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The Jesus Films: Jesus in Our World Today

At the end of Jesus (1999), Jesus tells the apostles that he will be with them always. He then walks toward the wall and out into the sunshine of the twenty-first century, wearing modern dress, having a contemporary hairstyle, being greeted by children, and going off with them. It shows that one way of creating a Jesus-figure is to incarnate him in the present. Two films did this in the early in the first decade of the twenty-first century: Joshua from the United States and Son of Man from South Africa.

The Book of Life

While it was released in 1998, The Book of Life is a millennium film. It takes place on December 31, 1999. This is the same date for the action in the Arnold Schwarzenegger apocalyptic thriller End of Days. Interestingly, both films are set in New York City with the countdown to the beginning of the millennium, ignoring the reality of New York being nineteen hours behind the international dateline time.

Hal Hartley is a writer-director who has built up a cult reputation with his offbeat stories, his rather more intellectual approach to cinema, and his extensive dialogue. His visual style is often experimental with washes of color across the screen. He also uses a group of actors in many of his films, which include Trust, Simple Men, and Henry Fool. The Book of Life stars Martin Donovan, who appeared in most of Hartley’s earlier films, as well as several members of the Henry Fool cast, which he made at this time. The film is brief, only sixty-three minutes, but it is quite substantial in its imagining of Jesus confronting Satan as the world comes to an end.

One of the difficulties with Donovan as Jesus is that the actor generally looks morose, sometimes impassive. That is the case here. He first appears in New York City with his assistant Magdalena. He has been given a task by his Father to prepare for the apocalypse and the judgment. Four of the seven seals have been broken, and the Book of Life has the names of the 144,000 who are to be saved. This time the Book of Life is on a laptop computer, which Jesus wants to save from any enemies. In his Second Coming, Jesus reacquaints himself with the human race and is moved again with pity. He says his Father is too vengeful and he cannot live up to that. Jesus now wants to go against his Father. “My Father is an angry God. He likes lawyers.”

The film dramatizes the struggle between good and evil by having Satan also in New York City trying to gain souls. He is located in a bar where the symbolic human being is a compulsive gambler and his girlfriend tends the bar, although she is rich and manages a soup kitchen. The bar becomes the location for discussions in the Hartley style about human nature, about the soul being only a material phenomenon, a biological accident—yet Satan says he will snatch souls from the All-Knowing until the last day. “As long as there are hopes and dreams, I’ll have my work to do.”

While Satan talks in this vein, Jesus fears the breaking of the fifth seal: with the souls of the those slaughtered for the word of God who cry for vengeance. It is the darkest hour of the dark night of the soul, the time of the divine callousness. Jesus asks himself about the comfort of dreams of vengeance and why he had not revolted: “I rose to the occasion and lied. . . . Love is only a survival defence mechanism.” He tosses the laptop into the Dumpster but it is rescued by his assistant.

The gambler loses money but is willing to sell his girlfriend’s soul to Satan on a long shot. Satan describes her as “terminally good.” The gambler discusses atheism with Satan.

In the meantime, Magdalena has explained her love and loyalty to Jesus. She is the woman of John 8, the woman caught in adultery. Without benefit of flashback but with the camera focusing on her face, she recounts the event using the words of the Gospel text. It is a moving recitation. She finishes by saying that she thought he had fallen in love with her—“he’s that kind of guy!”

Eventually Hartley sets up a verbal confrontation between Jesus and Satan in the bar. Jesus has borrowed a quarter from the rich woman (who offers him soup) to make an appointment to meet Satan. Their initial interchange is about Jesus working for someone who makes rules. Satan said he did too, but he quit because he wanted to make his own rules. Jesus retorts that Satan didn’t quit. He was fired.

Jesus does not want to complete the apocalypse. Jesus inveighs against Christians who speak of love and forgiveness but who believe in divine vengeance, “a closed door policy.” They have distorted the soul of humanity—and with references to Faust and Frankenstein. Jesus says he imagined that the truth of the Gospel was self-evident and had no idea it would be perverted by people who preached it in his name. He also says that he is addicted to human beings, the allure of free will, the thrill of possibilities, human persistence in inventing, the developments of artificial intelligence and cybernetics. Yet, humans will become obsessed with themselves in new ways.

Throughout the film, there is talk in the background, radio talk of an Armageddon variety and quotations from the Psalms: “Fall on us rocks and protect us from the wrath of God.”

While Satan persists in his stances and the gambler listens to the arguments, Satan gets hold of the laptop.

Jesus continues his outburst, his rant, about his Father. He sees himself as an exile, an outcast, a man without a country. He thought the apocalypse was a good idea, but nobody learns. But God has a weakness for sacrifice, and, Jesus says, “I know I can work that angle.”

