Job Movie Project, Day One

We had some good candidates for the next great Job movie present this Thursday, and although I’m waiting to post too many details, here are the basic upshots of the first four:

• Joanna: Think Job, but as a chick flick. The setbacks are heartbreaking, the Eliphaz/Bildad/Zophar figures are not hochma-accusers but supportive girlfriends, and Joanna at the end gets not her cheating ex-husband but a better, cuter husband.
• The Inveterate Foe: Exploring what it might mean to hit bottom in the modern world, This movie follows Jacob (the Job figure), who loses everything and ends up wandering homeless, encouraged by the child-savant Elihu (whom this group rehabilitated after I trashed the biblical Elihu in class) until his fortunes are restored.
• The Hand that Feeds: The Job figure in this one is a lawyer who, through the scheming of his wife and Duval (his wife’s ex-husband), the Satan-figure who is a scheming IRS agent, ends up unjustly imprisoned. The God-figure, who has not caused his suffering but has been absent due to a drug addiction, recovers and makes his own plans to trap Duval and restore the righteous Jonathan O. Boyer to the life he deserves.
• The Given and Taken Oz: In this double-appropriation, J.D., a midwestern farmer, loses everything he has in a tornado and finds himself in a strange land beholding a yellow road stretching out to the horizon. (See the doubling?) In a departure from both stories, J.D., with the help of three comforters who also happen to be a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion, must choose between the yellow brick road and the golden road to find his way back to a good life.

The remaining five groups present on Tuesday, and voting will remain open until April 21. Only the class members’ votes matter, but if you, O readers, have any thoughts about any of these, by all means weigh in.  This is the third year we’ve done this project but the first that I’ve made it a formal, graded assignment, and I think that the extra heat has already forged some really good ideas.  Hollywood, you should be watching this.