“Powerful, Fascinating History”
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What You Need To Know:
A GREAT AWAKENING is full of jeopardy, dramatic conflict and engaging dialogue. The acting is excellent, which means the directing is very good. A GREAT AWAKENING has some elements that are not for little children, including Whitefield being bloodied, his scary eye, a bawdy scene with Franklin, etc. However, for older children and adults, A GREAT AWAKENING delivers a powerful insight into American history by showing that The Great Awakening created the United States of America.
Content:
Extremely Christian, historically accurate, moral, entertaining, patriotic presentation of the influence of The Great Awakening on the Constitutional Convention, driven by the friendly opposition of George Whitefield [“Wit-field”], a man of great faith, and Ben Franklin, a confirmed atheist with a surprising ending, and Whitefield prays that people don’t look at him but look at God, plus characters run profitable businesses;
No foul language;
A school master, parents and fellow students somewhat violently abuse Whitefield because he has one eye that has a film over it, prisoners are shown in horrible shackles, several scenes where people attack Whitefield with rocks and bottles and other things when he’s preaching, Franklin in one scene suggests that Whitefield grab the key from the wire to the kite and says he had his son do that and the lightning went into his hands;
Franklin as an ambassador to England and then France is watching a bawdy play mocking Whitefield with a strong sexual reference while a woman next to Franklin puts her hand on his thigh, and an English admiral asks Franklin what his wife thinks about his female dalliances;
Bawdy costumes highlighting female and male attributes, and prisoners in tattered clothes;
Franklin’s mother works at a bar which has a stage where people are constantly drinking;
No smoking or drugs; and,
People mock the Gospel, Franklin constantly challenges Whitefield’s faith, telling him God is unnecessary, Franklin points out that Whitefield’s orphanage in Georgia uses slaves but Whitefield says, “My character is flawed; so, look at Jesus, not me,” and other examples of human frailty.
More Detail:
The movie begins with the Constitutional Convention after the Articles of Confederation failed. The scene of the Constitutional Convention is full of representatives of different states arguing and refusing to be united. The elder stateman is Ben Franklin who is unusually silent. Ben returns to his grandson’s printshop in Ben’s home. Ben has funded his grandson’s print shop. He’s extremely discouraged about the wrangling between the states.
George Washington, the chairman of the Convention, visits amid a storm to ask Ben to please do something about it. George Wahington asks Ben, did we fight, especially at Valley Forge, only to have it all come to naught?
After George leaves, Ben has his grandson retrieve a box that contains the late, famous itinerant preacher, George Whitefield’s (pronounced “Wit-field”) journals. The movie flashes back to George Whitefield’s life as a little boy.
George is handicapped by a bad, smoky-looking eye. His father mocks him, throws his food on the ground, and tells him to clean it up.
Whitefield also helps his mother, who works as a waitress in a restaurant, saloon, where there’s a stage where an actor delivers some of Shakespeare’s soliloquys. The actor takes an interest in Whitefield and teaches him how to project from the diaphragm and gives him a letter so he can enter one of the colleges at Oxford.
Another flashback shows Franklin in his father’s candle shop, where his father tells him that Franklin is his tithe and that his father has dedicated Ben to serve the LORD. Franklin refuses and wants to be in the printing business writing newspapers and many other things. Later in the movie, Franklin complains that his father was a tough Puritan, although the movie doesn’t really show that.
Back to Whitefield at college. To pay his way, he’s serving tables and his fellow classmates start mocking him for his bad eye. Everyone comes and dumps their food on the ground for him to pick up, which is what happened to him when he was little. One of the classmates starts helping George, and to his surprise some students dressed in black come to help him and invite him to join “The Holy Club.” These students include John Wesley and his brother, Charles, who wrote many great hymns.
When Whitefield comes to the club meeting, they wash his feet. As part of their ministry, they go to the prison to hand out Bibles to the prisoners. Whitefield say why don’t we read the Bible to them in case they can’t read. Charles says it would take hours to read each one. However, Whitefield, using his powerful, stentorian voice, starts reading to all of them. In the middle of reading the Gospel of John, where Jesus says you must be born again by the Holy Spirit, Whitefield is overcome by the Holy Spirit. Immediately, one of the prisoners comes to Christ as Whitefield is washing the prisoner’s feet. Many more prisoners come to Jesus Christ.
Whitefield builds a portable pulpit, puts it on horse and goes off to Bristol to preach to the coal miners. Some of the tough coal miners throw rocks and bricks at him, but despite being bloodied and stunned, Whitefield continues to preach, and the coal miners and their children come to Christ. When he preaches in an Anglican Church, people come to Christ, and Whitefield condemns the clergy for being dead to Christ.
Rejected by the Anglican Church, Whitefield goes to America for the first time. Ben Franklin thinks he’s just another preacher, but everyone in his print ship wants to hear Whitefield. Ben believes nobody can preach to thousands of people, but Whitefield can, and Ben, being a man of science, measures the crowd’s size and is amazed as he walks further and further back. Ben asks to see Whitefield, and Whitefield visits Ben Franklin late at night after he’s finished preaching.
Franklin realizes that Whitefield can sell newspapers. He believes that either disaster or religion can do that. So, he makes a deal with Whitefield to report on his preaching tours of America, print his sermons and print his bulletins announcing when and where he’s going to speak. Whitefield covers thousands of miles on horseback, and Franklin is deeply impressed. Though every time he sees Whitefield, he rebukes Whitefield’s faith. However, Whitefield challenges Franklin, asking him questions like Who is behind all of creation.
So, when Whitefield dies in 1770 because of all the beatings and traveling, he did, Franklin is deeply moved.
Back at the Constitutional Convention, Franklin recalls his friendship with Whitefield and makes a motion, which goes down in history. The movie’s ending is surprising and powerful.
A GREAT AWAKENING is one of the best historical movies and most dramatic ever made. The acting, especially by John Paul Sneed and Jonathan Blair as Franklin and Whitefield, is excellent, which means the directing is very good. Although classic screenwriting rejects flashbacks, they do work in this movie. So, there’s an exception to every rule. Some great, well-written dialogue and lots of jeopardy and conflict help overcome that potential problem.
A GREAT AWAKENING has some elements that are not for little children, including Whitefield being bloodied, his scary eye, a bawdy scene with Franklin, etc. However, for older children and adults, A GREAT AWAKENING delivers a powerful insight into American history by showing that the Christian revival of The Great Awakening created the United States of America.