As Jesus moves to a lawyer’s office and then back to the hotel room, he continues to reflect on the Incarnation—“not a good idea to have God made flesh, messy. . . . I’m a victim of my own history, a pawn.”

The irony of Satan having the computer is that all the experts and hackers he takes it to find it too difficult to open: “It’s a lockout.” “We don’t service that brand.” “It’s an ancient warranty and it’s expired!”

Apocalypse does not happen and the world moves on to January 1, 2000.

The new year, the millennium, is “just another day in the lifetime of similar days, filled with the possibilities of disaster and perfection. To be there amongst them was good, the innocent and the guilty, all perfectly helpless, lost and all deserving of forgiveness.” Jesus sees a Salvation Army musician and speculates on the future, test tubes, and computers and wonders whether in a hundred years people will remember what he said and did or whether someone else will come along and say the same thing.

In an ominous scene in retrospect because of the Manhattan skyline with the Twin Towers prominent, Jesus throws the laptop into the water. Does it matter? Do we matter?

The Book of Life is a contemporary philosophical/theological morality play with Jesus posed against Satan for the salvation of humanity. Since Hartley is not giving official doctrinal positions or concerned about church sanctions, he speculates about the nature of God and opts for the commonplace condemnation of the God of vengeance. His Jesus is an earnest Son of God who wants to do the best for the human race to which he says he has become addicted. Satan is still the seducer, the smart talker full of self-confidence who never recognizes when he is defeated.

This film is not a crowd-pleaser but it offers enough provocative thinking to make it worthwhile.

Las aventuras di Dios

Spanish-born, Argentinian writer-director Eliseo Subiela is always interested in religious themes and the transcendent in his films, especially his classic Man Facing Southeast. In 2000, he made a surreal cinema adventure of Jesus on earth in the present. It was filmed on digital video, trying to blend dream with reality. He offers

a Jesus who questions the identity of people that meet him, and that pawns his crown of thorns to taste a coffee with a slice of bread and butter . . . a lottery reminds Jesus over and over that he has to save the world. At the end of the movie the protagonist emerges from the sea . . . alienated from his grey existence. . . . In the middle of the road, Jesus is hitchhiking and gets a ride in a car that disappears at great speed.1

Subiela draws on his Iberian cultural heritage and its Catholic Christian imagery and imagination.

Joshua

What if Jesus were to come to earth now and live his mission among us all over again?

We need to ask further questions. Where would he live? Would he preach in the way that he did two thousand years ago? Would he work miracles now, even raise the dead? What about challenging the religious authorities as he did with the scribes and Pharisees? If you have ever wondered about these questions—or even if you haven’t—then Joshua will provide some answers.

Father Joseph Girzone has written a series of Joshua novels, and he creatively answers all these questions. The books show how Jesus preaches more by example and living amongst ordinary people than by teaching. It is by sharing in their lives that Jesus wins people to himself. He affirms them as the persons they are with their particular gifts and talents.

Father Girzone holds that Jesus’ miracles would be much more low-key than in the past, and they would drain the power out of him (as he said when, in Mark 5, he healed the woman with the hemorrhage and felt power go out of him). He would be “ecumenical” and would test the faith of many who preach the Gospel in his name but fall short of the ideals or misinterpret them: tent-show healers as well as of fear-of-God parish priests. And, in the case of Joshua, he would be living in the United States.

This is all to be found in this first film of Father Girzone’s Joshua stories.

It should be said that it is made for those who like their good messages clear and positive with a minimum of ugly confrontation. It does not take a very sophisticated approach and, yet, underlying the entertaining story, there is quite some serious reflections on following Jesus and on faith.

Tony Goldwyn, who showed he could be quite a villain in Ghost and in The Sixth Day, is much different here. His playing of Joshua is of a man who is both outgoing and quiet, down to earth yet insightful, speaking the truth yet compassionate. Like the Jesus of the Gospels, he is a listener as well as a man of action. It is a subdued but pleasing interpretation.

The filmmakers had to make decisions as to how Joshua would be credible in modern times let alone in the film. Questions they had to face concerned his age, his appearance, and his manner. How could the actor portray him as reserved yet friendly? Who could convey the impression that he was grounded in the real world as well as able to communicate deeply about realities beyond day-to-day human experience? When Joshua first came to the town, appearing out of nowhere, there was initial antagonism toward him, but eventually, he began to make friends. The writer took Father Girzone’s lead and showed Joshua doing “Gospel” things. He was able to move into the workshop of her husband by a woman in the parish. After all, Jesus was a carpenter. Joshua made carvings—and gave a heart to the woman.

