It is now time to delve into a relatively obscure film from the 1980s that provides one of the finest discussions of theology in all of cinema history. I am referring, of course, to 1988's After School, directed by William Olsen, maker of philosophical classics like Getting It On (1983) and Rockin' Road Trip (1986).
Some of your universe's film critics are not intellectually or emotionally prepared for the theological depth of After School. For example, reviewer denisef5000 dismisses the film as "Just a dud overall." Reviewer mark.waltz writes, "I'd refer to it as the biggest disaster of 1988, but that's far too much of a compliment." And reviewer Groverdox writes (boldly ending their sentence with a preposition), "This is one of the most perplexing filmmaking decisions I have ever witnessed the result of."
Read on for an appreciation of the monumental depth of William Olsen's After School...
The film begins at the dawn of the human species, with a group of topless primitive men and women cavorting in a stream. They appear to find splashing each other hilarious, as indicated by a young man laughing uproariously.
The primitive creature’s laugh becomes (in Kubrickian fashion) the roar of a motorcycle, as there is a hard cut to a modern young man riding such a vehicle through suburban streets, then colliding with a Volkswagen bug driven by a young woman named September. There are no hard feelings, despite the damage caused to both the orange bug and the motorcycle. “It was nice running into you,” the young woman says as she drives off.
“Let’s do it again sometime,” the biker says, picking up his motorcycle.
The film cuts to a swimming pool. September dives in from the high dive, earning applause from the onlookers. After diving once and receiving feedback from her diving coach, she goes to the women’s locker room to change, avoiding the advances of an irritating young man named Jay by telling her she needs to stay home tonight to finish the book. (The book, which she reads while sitting on her bed, appears to be a picture book with approximately 20 pages.)
The next day, September rushes to class, where the teacher introduces himself as Father Michael McCarren, writing his name on the chalkboard even though his introduction implies he has been teaching this class for at least half a semester. The priest (played by Sam Bottoms) asks the class three questions. “Who believes in Biblical creation?” Several hands go up. “Who believes that God created man through evolution?” Again, several hands go up. Then he asks with closed eyes, “Who believes that man just evolved and created God in his own mind?” Only September’s hand goes up.
(The film does not tell us whether September’s school is a public school or a Catholic school, but context clues, such as the fact that the class is being taught by a priest, give us a tiny bit of information.)
“Why would anyone create such a complex concept?” Father McCarren asks.
September answers, “To answer the unanswerable.” She adds, “Primitive man needed to find answers to all his questions, so he created a god in his own imagination.”
“That would take a lot of imagination,” says Father McCarren.
Meanwhile, at one of the Catholic Church’s many suburban mansions, a group of priests discuss the famous talk show host Dick Cavett, who is inviting the very controversial author of a very controversial novel called “Before God.”
The novel, which appears to purport that people lived a long time ago, is so controversial that the priests must choose one of their own to debate the novel’s author, an ex-priest. “We have been instructed, by the Vatican, to supply the Church’s representative,” says a bald priest worriedly.
The third person they discuss is in fact Father McCarren, who is teaching high school in Florida. “Didn’t we offer him a position here? And he turned us down?”
“He turned us down because he felt that his calling was to teach.”
The bald priest laughs. “His calling? This younger generation.” The bald priest assigns his colleague, Monsignor Barrett, to go to Florida to vet Father McCarren for the important job of going on The Dick Cavett Show.
Back in the primeval past, the primitive people continue to frolic in the water. One man eats some berries and shares them with the others. He then kills a boar, which the tribe cooks and eats.
Meanwhile, millions of years later, Monsignor Barrett takes a cab to the school where Father McCarren teachers. The priest is so hot in the Florida heat he wipes his face with a cloth. (Also, perhaps showing poor judgment, the priest has taken a taxi from the Yellow Cab company that is in fact bright orange. This twist is never, unfortunately, explored.)
In class, Father McCarren and September debate the finer, more sophisticated points of the theory of natural selection. “What environmental stimuli convinced the reptile he should learn to fly? What gave him the idea to fly because there were no birds around for him to copy?”
