(REVIEW) While evangelicals are often said not to care about racism, quite a few movies made for that audience over the years have dealt with the topic. Films such as “The Second Chance,” “The Grace Card,” “Woodlawn,” “Cabrini,” “Between Borders,” and “Bonhoeffer” never made as big a splash as others in the genre, but they never seemed to offend anyone.
“Sarah’s Oil” is in that tradition — a decent faith-based historical drama that deals explicitly with race, but one that may become a rarer occurrence in the coming years.
The film follows the true story of Sarah Rector (Naya Desir-Johnson), an African American girl born in Oklahoma Indian Territory in the early 1900s, who believes there is oil beneath the barren land she’s been allotted — and whose faith proves right. As greedy oil sharks close in, Sarah turns to her family, friends, and some Texas wildcatters — including Bert Smith (Zachary Levi) — to maintain control of her oil-rich land, eventually becoming one of the nation’s first female African American millionaires — at just 11 years old.
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“Sarah’s Oil” mostly does its job as a faith-based historical inspirational drama. Sarah and Bert are likable and easy to root for, and their chemistry carries the film. The dialogue moves quickly and doesn’t drag. The stakes feel real, and the historical reality of the story — and of the racism of the time period — adds weight to both the hardships and triumphs the characters experience. Levi’s character, Bert, has the strongest arc, going from a self-centered con artist to a good man whose heart is changed by Sarah — and Levi plays all sides of him to solid effect. (Although his best performance of the year remains “The Unbreakable Boy,” in my view.)
The film’s flaws are relatively minor but add up. Despite her name being in the title, Sarah is a largely one-dimensional character whose role is primarily to inspire other people — particularly the white man, Bert — to be better. She has no character arc herself but goes back and forth between self-confidence and self-doubt as the plot — and other people’s arcs — demand. Each setback that Sarah and Bert face in getting the oil is resolved relatively quickly, meaning the story must stack one obstacle after another to fill the runtime. Sarah’s ever-present voice-over tells us exactly what to think or feel in each scene, rather than letting the scene speak for itself — or, if voice-over must be used, drawing us deeper into the story.
Ultimately, how much you enjoy the film will depend on how much you enjoy inspirational faith-based dramas. If they’re your jam, this will definitely satisfy. If you’re indifferent or uninterested, it likely won’t convert you.
But it’s interesting to consider where “Sarah’s Oil” fits in the cultural moment. Evangelicals have always been the largest audience for faith-based films and remain so even as the genre goes mainstream. But “Sarah’s Oil” represents more of the mainline and Black Protestant side of the American Christian tradition than the evangelical one.
Religion sociologist and Religion Unplugged contributor Ryan Burge explains in his book “The American Religious Landscape” that American Christianity is typically divided by sociologists into “mainline,” “Catholic,” “evangelical,” and “Black Protestant” traditions. The evangelical tradition is associated with the American religious right. Mainline churches were a huge part of 20th-century social justice movements like women’s rights, workers’ rights, animal rights, and minority rights. And Black Protestant churches were — obviously — huge drivers of the Black civil rights movement.
“Sarah’s Oil” ticks nearly every mainline/Black Protestant box there is. The villains of the story are greedy businessmen and racists. The heroes are not only a God-fearing Black family, but also their allies: Indigenous people on a nearby reservation, a suffragist lawyer, and a Black journalist. Their primary white ally, Bert, is a morally compromised individual who must find redemption through his relationship with these figures. But because the arc is Bert’s, the story ends up being told more from a mainline gaze than a Black Protestant one.
One might think that this kind of film could be risky to pitch to faith-based audiences, since those tend to be primarily evangelical. But as noted above, quite a few faith-based films over the years have tackled social justice or racial issues. They never garnered the same enthusiasm as films that hit on more conservative-coded values such as “War Room” (family), “I Can Only Imagine” (forgiveness), “God’s Not Dead” (Christians fighting secularism), “Jesus Revolution” (revival), “The Passion of the Christ” (Jesus’ death), or “Sound of Freedom” (fighting sex trafficking). But they were never terribly controversial either, making them attractive to filmmakers who wanted to appeal to both evangelical and mainstream audiences. Levi is a good representative of this balance: someone who stars in a progressive movie but openly voted for Donald Trump in the last election.
That dynamic, however, may be changing. Mainline and Black Protestant Christian denominations have been rapidly losing members since the 1970s, while evangelicals have largely held steady. Even liberal churches seem to have the effect of making their members more conservative. Because of this, Christianity is becoming increasingly “conservative-coded,” rejecting anything that smells of “woke” or “progressive” ideology.
It seems only a matter of time before faith-based films lose their aura of protection and come under the same fire as secular movies — particularly as more explicitly right-leaning faith-based projects emerge, such as “The Pendragon Cycle” and “Young Washington.” Even if there is no overt backlash, financial incentives may cause mainline-leaning films to disappear along with the churches they represent.
“Sarah’s Oil” is a largely unobjectionable faith-based drama that hits most of the right notes for fans of the genre. It remains to be seen whether this kind of film will stay standard or be remembered as a product of a bygone era.
“Sarah’s Oil” opens in theaters nationwide starting Friday.