And the local church? He was there to help pull it down in order to build it again. When you see the film, you will appreciate how Joshua was, like Jesus, all things to all people—his growing friendliness with the various people that he met: the boy and his guitar and his clash with his father; Maggie and her grief for her dead husband and wanting to move; Father Pat and his difficulties in the church (who becomes something of a Peter-figure); the Baptist minister, Theo, and the congregation; Joan and the difficulties with her husband; Father Tordone, the parish priest, and the clashes people have with him. A dramatic highlight is the raising of the church bell and Theo falling off the roof—and his being brought back to life. Joshua goes to the revival tent and a woman gets her strength back, he challenges the preacher about his lack of faith and quietly heals the blind woman. And, like Jesus of old, Joshua felt the strength going out of him as his enlivening power went into those who were healed.

Kurt Fuller is genial as Father Pat and F. Murray Abraham is not so genial as the pastor. Giancarlo Giannini appears at the end as the pope receiving Joshua in audience and listening to his message. Audiences who prefer their messages to be less explicitly inspirational will find the film too sweet for their taste.

The screenplay is too simplistic for many, with much happening too fast and without the dramatic and psychological impact that would have given it more depth. Father Tordone’s literal change of heart was rapid in the extreme. Father Pat (who may drive more staid parishioners up the wall) is very genial. And, yet, it made me reflect on how Jesus would be incarnated today, what his manner would be like, how he would heal, how he would affirm and challenge.

Soupernatural

This punning title does not sound like a candidate for a Jesus film. It is in the vein of Joshua insofar as the Messiah comes to the United States and takes up work in a parish soup kitchen—the pastor cannot believe that this is what Jesus would do, especially as he is referred to as the man with spikey blond hair with the look of a drugged-out, sex-crazed rock star! Perhaps the title of the film should have been Souperman.

However, despite the satirical tone and the point being made that if Jesus came back into today’s world it’s questionable if he would be recognized or acknowledged, a TV reporter goes on a mission to find him, and she does. She is told to look for the Jesus-looking guy with a soup ladle in his hand. The channel boss is not so reverent. He asks whether the Messiah is the smelly guy.

Once again, audiences are interested in the question, what would it be like if Jesus came into today’s world? How would he cope? How would we cope? The film has quite an elaborate website, which includes a trailer so that net surfers can see and hear actor Kevin Max as the Messiah.

Man Dancin’

This film is indebted in concept to Jesus of Montreal.

In 2003, British director Norman Stone released Man Dancin’, the story of a political prisoner in Northern Ireland who returns home; resists the pressures of the local gangsters, thus endangering his life; but also works with a parish priest to put on a Passion play involving the locals and some of his friends. Like Daniel in Jesus of Montreal, the main character undergoes something of a passion himself while bringing the Gospel message to people in a down-to-earth way.

What begins like a British gangster film of the late 1990s/early 2000s moves into a piece of Christian filmmaking, an effort to spread the Gospel message by means of popular entertainment, an effort in entertainment-proselytizing in a good way. The film has the courage of its convictions.

The original story came from the director, Norman Stone, and was written for the screen by Sergio Casci, who wrote the screenplay for another offbeat Scottish gangster comedy-drama, American Cousins. What Stone and Casci have attempted is what might be called a variation on Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal, a kind of Jesus of Glasgow.

EastEnders’ star Alex Ferns does a good job as Jimmy Kerrigan, released from a Northern Ireland jail after nine years for gun-running. He is older and wiser and has a mind to move away from the criminal gang of his youth. We get an inkling of his heroism to come when he offers to take a beating from some young thugs instead of his addicted brother. He shows how to turn the other cheek.

He does not remain long free from his past. He is called by the chief (James Cosmo), who runs protection, prostitution, and other rackets in the city, as well as by the corrupt police officer (Kenneth Cranham), who works in cahoots with the chief. Jimmy stands his ground; tries to get his brother away from the drugs; visits his ailing mother in the hospital; befriends Maria, a prostitute who wants to get out of the game, and assorted other criminals, club managers, and dealers. His life resembles that of Jesus in some ways (like the contemporary story of 1916 in Intolerance). He also has his Judas-figure, Terry, who betrays him to the chief.

But he also gets caught up in the activities of the parish priest, Father Flynn, to save his parole, and he has to go to anger management sessions. The parish is putting on a Passion play and soon Jimmy is running it and rewriting it, and Maria and her friends, his brother, and an old blind singer (Tam White, who wrote the songs for the film) are all involved. It is clear that there are analogies with the Passion of Jesus. Jimmy is brutalized. His brother betrays him, and the audience is left to get the Gospel message, especially as the troupe take to the streets for performances after the chief has the parish hall burned down. Stone is able to mix streetwise conventions and a tough world with Gospel basics.