“Maybe,” September theorizes, “he was a bold and adventurous lizard who wasn’t afraid to try something different.”
Father McCarren meets with Monsignor Barrett at a motorcycle repair shop. The elder priest tries to convince the teacher to go on TV to debate the ex-priest who for some reason believes man created God in his imagination. However, Father McCarren believes the author doesn’t deny the existence of God, just some particulars of the church’s interpretation.
In the primeval past, a topless woman eats berries, getting some of the juice on her breasts. (This is, of course, an entire scene.)
Millions of years later, September helps Father McCarren prepare for his TV debate. After some back and forth about Thomas Aquinas and God’s will, September asks if one of the church’s valuable traditions includes celibacy for priests.
Back in the past, one of the tribe’s women (all of whom are 25 years old) is killed by a leopard. The leader (the one who discovered berries are edible) carries her body to a tree with some very suggestive openings, a tree which the tribe is beginning to worship.
Perhaps predictably, the film cuts from the primitive tree god to a hot dog stand. September and Father McCarren are at the zoo, taking a break from their religious debate preparation to look at monkeys. Father McCarren, showing the same key understanding of science he displayed earlier, asks, “What do you suppose that monkey would wake up one morning and device ‘today I think I’ll evolve into a man’?”
“I don’t know,” September replies. “What would make a man wake up one morning and decide he wants to become a priest?”
“That’s a completely different question.”
“And infinitely more interesting,” September says.
After their date to the zoo, a nude September takes a bubble bath and calls Father McCarren on the telephone. He tells her good news: The Dick Cavett Show will be filmed in Florida, so September can attend as an audience member.
Later, September goes to Father McCarren’s house and they share a pizza. She falls asleep on his couch; instead of getting a blanket to cover her up, he tosses her sweater onto her. Surprisingly, the filmmakers cut to outside the house, where someone in a car is taking photos of the rendezvous.
The next day, in a clever sequence, the filmmakers intercut September’s aerobics class with Father McCarren’s half-court basketball game. Both sweaty, they meet after their physical activities. The priest tells September they need to be careful because people might misinterpret their relationship (he has been shown the photos from the previous night). The filmmakers cut to primeval times, when men and women are apparently discovering sex (thought not explicitly, as the discovery consists mainly of furtive glances).
Millions of years later, September commiserates with her roommate about her breakup with Jay and her pursuit of her teacher who is also a priest. She meets him at night in front of the library and she tries to kiss him, but he rejects her. “You do like me, don’t you?” she asks.
“September, I like you very much, but…”
“But what?”
“I made my vows.”
“Your vows? Words you mumble when you were too young to understand what they meant.”
They order ice cream at an ice cream stand, where they are observed by a startlingly large group of mimes. At the same mimes-infested part of the park, Jay confronts September, she slaps him, and then Father McCarren comforts her by hugging and kissing her. He is not ready, however, to have sex with her.
Millions of years earlier, the tribal leader runs across a savannah and then throws his spear in the air. Seconds later, it is raining, and he falls out of a tree. The film dissolves to his unconscious body, now lying in the sand, as a woman treats his wound from falling out of the tree (I believe). Also, there is a snake. And the woman is completely nude, not even wearing the makeshift thong the other women in the tribe wear.
Millions of years later, September barges into Father McCarren’s house and confronts him, telling him he is arrogant. “You wanted me to fall in love with you,” she says. “And when I did, you hit me with God to avoid me.”
Of course, the only way he can respond to this is to miss her on the mouth and watch her strip off her clothes. At the last minute, he runs out of his house to the church, where organ music plays in the middle of the night (though the organ is visible and nobody is playing it). September follows him but leaves him alone. He spends the night in the church.
There follows a spectacular montage accompanied by a spectacular 80s pop song, only a few of whose lyrics I will transcribe here:
“You know that I understand
The words you’re searching for
Hoping the future brings
The answers to your dreams.
