While “The Forge” deserves credit for wanting to address the real problems of struggling men and boys, it fails to speak to the very people it says it wants to help. Christian parents of such boys would be better off passing on this movie and following other sources for their boys, and following the example of the movie’s Cynthia by praying for them instead.
(REVIEW) The focus of “The Forge” on the modern plight of young men in society is laudable. But the film’s inability to empathize with these men, or offer a compelling vision for their lives, will turn them away from Christianity more than draw them to it.
Before we had the Erwin Brothers (“I Can Only Imagine”) or Dallas Jenkins (“The Chosen”), the undisputed kings of the faith-based film industry were the Kendrick Brothers. With films like “Facing the Giants” and “Fireproof,” Alex and Stephen Kendrick were Christian household names throughout the 2010s. At their height, The Kendricks’ movie “War Room” was No. 1 at the American box office.
The Kendrick Brothers films pioneered the “faith-based inspirational drama” that still defines the Christian film industry to this day. Their films would typically center on a social issue, whether it was marriage (“Fireproof” and “War Room”), fatherhood (“Courageous”) or abortion (“Lifemark”).
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They would then have a character preach the gospel to the protagonist dealing with that problem and show them that the answer was to repent and make Jesus Christ their lord and savior. The Kendrick films were often accused — I think rightly — of being more sermons than movies. But there was no denying their popularity within Christian circles. Even now, with them being eclipsed by more popular Christian filmmakers, they still have a loyal audience.
Now, with their latest film, “The Forge,” the Kendrick brothers turn their attention to a social issue that has dominated social media in recent years: The boy crisis.
“The Forge” follows Isaiah, a high school graduate living at home with his mom, Cynthia (Priscilla C. Shirer, playing the sister of her character from “War Room”), with no plans for the future. After his mom threatens to start charging him rent to live there, Isaiah is taken under the wing by a man who promises to help him become the man God is calling him to be.
The film deserves credit for tackling the problems of wayward young men. Men in our society are falling behind in school, dropping out of the workforce, abandoning marriage and parenthood and increasingly ending their lives. So it’s great to see faith-based industry films trying to address helping men achieve their potential. Furthermore, the empathy shown to moms of such sons is vivid, with Cynthia struggling with wanting the best for her son but being unable to draw it out of him because she’s not a man and “it’s hard for a woman to call out the man in her son.”
The scenes where she responds by seeking support from her friends and praying to God about it together are honest and heartfelt. And when her son does turn around, her shock and gratitude for how God has turned things around is genuinely moving. Once again, the faith-based film industry does a great job of giving a far-too-rare voice to the experiences of Christian moms.
But therein lies the problem. This is clearly not a movie for the men who are lost; this is a movie for their moms. Worse, it’s a movie that will probably not inspire lost men to turn around, but rather push them further away.
The film largely ignores putting us in Isaiah’s point of view or understanding his perspective. The movie starts out with a parade of scenes where Isaiah is a stereotypically frustrating young man. He plays video games instead of doing his chores or looking for a job. He rolls his eyes at his mom when she confronts him and whines when she threatens to charge him rent. He obnoxiously tries to hit on a girl at a coffee shop and is disrespectful to her dad. Each of these scenes ends with an eye roll or a lecture from the adults in the room, whether that’s his mom, the coffee girl’s father or an office receptionist.
Why does Isaiah play so many video games? Why does he have so little ambition? Why doesn’t he listen to his mom? The film either ignores those questions or reduces them to “because his dad left” without digging much deeper.
The thing is, we have pretty good information on why men today are struggling. Dr. Jonathan Haidt points out in “The Anxious Generation ” that overprotectiveness of children has undercuts boys’ confidence growing up by keeping them from going on adventures without supervision — which they can’t gain confidence without having.
Schools reward girls’ natural sit-still-and-listen style of learning while punishing boys’ active, hands-on learning style, as The American Psychological Association points out. Add that to men feeling stigmatized for their masculinity, as Dr. Richard Reeves’s book “Of Boys and Men” unpacks, and many men don’t see the point of trying to succeed.