It is risky ground, making a tough gangster film with a Christian message. It is not the kind of film the “converted” usually go to see. Man Dancin’ also hoped to bring some Gospel meaning and credibility to the cinema multiplex audience.

Son of Man

After the worldwide success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in 2004, one might well ask what direction the Jesus film could move in. An answer came very quickly from South Africa. The film is Son of Man (2005). It is a contemporary rendering of the Gospel story, spoken and sung in Xhosa and English. It opens the way to what many small groups were doing in the 1990s with their video cameras, making the Jesus story relevant to their own cultures.

A popular word used these days, when critical comments are offered about the lack of vision in so many film classics being remade, is re-imagining. In 2001, publicity told us that we were being treated to Tim Burton’s “re-imagining” of the 1968 The Planet of the Apes. It is a good word. All of us do our re-imagining of so many stories. It is only right because the Gospels have been re-imagined in all art forms over two millennia and in film during the twentieth century.

Distinctive

What is distinctive about Son of Man?

In February 2006, U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha, a contemporary version of Bizet’s Carmen, set in a South African township near Cape Town, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. It was a fresh experience of Bizet’s classic story, a dramatization of the intense characters and interactions with South African images and South African voices. The local language, Xhosa, was used. The same company, with the same director, Mark Dornford-May, is responsible for Son of Man. Pauline Malefane, who played Carmen, is now Mary, mother of Jesus.

Given the role of music and dance in the South African tradition, Son of Man is filled with song, chant, humming, and a wide range of instruments, all offering exciting variety as the film moves into its different moods. The cast are always ready to sway, stomp, dance; to fill the scenes with motion and emotion. Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell had already brought contemporary melodies and rhythms to the Gospel in the 1960s and 1970s. Both of them (as with He Who Must Die, Jesus of Montreal, and Corpus Christi) are about putting on a play about Jesus, the re-enactment of the story. Son of Man is showing us what the Incarnation could be like if it happened now. This is the Jesus story in our times.

With this film, African audiences have the opportunity to appreciate the relevance of the Gospel to their own situations. Those from outside the African tradition are offered a chance to look at familiar stories with new eyes, with different perspectives.

The running time of the film is quite short, only eighty-six minutes. Clearly, not every Gospel episode can be included. The social and political dynamic behind this re-imagining of the Gospels means that the selection of events and the emphases are to be of a piece with the “good news for Africa.” Jesus’ encounters are limited here. There are no parables. While there is an emphasis on healings, the core of the Sermon on the Mount is what Jesus preaches.

On first viewing, Jesus may seem less charismatic than we might hope for, sometimes more unassuming than we might think he ought to be. However, on further viewing, the portrayal of Jesus by Andile Kosi combines a quiet compassion with earnest determination to carry out his mission of peace and justice. The character who makes a profound impact is Pauline Malefane’s Mary. She is a big and strong woman, an earth-mother figure, with a powerful singing voice. The Magnificat after her experience of the Annunciation is dramatic and memorable. At the end, she is the strong figure who stands up for the meaning of Jesus’ life and death.

The Infancy Stories

The infancy narratives comprise a quarter of the film’s running time. However, the film opens immediately with the temptations of Jesus and then flashes back. The Satan figure (as with The Greatest Story Ever Told and the 1999 Jesus) reappears frequently throughout the film. He is a blend of the charming appearance and the sinister attitude. He arrives at crisis moments. He observes. We know that he is there and has his eye on Jesus.

The setting for the temptations is sandy and rocky desert terrain, but it is on the coast. The rock for bread is picked up from the ground. Satan’s invitation to accept the kingdoms of this world are on a cliff top where Jesus pushes Satan away (quite vigorously). They sit on a sandy slope while Satan asks Jesus to worship him. This time Jesus roughly shoves him down, telling him, “Get behind me, Satan.” Satan says it is his world. Jesus retorts that it is his world, and he repeats this later. The appearance of Jesus for non-Africans is arresting. He is covered in white paint, which, fifteen minutes later, we find is part of his initiation ceremony as a man. The imagining of the temptations as part of this initiation rite makes good sense.

Suddenly, a voice speaks in English. We see a broadcast from Channel 7 from the kingdom of Judea, Africa. Herod is king. People are shown shooting and looting. Militia groups jog and chant. In this civil uprising, Mary is seen running for safety, the camera tracking along a school path, past empty classrooms. Mary takes refuge, dismayed at the dead bodies lying on the floor. She pretends to be dead and survives the gaze of a black-cloaked machete holder.

Suddenly, an angel appears.