I know you’re feeling scared
And wondering what to do
But if fate has its way
I will be with you.
Somewhere in your heart
You know what path to take.
Somewhere in your heart
Love will show the way.
Somewhere in your heart
You’ll find it’s love you can’t hide
And soon you’ll realize
Love will be your guide.”
The film then continues its regular pattern of showing conversations between September and Father McCarren. She apologizes for undressing in front of him. The conversation turns to the TV debate. Then September leaves, after which Father McCarren says out loud, out of earshot, “September, I love you.”
Millions of years earlier, the tribal leader (wearing a loincloth) and his favorite woman (wearing absolutely nothing) embrace each other while a snake hangs from a tree branch.
The film finally reaches its climax at the TV studio, where the real Dick Cavett hosts an interview with C. A. Thomas (played, somewhat shockingly, by the great Robert Lansing) and Father McCarren. Mr. Cavett introduces the author: “Lately you’ve been called a lot of things, you’ve been attacked by your critics as a heretic, as an atheist, as a man who has staged a one-man attack, an assault on the church.”
The author explains that he left the church but not God because the church was more involved in the church than in God. Father McCarren defines God as the creative force. Mr. Lansing says, essentially, that he agrees with Father McCarren on everything. “Whether God exists or is a creation of man isn’t important. We need Him. We use Him the same either way. What’s important is what we do this day. This day, and tomorrow, and the next.” The debate becomes one about the Catholic Church’s dogma and rituals (of course, in your universe there is no church other than the Catholic one). “Father McCarren,” Mr. Lansing says, “God will allow you to go your path alone. When you feel you know your own way.”
Suddenly, Father McCarren stands up, pulling off his mike.
“I seem to have lost my priest,” Dick Cavett quips.
“Yes, sir, I think you have,” Father McCarren replies, leaving the stage.
Meanwhile, September abandons her college diving meet to drive to the studio to support Father McCarren. Shockingly, she pulls into a handicap parking spot and parks (on which nobody comments). She gets out of her car and meets Father McCarren, and they walk into a Florida jungle — perhaps the same jungle the primitive tribespeople inhabited millions of years ago (which raises the question, not addressed in the film: Did man create Florida in his mind, or did Florida exist all along?).
The film dissolves to the primitive jungle and the man and woman circle each other lovingly. The man raises his hand toward the sky — the film implies that this is the very moment, just before a sexual encounter, presumably, that man created God.
As do many of cinema's greatest classics, After School raises dozens of questions for audiences to ponder as they leave the theater or turn off the television. I can list only a few of these questions for your edification. Perhaps foremost, does September get a ticket for parking in a handicap spot and walking off with her priest/teacher into the jungle to have sex? Is the story of the primitive tribe in the jungle also the story of the novel Before God? (The two timelines never connect, so this will be a mystery for the ages.) Are there, or will there ever be, churches other than the Catholic Church? (Robert Lansing argues that the rituals and dogma of the Catholic Church are less than helpful; I wonder if anybody has ever made that argument in the past.) Why does a film that considers theological arguments for God's existence so interested in nude cavewomen? These are but a few of the questions the film raises.
We must also discuss the meaning of the film itself, which raises more questions. Narratively, the film appears to be following September's arc as she moves from her skepticism about Biblical creation to helping her teacher prepare for his TV debate by memorizing arguments in favor of God's existence. She abandons a swim meet to go to the TV studio to support him, providing evidence that she has changed and now believes in God. But in a surprise twist Father McCarren decides in the middle of his TV debate that something (presumably love and sex with September) is a path more important than his vows to the Church. Both September and Father McCarren abandon their faiths to be together. Clearly, the film's message is that love conquers all, and that religious faith is unimportant. Then, in the final twist, the film flashes back to primeval times and shows that, in fact, God was invented because primitive man wanted love and sex. It is hard to imagine a more coherent theological argument for humanism. This is what makes William Olsen's After School an edifying, educational film for the ages.
Now I need to explore Rockin' Road Trip (1986)...