Walker Percy Film: Journey from Medicine to Fiction, Agnosticism to Faith

My first introduction to the writings of Walker Percy was Love in the Ruins. I was instantly hooked, and moved on to devour The Second Coming and Lancelot. But I hit a wall when it came to perhaps his most famous novel, the National Book Award-winning, The Moviegoer.

For some reason – immaturity, perhaps – I just couldn’t get into the novel. I tried a couple of times, but I always ended up setting the book down, unread, and moving on to something else. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I picked up the book again, and it was like I had been hit by a bolt of lightning. I realized for the first time the brilliance of The Moviegoer.

I told that story a few years ago to New Orleans-based filmmaker Win Riley, who seemed nonplused by my lack of appreciation for The Moviegoer. A Percy devotee since his teens, Riley once said that he first read the novel when he was a teenager and that it hit him “like a depth charge.” Thus began a years-long fascination with Percy that culminated in Riley’s must-see biography, Walker Percy: A Documentary Film.

 

With Win Riley (left) during a screening of
Walker Percy: A Documentary Film

In a 2011 interview with Micah Mattrix, Riley explained his interest in Walker Percy: “I’ve been curious about Walker since, as a teenager, I first pulled The Moviegoer from my parents’ bookshelf…. Part of my curiosity came from the fact that Walker was steeped in the traditions and culture of the South, yet his interests led him to people like Camus and Sartre and Kierkegaard rather than someone like Faulkner. That was intriguing to me. And the story of moving from medicine to fiction, from agnosticism to faith, was very, very interesting.”

Three years in the making, Riley’s award-winning documentary tells Percy’s story with archival film, excerpts from his work, and interviews with family, friends and scholars.  

Here, Riley describes the film in his own words:

As a doctor turned writer and philosopher, Percy was concerned with the big issues: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" But he knew his audience was inured to a direct approach. Binx Bolling, in The Moviegoer, is almost allergic to such discussions-––“...if they spoke to me of God, I would jump into the bayou”––yet he is preoccupied with what he calls ‘the search.’ It is a preoccupation that haunts all of Percy’s work.  Part of what makes Percy’s characters like Binx, Will Barrett, and Thomas More so indelible is their wry humor despite being ‘Lost in the Cosmos.’ In Percy’s fifth novel, The Second Coming, the protagonist, Will Barrett, descends into a cave, determined to confront God. He is thwarted by a toothache. For Walker, “humor was an instrument of introspection,” writer Robert Coles says in the film. “That’s what he beautifully combined: that lighthearted sensibility merged with a grave, seriously introspective side. This takes a genius.”

 Walker Percy: A Documentary Film can be purchased or rented here. 

Winston “Win” Riley’s first film, Walter Anderson: Realizations of an Artist, won several film festival awards and was broadcast on PBS. The documentary is absolutely fascinating and I highly recommend it.

Here’s a description of the film from Riley’s website:

Walter Anderson: Realizations of an Artist explores Anderson’s life and art, from his student days to his last trip to Horn Island in 1965, during Hurricane Betsy.
 Using never before seen film footage, as well as artwork and archival photographs, this one-hour biography traces the extraordinary life of the fiercely independent artist. Interviews with family members, artists, and art critics describe Anderson’s struggle to survive during the Depression, his hospitalizations and subsequent escapes, and his eventual triumph as an artist. Born in New Orleans and trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Anderson had a spiritualist side that resulted in a lifelong search. As a student, he set out to visit the mystic G.I Gurdjieff at Fontainebleau, as well as the Paleolithic murals at Les Eyzies. He walked across war torn China in 1949, hoping to visit Tibetan monasteries. And on many occasions he set out from Mississippi on cross country bicycle trips––to West Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New York––painting watercolors and writing along the way. “He believed,” says Washington Post art critic Paul Richard, “that somewhere down the road, he would find the enlightenment he sought. It was a religious quest as well as an aesthetic quest."

Walter Anderson: Realizations of an Artist can be purchased here.