There are many angels in Son of Man, most of them adolescents or young boys—with suggestions of feathers on their backs. It is interesting to see how easily angels can appear in this kind of African context, a context of myth, lore, and song, a far cry from Western logic and reason for everything. The angel speaks the text of the Annunciation in some detail. There are close-ups of Mary (this happens frequently throughout). She is puzzled. However, at the end of the angel’s speech, she breaks out into a beautiful aria of the Magnificat (sounds of shooting in the background), which continues into the transition of seeing her pregnant, with Joseph; walking along the beach; and arriving in a village where men with megaphones are summoning the population to register. The scene is still chaotic with military chasing citizens. Mary and Joseph are offered a stable room.

The re-imagining of the Nativity is delightfully local. Young children wander about, goats and goatherds, music and whistling and a chorus of angels chanting about the sun rising from the mountains—“today we are united, one people.” Then the baby appears. Mary hums. Joseph looks on. A “Gloria” breaks out with angels sitting on the rafters. A child brings the gift of a young goat. Mary cuddles and plays with her son.

Music signals that the Magi are on the way, a long journey—and Jesus is seen wearing a paper party hat crown. Some time has passed, and Mary is hanging out the clothes on the line. Jesus is now walking and talking. Mary is washing Jesus in a tub when the wise men are let through a roadblock and arrive with their gifts. Mary presents her son. And the angels are smiling.

But Herod urges the troops to look for the boy. Joseph is in the fields when he hears the megaphone announcing the registration of the infant males. Then it is night. Satan arrives and smiles. Gabriel stares at him. Day comes, and people are running scared. The soldiers search the shanties but the people are gone, walking an exodus in silence. They are set upon by the soldiers. Mary and Joseph have been at the end of the line and hide in the vegetation, Mary putting her hands over Jesus’ eyes as the soldiers begin to kill the children with machetes. There is music of lamentation and Satan says, “This is my world.”

In giving so much time to detail of the infancy narratives, Son of Man takes the audience into the African world—its violence and unrest, its language, its music and movement, its settings, its clothing, its sense of the transcendent—all of which prepares us for the mission of Jesus.

Jesus’ Ministry

The infancy flashback is now over. Young men are washing in the sea. They emerge and are painted white as part of the initiation ritual. Suddenly we are back to Jesus pushing Satan down the slope. The initiation is complete as Jesus has successfully confronted evil. An elder announces to the community that now they are men. They wash—and the film makes the transition to Jesus dressing for the road, saying farewell to his mother, and leaving home. She sits and contemplates. Jesus walks through towns and villages, through factories and coal mine assembly lines, choosing disciples (whose names come up on-screen). During the film, they are not particularly delineated except for Peter and, of course, Judas. Times are still violent with hooded men running—from these come James the Less and Philip. There are also women apostles, Andie and Thadea. Judas is shoveling coal for a train, but he also supplies guns to two men who arrive in a car—and their names come up on-screen, Annas and Caiaphas.

As with Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, some devices are found to give the political background. Once again, we have Channel 7, which announces the death of Herod. The army of the Democratic Coalition, under Governor Pilate, announces an interim government, which is at the service of the people and is to support democracy.

In the meantime, Jesus is seen with his followers in a room. He is teaching. They are responding, sometimes loudly and argumentatively. This is one of two key scenes where Jesus speaks his message. He highlights the evils of poverty and overcrowding. But he warns that his followers are not to be corrupted. They are not to be violent. They have a right to their beliefs but they must never kill. As night falls with a curfew, he invites his disciples to hand in their weapons—as one of the apostles does so, he has a visual memory of his mother desperately urging him as a child to shoot.

Satan appears again, watching. The screenplay takes the story from John 8 of the woman taken in adultery as a key event for Jesus’ message. Here the accusers pour petrol over her and want Jesus to give an answer so they can burn her. In this episode, Jesus is less emotional than one would expect. He does not accuse the woman and lets her go. He sternly tells her to “go.” There is a puzzling moment when her jewelry is returned to her—but then we see her going to a pawnbroker, then to a merchant where she buys some fine ointment and then enters into the banquet room and pours the ointment over Jesus’ feet as she weeps. While Jesus rebukes the host (a woman) about his not receiving the courtesy of washing when he arrived, it is Judas who makes a scene and complains about the money and how it could have been used for the poor of the country. He says Jesus is corrupt and his behavior inappropriate. Jesus tells Judas he wanted to offer a lesson of peace.

This is exemplified as the hostess takes the sinful woman, caringly sits her down, and sings to her, joined by a chorus of women. Judas sits at his table, frowning.

Video Cameras

From this point on, Son of Man uses not only the device of television news, but also a video camera with which Judas films Jesus. This material is then viewed by Caiaphas and Annas and is taken to Governor Pilate as evidence of Jesus’ political ambitions. This device works well as it uses contemporary technology (as Judas notes in Jesus Christ Superstar, in 4 BC there was no mass communication) and enables us to observe Jesus from Judas’ viewpoint.

