath of “Blast it” was uttered by Franklin, and “Dear God” as an expletive also. “Dung, ” too, was mentioned at some point. The films rating is PG-13.

The actor who played Whitefield was compelling and believable, repeatedly calling for people to be “Born-again, ” and to “Awaken.” Nobody was sleeping in our local Wanee movie theater, and I pray this production not only strengthens believers, but stimulates unbelievers to faith. Oh, and I project the new hymn introduced on the soundtrack will soon be sung in churches everywhere; it’s wonderful.

• Violence: Moderate
• Alcohol: Moderate
• Profane language: Mild
• Vulgar/Crude language: Minor
• Nudity: None
• Sex: None
• Occult: None
• Wokeism: None

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.