The Song

The Song (2014) is about a modern-day, country rocker King Solomon. Jed’s (Alan Powell) father had an affair with a woman named Bethany (based on King David’s second wife, Bathsheba), whom he later married. They had Jed, who grew up into a strapping young man, and then Jed’s dad died. All this backstory is dealt with in the movie’s first six minutes and plays like the recap of a film nobody made.

Jed meets, falls in love with, and marries Rose (Ali Faulkner), and they have a son, Ray (Jude Ramsay). Jed decides to build a chapel for no apparent reason other than that Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem (not personally with his bare hands, though).

Jed’s musical career takes off. He goes on tour with fellow musician Shelby Bale (Caitlin Nicol-Thomas), who is a stand-in for the Queen of Sheba. Nothing in the Bible suggests any impropriety during Solomon and the Queen’s brief meeting, but we know that Shelby is bad news because, unlike Rose, she has dark hair and a lot of tattoos.

Shelby introduces Jed to the joys of pill-popping and extramarital sex. Jed leaves his family, shacks up with Shelby, attempts suicide, goes to rehab, grows a fake-ass beard, quits the music business, and sets out to reunite with his family.

Rose is having none of that happy crappy, but then Jed goes onstage (this happens at one of the wine-tasting events that Rose’s family hosts) and sings Rose’s favorite song, Peter Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!” That’s all it takes to win her back.

There are a couple of problems with this development. First, there’s the empty gesture of singing a cover when it’s been established that Jed is an accomplished songwriter and has written at least one song inspired by Rose. Second, there’s the irony, lost on Rose (and possibly the filmmaker too, unless he just didn’t care), of Jed walking away from a stage (he had a show that very night) for Rose’s sake, only to walk onto another stage as a counterintuitive way to convince her that he’s...