Judas has complained to the bosses that Jesus has focused in his teaching on “invisible morals” and ideals. Yet, Jesus’ sayings are particularly strong and pointed. While he says that authority is divinely instituted, he tells his disciples that they are to follow him. He says that he has not come to disrupt the law (in a paraphrase of Matthew 5:17–18) but to be creative. He wants to do away with all hate. Then he is more specific. He attacks the tribalism and corruption of Africa, people being beaten and tortured in the Middle East, the child labor scandals of Asia, the unjust trade subsidies of Europe and the United States, and the restriction of necessary medicines because of patent disputes. People disappear. We are lied to. “Evil did not fall.”

Miracles follow.

The first is a brief rendition of the paralytic (here a young boy) who is lowered through the roof in front of Jesus. Jesus is speaking of the innate goodness of human beings and warning that his followers are not to be a suspicious group. He holds the boy, who is jolted into health. Next, there is a scene in a funeral parlor (videoed). Jesus arrives and asks for the coffin to be opened—and the comment is made about the stench. But Jesus prays and touches the dead man on the forehead, and he too is jolted back into life. The choir chants and there is a panorama of a rainbow. Then, on the road, Jesus hears a child’s cry. Again the scene is videoed for evidence, a greenish and swirling picture of a child in a fit. Jesus calms the child, raises the child, and smiles—and we see Annas and Caiaphas watching the television monitor. They demand of Judas proof of Jesus’ political ambitions.

Jesus is now an acclaimed leader and stands on a high, makeshift plinth (again recorded). He urges “collective dialogue,” for them to act as a group and to treat people with dignity, to unite. The people are excited and dance but military personnel turn up and declare the gathering illegal and force the people to disperse. Jesus gets down—and stops Peter from throwing stones. Judas runs the length of an abandoned building and declares that he has “got him,” handing over the camera to Annas and Caiaphas while extending his hand to receive money.

Riots get worse. Citizens are beaten and the governor goes on television to impose martial law: to protect democracy requires hard decisions, to impose order one must be strong, to achieve peace, we must use force. Women protest in the streets and lay their babies on the road. The men do a sit-in cradling the children.

As the crowds in the township raise Jesus aloft and carry him in triumph in Palm Sunday exhilaration, the authorities tell Jesus that he is a minority and they will not allow him to disrupt what they have worked for years. In the meantime, Mary packs and leaves home, arriving in the busy city with its cars and freeways and overpass steps.

We see Annas and Caiaphas watching the video of Jesus on the plinth and realize they are watching it with Pilate, who says it is not evidence. He pours himself a glass of water, accidentally spilling it on his hands. He tacitly allows Annas and Caiaphas to act against Jesus.

The Passion

Jesus is in a house with Mary at the sink, a microwave next to it. The Last Supper sequence follows. As Jesus hands around a big can from which the apostles drink, they see in the base of the can, in blood-colored tones, images of torture, killing, and lamentation, a front-end loader scooping up a corpse. He does not need to (and does not) say, “This is my blood.” Jesus says he will be betrayed while Judas collects the used plates. Jesus tells him to go. He also warns Peter that he will deny him.

The agony sequences take place in a sandy area with large open pipes for a pipeline. The apostles watch Jesus—“Brother, you’re troubled”—but do not really support him. Jesus goes apart. Satan is present again but Jesus asks a small angel if this suffering can pass. He begs the apostles to be with him but the noisy crowds approach. Satan watches. Once again there is the video camera, catching Jesus say, “I am he,” while Judas looks straight to camera and kisses Jesus.

The filmmakers said they wanted the Passion sequences to be relevant to South African experience, especially the torture and death characteristic of the apartheid regime. So, Jesus is hustled down to a secret place in what looks like an abandoned factory and bashed. Judas exits from this hidden torture room and vomits. When Annas and Caiaphas offer Jesus a share in power, Jesus urges them to talk because they cannot beat him into agreeing. There is a grim long shot of Jesus being bashed again. His body is then bundled into the trunk of a car.

Judas looks dismayed as vivid lightning flashes. Peter, hiding in a pipe, is accosted by military who say they have seen him with Jesus. He denies Jesus by saying people look alike. Nothing happens to him as the soldiers are summoned away by walkie-talkie.

Jesus’ body is driven out into the countryside and, in images familiar from torture films from many countries, his body is carried in a blanket to a place where a hole is dug and he is tipped in. In the meantime, back on television, Annas and Caiaphas are being interviewed. They will work in collaboration with the government and work out a timeline for withdrawal for the occupying forces.

