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ble? In searching for what he calls “signs of metaphoricity”, Ricoeur finds his answer in the narrative structure: the dimension of extravagance within the ordinary realism of the story “delivers the openness of the metaphorical process from the closure of the narrative form”.21 Ricoeurian parabolic realism is congruent with the cinematic realism described and celebrated by classical French film theorists André Bazin, Amédée Ayfre, and Henri Agel. Bazin is well-known for his praise of French and Italian realist cinema and its sacramental capacity; his lesser-known contemporaries Ayfre and Agel also recognize the sacred and transcendent in cinema.22 Building on Agel and Ayfre’s phenomenological approach, Michael Bird draws a strong connection between cin- ematic realism and what he calls spiritual realism, a term originating with Agel: “If film is understood to possess a continuity with the world it represents, then in order for cinema to have a means by which it can open us to the dimension of the sacred, this means would have to be directed to the discernment of the holy within the real rather than leading away from the real as in the case of art that abolishes reality.”23 Such realist cinema pays attention to the everyday moments, allowing time and im- ages to point us to something beyond the mere material, as seen in the films of re- cent auteurs such as Asghar Farhadi, Cristian Mungiu, Kelly Reichardt, Debra Granik, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.24 Finally, Ricoeur directs his attention in “Biblical Hermeneutics” to limit-expres- sions, which utilize paradox, hyperbole, and other modes of intensification to ad- dress the external referent of the parables, namely existential limit-experiences. Also described by Ricoeur as “boundary-situations”, limit-experiences are ineffable peak moments within human existence such as death, suffering, guilt, and hatred, but also birth, joy, grace, and love.25 As religious discourse in non-religious language and image, parables as limit-expressions attempt to describe these limit-experienc- es of immanence on the horizon of transcendence in a metaphoric montage be- tween film-world and life-world. In From Text to Action, Ricoeur suggests that as the reader interprets the text, the text also interprets and affects the reader. Thus the filmgoer discovers themselves anew via the filmic parable-world, a reorientation by way of disorientation. The task of interpretation is only completed when the audi- ence emerges from the hermeneutical circle with a reoriented theological and mor- 21 Ricoeur 1975, 99. 22 Agel 1961, Ayfre 2004. 23 May/Bird 1982, 13. 24 The Dardennes’ post-secular parabolic films are the focus of my forthcoming PhD thesis at the University of St Andrews, tentatively titled “Post-Secular Cinematic Parables: Theology, Philosophy, and Ethics in the Films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne”. 25 Ricoeur 1975, 128. 22 | Joel Mayward www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 17–36