Fundamental Theology, Cinema and Spirituality
MexicoIn memory of Luis García Orso, sj (1944–2025).
Sergio Guzman SJ**
Fundamental Theology is a discipline within theological sciences that studies the foundations and basic principles of the Christian faith. These topics relate to divine reality and how it manifests itself in the history and lives of believers; to the dialogue between faith, reason, and culture; to what is linked to belief, to what gives meaning and value to existence. Father Luis García Orso, SJ, was a professor of this subject for many years.
In the 1990s, I was fortunate to have Luis as my spiritual companion and apostolic companion when we worked in the Ecclesiastical Base Communities (CEBS) on Cerro del Cuatro in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Later, he was my professor of Fundamental Theology at the Colegio Máximo de Cristo Rey in Mexico City for a year, during the period of studies then called "Accompanying Theology," prior to the Magisterium. As a Jesuit in training, Luis studied Philosophy, Humanities, and Psychology, and finally earned his doctorate in Theology from the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia, with his thesis "Humanity in the Nonhuman: An Anthropology of Liberation."
For several years, from roughly 1982 to 1996, he was a professor of theology, trainer, superior of Jesuit student communities, and advisor to the CEBS (Centers for the Study of Jesuits) in the Mezquitera neighborhood of Guadalajara. At the end of 1996 or beginning of 1997, he was assigned to Mexico City, where he taught theology classes to me and a small group of Jesuits. I well remember all the requirements he asked of the group in order to take his Fundamental Theology class: listen to the songs of the Spanish singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina (who by then had already recorded more than ten albums, from Inventario to Yo, mí, me, contigo); read the book Creer que se cree (Believing That One Believes) by Gianni Vattimo; and ¿En qué creo los que nos creo (What Do Those Who Believe Us Believe?). by Umberto Eco and Carlo Maria Martini, watch the film Kids by Larry Clark (which had recently premiered in Mexico City and caused a lot of controversy for the way it portrayed a group of young people from New York who met in a park to hang out, have sex and do drugs), go on a Sunday to the Chopo market in the Buenavista neighborhood (a space for alternative and underground culture in Mexico City, where people of different ages and styles meet to buy or exchange clothes, books and records of rock, punk and other genres). It was not about doing an interview, but about observing, applying the senses, contemplating, as Ignatius of Loyola invites us in the Spiritual Exercises: “see, hear, look and consider, reflect on oneself” .
After this immersion in music, film, literature, and these cultural spaces, in the first sessions of his course, Luis masterfully developed the phenomenon of postmodernism. And, following the Uruguayan theologian Juan Luis Segundo, SJ, in his book El hombre de hoy ante Jesús de Nazaret (The Man of Today Before Jesus of Nazareth), he made us reflect on anthropological faith and the importance of belief. In 2016, when I asked Luis to write the prologue or introduction to my book on superheroes, Believing in/of Superheroes: A Faithful Look at Marvel Movies, he wrote generously and subtly:
This is a book designed especially for teenagers, about superheroes and about faith. [...] The author's proposal includes three fundamental questions that every young person carries inside, even if they don't always know how to express them: Who am I? What do I believe gives meaning to my life? What is my mission in life? Three fundamental questions that every teenager asks themselves, in one way or another, with these words or others, whether they say it or not. [...] This path is the path of their faith: of what they believe and what gives meaning and value to their existence. And perhaps this path will lead them better to encounter the God of Jesus Christ, who loves us, welcomes us, and wants the best for each of us, and to believe in him more deeply .
I also thanked him for personally telling me that the first chapter of my book, "Faith, Identity, and Mission," "is a very good synthesis of Fundamental Theology." What an honor! Luis was a great human being, a theologian, a writer, a teacher, and a life teacher, who has left us an important legacy that we must know how to utilize to continue practicing theology in dialogue with today's culture. We also remember Luis fondly as a cinephile, film critic, and master in discovering images of the Spirit (with a capital S) in cinema.
In many magazines, such as Xipe totek, his analyses and readings have remained, moving us, humanizing us, and helping us to believe in the God of Jesus Christ with greater depth and commitment. For example, in issue 22 of Xipe totek we find an article that Luis titled “Glimpses in a Tape of Dreams,” in which he confesses something of his passion for cinema: “At fifteen I was already madly in love with cinema, and what else could I do! The story had begun long before, when at five or six years old my parents took me to a movie theater in San Diego, California, to see Bambi, and I loved those tender and fantastic images.” 3
I once heard Luis say that “going to the movies, watching a film, is like entering a confessional, starting a conversation with someone who wants to tell us a story.” The director opens his eyes to share with you, through moving images, what he believes, dreams, feels, and hopes. And this, for us as viewers, moves us, makes us think, and summons us as human beings.