Mary does not know of Jesus’ death. A grieved young man from the burial party finds Mary amid a group of protesters chanting against the occupiers and holding photos of Jesus as they burn effigies of Annas and Caiaphas on upraised crosses. Mary screams and laments.

It is interesting at this point to wonder how the film will treat the Resurrection. Mary and the women go to the burial hole, and Mary starts to remove the branches and dig for the body. We cut to her holding the body of Jesus in Pietà fashion. We are then invited to contemplate this tableau as the camera follows Mary holding Jesus on the back of a utility truck, moving along a modern freeway with its overpasses.

What follows is surprising. Mary ties the arms of Jesus to a cross with scarves. Jesus is lifted up on the cross for all to see, and in the words of John’s Gospel, he draws all people to himself. This is the sign of the cross. People are going about their everyday work and chores but they see Jesus and approach. Mary stands at the foot of the cross and sings a chant previously heard: “The land is covered in darkness.” A helicopter flies over. Mary and Peter begin to dance, stomp, and chant: “Unity, freedom fighters, strength, comrades.”

However, soldiers approach with guns and the people scatter as they are given two minutes to disperse. Mary stands her ground, looks at Jesus on the cross, and slowly approaches the military, a shot of her with rifles framing her and Jesus crucified in the background. She sings and she dances, “The land is covered in darkness.” The women join in.

That is not the end. A bright wall painting of a cross is seen. Silence. Then the empty grave and slowly a silhouette of Jesus appear. This time the chant is of the sun rising: “We are united.” The shadow cast by Jesus grows and the angels smile. And now, Jesus walks up the sand hill, happy, followed by what can only be described as a multitude of angels. He raises his arm in the gesture of defiant hope.

Jesus is risen.

During the end credits, after a quote from Genesis that we are made in God’s image, there is a sequence of photos of a range of ordinary people. This Gospel is good news for everyone.

In this overview of Son of Man, we can see where there are similarities to the previous Jesus film. But, we can also discern many ways for the future in re-imagining the Gospel narrative, of appreciating what the Incarnation might entail and mean were it to happen in our time, society, and culture. This opens the way to many more, and varied, Jesus films.

Mary

Abel Ferrara’s career has been a strange mixture of violent films, films where characters were drug dependent, but also a number of films that dealt with religious themes: The Addiction, Bad Lieutenant, and Mary. Mary won the Grand Jury Prize in Venice, 2005, as well as the Catholic SIGNIS Award. The Mary of the title is Mary Magdalene. Juliette Binoche plays Mary in a film called This Is My Blood, directed by Matthew Modine’s character, who also plays Jesus. When the filming has finished, she remains in Jerusalem to sort out her life. He returns to New York and encounters an atheist journalist (Forest Whitaker) who is preparing a television series on Jesus. This gives Ferrara the opportunity to offer some scenes for his Jesus film, familiar enough in style, focusing on the disciples, Mary Magdalene, and Judas, as well as some discussion about the claims of Jesus.

In a sequence at the television station, there is a comment on the commercial success of The Passion of the Christ. There are also connections with The Da Vinci Code and its perspective on Mary Magdalene. Mary was made when The Da Vinci Code was a best seller, the film being released in the year following Mary. This film has suggestions about Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus. It opens with the Resurrection sequence, the rolling back of the stone, the absent body, the angels speaking. Mary sees Jesus and hears him telling her not to touch him because he has not yet ascended to the Father. Mary is given various monologues with a Gnostic emphasis on the “nous,” the mind, and the spirit. Peter and the other apostles are called by Jesus with Mary present on the shore with later suggestions of a rivalry between Peter and Mary. We also see Jesus at the Last Supper, the washing of the feet, Jesus’ words, and his legacy of love, unconditional love.

By way of comment on Jesus as a holy person, the actor, Tony (played by Modine), who portrays him, is vain with a high estimation of himself. In real life he is no Christ-figure but the point is made that it is he who wrote the screenplay and was quite aware of the themes that were expressed in the dialogue. This contrasts with Ted, who questions his TV show guests about Jesus, historicity, the Romans and the Crucifixion, the blaming of the Jews, the Jews seeing Jesus as the Messiah and not wanting to kill him. There is a variety of experts who include actual scholar Elaine Pagels, with her feminist approach and her comments on the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene. There is also a French theologian who emphasizes Mary as a woman as the first disciple, along with an archaeologist and historians.

