The Old Testament is full of strange and brutal stories, but they rarely appear within the closed community of Christian filmmaking. For every First Reformed there are a dozen sanctimonious God’s Not Dead sequels and spinoffs, so maybe it takes an outsider to create an awe-inspiring work of art based on the foundational text of Western civilization. Without the obligation to preach, it’s possible to approach the Bible as a set of fantastical stories to adapt.
