Various factors played a part in their commercial viability, to be sure. All earned enthusiastic reviews from critics, and sparked lively discussions among moviegoers. They are exceptions to the rule, however. Smaller companies do make specifically religious films, aimed primarily at evangelical Christian or Morman audiences. But these get most of their exposure outside large cities, and their theatrical runs serve largely as promotional tools for future release on video.
Some observers feel cinema is less than ideal for exploring religious or spiritual subjects.
Another argument holds that movies are materialistic by their very nature, which makes them unsuitable for exploring spiritual themes. Truffaut's colleague Jean-Luc Godard believes precisely the opposite, however, stating that a combination of different shots can evoke ideas and intuitions not present in the shots themselves. Godard's ideas played a major part in a recent gathering of critics and scholars at Princeton University, devoted to the possibilities of religion and film. Although the participants had varied perspectives, there was a shared conviction that freethinking filmmakers have opened up many avenues for spiritual cinema that have yet to be recognized as widely as they deserve. The intersection of film and religion was celebrated in a keynote talk by San Francisco filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky, who makes pictures that don't tell stories or contain conventional characters and dialogue.