‘Higher’ explores faith sans preachiness

Vera Farmiga has done something miraculous in her directing debut, “Higher Ground”: she’s managed to make a movie about religion that’s neither preachy nor mocking, and she treats her characters with great decency and respect.

Farmiga extends that courtesy to herself as its star, and her character, Corinne – like the movie itself – seems to be seeking answers with an open heart.

Based on the memoir “This Dark World” by Carolyn S. Briggs (who co-wrote the script with Tim Metcalfe), “Higher Ground” traces Corinne’s evolution from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, beginning with the time she was a little girl and thought she was saved at vacation Bible school through her adulthood as a still-questioning wife and mother of three.

She and her would-be rocker husband fall in with an insular, evangelical Christian community, full of happy hippies who sing hymns and hold their services outdoors. Corinne seems to have found the security and nourishment she’d long been looking for, but still experiences bouts of doubt; it’s as if she’s constantly trying to talk herself into believing, and Farmiga makes that precarious state of faith palpable.

There’s always been a striking naturalism to her performances in films ranging from “Down to the Bone” to “The Departed” to her Oscar-nominated supporting work in “Up in the Air.” Here, she applies a similar approach behind the camera, which draws us in and makes Corinne’s journey feel immediate and relatable.

The lack of support she receives from her husband as she suffers this crisis of faith is just one in a series of events that shake her to her core. But again, “Higher Ground” doesn’t judge him or vilify him; there are no bad guys – that’s what’s so refreshing. And as the film concludes, there’s still a bold sense of ambiguity; Corinne’s fate is open for interpretation.

The excellent supporting cast includes the ever-versatile John Hawkes and Donna Murphy as Corinne’s parents, and a vivacious Dagmara Dominczyk as the one free spirit in her otherwise structured, conservative church.

But it’s Farmiga’s younger sister, Taissa, who plays Corinne as a pregnant newlywed teen, who really stands out. Her performance is crucial to laying the emotional groundwork for us to want to go down this path, wherever it may take us. And we do.