Luis, in the aforementioned article, confesses to us, he confides in us his film history: “I spent my adolescence watching melodramas—in reality and on screen—and perhaps I learned something different from my peers, perhaps the desire to make life’s stage a little more human was planted in me . ” 4In issue 68 of Xipe totek, in the article “My film history of borders,” Luis continues to share his relationship with cinema, borders, and dialogue with culture:
I was born in Tijuana, Mexico, on the busiest border in the world. Crossing borders has been a part of my life since birth, when it was common to have a permit to cross the border, and little was said about undocumented immigrants. That's how I grew up, between two worlds, which later began to become many worlds, thanks to cinema. I learned to confront and delve deeper into life not with the texts of a fallen neo-scholastic philosophy but with Bergman, De Sica, Fellini, Visconti..., with Godard in Breathless (A bout de soufflé), Buñuel in Les Forgotten and Nazarin, René Clement in Gervaise, Jean Renoir in La Grande Illusion, Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard, and with Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (Room at the Top)... They were with me throughout my training, until the mid-seventies when other new filmmakers began to appear. Cinema did not cease to accompany me during my first 25 years as a Jesuit priest in insertion, rural and suburban pastoral care, grassroots communities, liberation theology, teaching and training, fundamental theology, changes and crises with GC 32,6 the doctorate in Catalonia, the beginning and growth of the First Stage in Guadalajara. [...] With film, I continue to strive to make this world a more humane, more dignified, and more just home for everyone.7
For Luis, cinema is a way of telling stories, and he knew how to intertwine these stories with his own life, with theology, and with his pastoral work. In his classes, lectures, publications, and Spiritual Exercises, he referred to films, and in this way, he helped us delve deeper into reality, to discover God "in cinema as in life," and to assume a social commitment. After the Center for Theological Reflection (CRT) published his doctoral thesis, Luis wrote several books on cinema, theology, and spirituality. I really liked "Images of the Spirit in Cinema," which is a key source in my workshops on "Cinema and Spirituality" and when I coordinate film forums. I'll share only the first paragraph of the chapter titled "Spirituality in Film": Through film, we come into contact with human stories reflected on the screen, and in and through them, with the "spirit" of men and women: that which guides them, animates them, gives meaning to their lives, makes them suffer and struggle, move forward and achieve their hopes, live and die. If anything moves us as film viewers, it is precisely being in such vivid contact with the spirit of human beings, and becoming part of it.
In this book and others such as Life on the Screen: From Cinema to the Digital Society and Led by the Gaze: Encounters with the Spirit of Film, as well as in many film reviews that have gone down in history in the magazines Xipe totek and Christus, we can enjoy, identify with, and celebrate that spirit that cinema gives us and that Luis was able to discover in a surprising and very human way.
In light of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, Luis proposed some methods for watching films and extracting benefits from them for our lives. These have to do with contemplation, repetition, and the application of the senses. With all this, Luis invited us to "use our imagination and images to go from the visible to the invisible, from what appears to the deepest, to what the Spirit wishes to leave us as an action of the Spirit. To open the doors of the senses to discover the Image of God in the images, the Spirit in the spirits." I continue to use these methods extensively in my film forums and have them as appendices in two of my books on cinema and spirituality. Luis died on May 1, 2025, at Easter.
A few days earlier, on April 29, Pedro Reyes, SJ, and Paloma Robles interviewed him on Ve y diles, the podcast from Christus magazine, to recommend some films related to the resurrection. From that fine selection, I remember the Japanese-German film Perfect Days, by Wim Wenders, which tells the story of Hirayama, a man who works in Tokyo as a public restroom cleaner and finds beauty, meaning, and fulfillment in his daily work and experience. Luis considered this film “one of the most beautiful and perfect of recent times.” On the day of the interview, he invited us to reflect: “There are people who inspire us... by how they live their day, how they wake up, how they encounter other people... With what spirit do we want to live?”
Those of us who were Luis's friends, missionary companions, students, or heard him at a conference, saw him celebrate and preach at Mass, or went to the movies with him, can say that he was one of those people who inspires and helps us live a more human, fuller, more perfect life... as Jesus has invited us and continues to invite us today: "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full."
Documentary sources
Jerusalem Bible, Desclée de Brouwer, Bilbao, 2019
.García Orso, Luis, “My Cinephile History of Borders” in Xipe totek, iteso, Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, vol. xvii, No. 68, pp. 377–382.
_______ “Glimpses in a Ribbon of Dreams” in Xipe totek, iteso, Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, vol. vi, no. 22, June 1997, pp. 129–134.
_______ Led by the Gaze: Encounters with the Spirit of Film, Buena Prensa, Mexico, 2020.13. Jn 10, 10.
.** He holds a degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences from ITESO. He is the parish vicar at the Sacred Heart Parish in Chihuahua, and a member of Signis (World Catholic Communication Association). checoguz@hotmail.com
2. Sergio Manuel Guzmán García, Believing in/of Superheroes: A Faithful Look at Marvel Movies, Buena Prensa, Mexico, 2016, p. 5. 3. Luis García Orso, “Glimpses in a Dream Tape” in Xipe totek, iteso, Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, vol. vi, no. 22, June 1997, pp. 129–134, p. 130. 4. Ibid., p. 131
4. Ibid., p. 131.
5. Luis García Orso, “My Cinephile History of Borders” in Xipe totek, iteso, Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, vol. xvii, no. 68, pp. 377–382, p. 377. 6. The initials “CG” refer to the “General Congregation.” 7. Ibid., p. 379
7. Ibid., p. 379.
8. Luis García Orso, Images of the Spirit in Film, Buena Prensa, Mexico City, 2000. 9. Ibid., p. 9. 10. Luis García Orso, Life on the Screen. From Cinema to the Digital Society, Buena Prensa, Mexico City, 2016. 11. Luis García Orso, Led by the Gaze: Encounters with the Spirit of Films, Buena Prensa, Mexico City, 2020. 12. Luis García Orso, Images of the Spirit in Film, p. 25
8Luis García OrsO, sj:_______ Humanity in the Non-Human, Center for Theological Reflection, Mexico City, 1989._______ Images of the Spirit in Cinema, Buena Prensa, Mexico City, 2000._______ Life on the Screen. From Cinema to the Digital Society, Buena Prensa, Mexico City, 2016.Guzmán García, Sergio Manuel, Believing in/of Superheroes: A Faithful Look at Marvel Movies, Buena Prensa, Mexico City, 2016.
Original source: https://revistas.iteso.mx/index.php/XT/article/view/303/265