by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
John Dickson, Ben Fielding, Chris Tomlin
Intro:
… has the right notes for an interesting look at a key point in the history of Christian worship music, but lacks the proper arrangement to make them resonate.
In 1918, in an ancient rubbish dump in a town 100 miles from Cairo, a lost papyrus text was discovered – a text containing what would later be confirmed as the oldest surviving Christian hymn. In 2024, after lengthy studio sessions, that hymn debuted to the public at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
The First Hymn does well in mapping out that journey, along with detailing the artistic and theological significance of that initial discovery. It can get a bit dry with its minutiae about Christianity at the time of the Roman Empire (and there’s a stray line about Constantine and the Council of Nicaea that’s eyebrow-raising), but it effectively gets across the passion of the speakers about this area of history. Even from the outside, the conviction comes through clearly.
However, this isn’t really about the text as it was discovered all those years ago, or written all those centuries ago. Even with the historical context on display, the emphasis is placed more on the modern reworking of it… which runs into issues. It’s difficult to get past the idea that this film is yet another ‘story behind the song’ Christian feature like I Can Only Imagine or I Still Believe. Except, this lacks the personal emotional connection that gave those films appeal outside of the expected audience.
Instead, this ends up feeling like seeing a piece of art once believed lost to the world finally make it back into the light… only to be gentrified to the point where it’s functionally no different than something made in the last week. After John Dickson remarks that “a good producer can hear what a song really wants to sound like, even better than the original composers”, it’s hard to make out the lyrics of the new CCM rendition over the discordant notes of hubris.
Beyond just being presumptuous, and making the film’s build to the final performance feel like waiting for the floor to drop out from under the audience, it makes the larger attempts at bridging Christian past and present hit odd notes, as if this whole exercise exists primarily to reinforce modern persecution complexes by harkening back to when they were factually-based.
This is only made worse by the presentation. From the ever-present Dickson narrating direct to camera, to the way his narration is edited over the footage, to his tone that comes across like a youth pastor trying way too hard to show Christianity as something ‘cool’ and ‘fresh’. Rather than anything cinematic, this feels like a schedule filler from the pre-Ancient Aliens days of the History Channel or a DVD collecting dust on the shelf of a church rec room. Because the film itself is tied closer to the modern reworking than to the original text, and its representation of the modern day looks cheap and sounds stock, its bigger statements about the resilient and unifying power of faith end up falling on deaf ears.
The First Hymn has the right notes for an interesting look at a key point in the history of Christian worship music, but lacks the proper arrangement to make them resonate. Despite its sentiments about music being able to bring people together, across demographics and even time periods, its incredibly in-crowd manner and underlying motives come across more off-putting than welcoming.
