It’s not often that you get a prayer in a big-budget Hollywood movie—and The Lord’s Prayer at that.
So I was a little surprised when I saw Snow White and the Huntsman over the weekend and all of a sudden, imprisoned in her dark tower, the captured princess Snow White (the luminescent Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame) kneels and prays the familiar words, “Our Father, who art in heaven …”
She goes through the entire prayer, at least the longer version that’s in the Bible in Matthew 6:9-14 (a shorter version can be found in Luke ll:2-4). Forced to choose between asking God’s forgiveness for our “debts” or “trespasses” or “sins,” the screenwriters opted to choose the latter. I don’t remember if she said “Amen” or not, but she left off the “power and the kingdom and the glory” part.
Make no mistake. The movie isn’t heartwarming inspirational fare. I found it scary and violent, but then I’m a wimp when it comes to violence in movies, sinking down in my seat and covering my eyes.
Looking at the kids in the audience, I wanted to ask their parents, “Won’t they have nightmares after seeing this?” Just watching the wicked queen stab her husband or pierce hearts with her false fingernails or literally dissolve into a flock of dark ravens was enough to give me the creeps.
And yet the presence of that prayer made me see the Christian imagery that lurks in this old tale. That evil can only be crushed when good people give up their selfish ways, that innocence and purity have power only when they assert themselves, and that Snow White herself is Christlike. She dies when she eats the poisonous apple only to be resurrected by the greater power of love. (I won’t give away who does the kissing here.)
I wanted to thank the filmmakers for inserting that prayer because it did for me what praying the Lord’s Prayer does in everyday life: It opened my heart and mind to the presence of God where I’d forgotten he might be. Lord, you’re right here next to my texting neighbor, the sticky floor and the smell of popcorn. God’s story is too big to be contained by just the Bible.
Still, why eight dwarves instead of seven? And couldn’t just one of them have a familiar name?
