MovieChat Forums > Inherit the Wind (1960) Discussion > 'The Atheist who believes in God': nuan...

'The Atheist who believes in God': nuanced character twist or cop out?

posted 12 years ago by gambitvoleur
16 replies | jump to latest

At the end of the film Hornbeck says Drummond is an "Atheist who believes in God" after Drummond mentioned that Brady looked for god "to high up and too far away." I have two questions about this.

1) is it true?

Does Drummond really maintain a tightly concieled, personal belief in god, or is Hornbeck just finding a snide way of saying that Drummond is sentimental and still cares about the Bible emotionally, in contrast to Hornbeck's own cynical distain? Drummond never technically confirms the truth of the comment, but his silence seems to be an omission.

2) If it is true, in your opinion does this enhance or detract from the character?

Does being some kind of closeted believer who knows he can't mesh his belief with objective reality make Drummond an ever more complex individual, torn between worlds, or is it simply a cop out because Hollywood wouldn't dare make its audience admire a character who remained an Atheist through-and-through? I myself am genuinely conflicted, although I lean towards the latter. Partly because I've seen that pattern before: there are many films and/or plays of the mid 20th century that can only depict gay characters in states of immense self-loathing.

But I'm interested in you people! Come ye internet folk! Unleash the dogs of...uh...reasonable conversation...please.

[–] TheGutterMonkey 8 years ago

What I always took from the film was that Drummond was (almost certainly, in my opinion) an agnostic just like the real-life man who he was based on. When he's speaking of god at the end of the film I feel like he was just doing so in a poetic sense and in reverence to a man who he disagreed with, but who he still respected. He didn't think it was right to mock or ridicule people for what they believed and he respected peoples right to believe it (unlike Gene Kelly's character who had no respect for those he disagreed with). His goals were never to try and preach to people to believe his way, but rather to find a common ground where both could meet and get along; this is what I felt the meaning was behind his placement of the Bible on top of Darwin's On the Origin of Species — it was meant to show that both men of science and men of god could share the world together, regardless of their differing beliefs.

Incidentally, I think this is similar to how the film Contact handled the clash between the religious and non-religious, and how while we both may have different opinions there are still commonalities between us and how we feel passion, hope, awe, and wonder, just in our own different ways. Unsurprisingly, some also complain about the end of that film because they feel the protagonists sudden "faith" in the aliens (she believed she met them even though she couldn't prove it; i.e., there was a parallel to the faith in god) was a cop out to her atheistic nature.

S.C.W.
www.TheGutterMonkey.com

[–] TheArgentinian (7074) 2 years ago

Cop-out. Mind you, the Hays code was still in place.