Thematically, Ferrara makes a comment through atheist Ted’s poor treatment of his wife and missing the birth of the child. However, after arriving at the hospital and speaking with his wife, he goes to the chapel, prays a desperate outburst and the acknowledgment of his sinfulness, asking to be punished. The crucifix is glimpsed. He invokes the sacrifice of Jesus for his son and wife to live. There is a strong parallel between Harvey Keitel’s outburst in the church in Bad Lieutenant with that of Ted’s prayer and the iconography of Jesus. Ferrara offers a theology of punishment, love, and sacrifice, something of a Mel Gibson theology.

We Are All Christs

Polish sensibility has deep Catholic roots. This is evident in a grim and graphic film about alcoholism, We Are All Christs (2006), directed by Marek Koterski. The central character is a professor of art who takes students on guided tours of churches. We see him standing against the station of the cross where Jesus falls the first time. He explains the sufferings of Jesus with some forcefulness. Interspersed amongst the scenes of family conflict because of alcohol are brief sequences of Jesus carrying his cross, but against the background of a modern high-rise apartment building.

Not only that, but various characters are depicted as being on the cross and their sides pierced, like that of Jesus, by a spear wielded by another member of the family who is being cruel. So, we are all Christs. Toward the end, when father and son attempt reconciliation, we see the two of them, dressed in white robes, carrying a heavy cross like that of Jesus, each helping to bear the other’s burdens. The Jesus-figure and the Christ-figures bring Jesus into the harsh contemporary world of addictions where people suffer like Jesus. They fall. But Jesus has been there before them.

Tutta colpa di Giuda

Maybe Italy would not be the first country, with its deep-seated Catholic traditions (along with some anti-clerical heritage), to make a film about putting on a Passion play, rethinking the meaning of expiation and sacrifice. But, by 2009, here was Tutta colpa di Giuda (It’s All the Fault of Judas). The reason that Judas gets his name in the title rather than Jesus is that the film is set in a Turin prison with inmates performing the play. And no prisoner wants to take on the role of Judas.

Writer-director Davide Ferrario was a volunteer for work in a prison for ten years. The experience led to this idea of prisoners doing a religious play and prisoners, in fact, play the main central roles in the film.

The setting up of the situation is ordinary enough. A young director, Irene (Polish actress, Kasia Smutniak), is allowed to come into the prison to work with a special section, not considered dangerous, and do theater work with them. They are interviewed on video, so we have some inkling of their past and their personalities (although they do not become particularly clear as distinguishable characters throughout the film). The prisoners are wary, especially when asked to perform choreographed dance movements. However, they eventually give it a go. The chaplain is very enthusiastic. The warden does not want prisoners too excited and agitated. The nun who works in the prison presents the puritanical and sour face of the church.

It is the chaplain who has the idea of doing a Passion play for Holy Week. Irene, the director, is agnostic and does not know the Gospels. She buys a copy, reads and studies it, and has to come to terms with an interpretation of Jesus. A first passage puts her off, Jesus cursing the barren fig tree (which is briefly but effectively shown as a black and whitewash animation sequence). But, this gives her the idea of Jesus as obsessed with his salvific mission rather than genial and gentle: tough talker, hard on his disciples, and halfheartedly working miracles.

The priest urges her to consider further the human element in Jesus. This gives rise to quite an effective modern dance interpretation of Jesus on her part, especially in gesture, with Irene finally leaping over the cross. The prisoners cannot make much of this performance.

The prisoners choose roles, avoiding Judas. They are fitted with costumes and a big solid cross is built and set up (which sets them wondering how Jesus ever carried his cross). By now, used to dance, they sing a vibrant song about Judas, about trials and judges, about imprisonment—a song and dance routine with verve.

Irene begins a secret affair with the warden. With her support, the inmates decide to get rid of the big cross and their block letters and substitute “expiation” (espiazione), which they turn so that facing the audience is “freedom” (liberta). They want to emphasize Jesus’ passion for life and that everyone should have exuberant life through him. This lively song and dance routine, “Come and Dance,” has Jesus finally coming down from the cross and joining everyone in the dance. It is too much for the chaplain, who tells Irene she has gone too far with her human element and this is a blasphemous interpretation. He declares that it goes against faith and the role of the church. She, on the other hand, speaks against religion.

With a performance planned for Good Friday, two events complicate the issue. First, the prisoners discover Irene’s affair with the warden and refuse to perform. She has to choose and, of course, in a sacrifice of her own, chooses them. The second is an amnesty announcement, which means that almost all of the prisoners will be released on Good Friday. The play will not go on because they choose life.

How to resolve the drama of the film? The prisoners set up a table, dress formally in suits and ties, and sit for a last supper with Irene. The actor playing Jesus takes on the role and speaks the Gospel words over the bread and wine. They all share the loaves and, with the wine, toast Irene. The supper is a celebration, and Jesus’ saving of the world, with a sacrifice, is so that they might live.

This is a Jesus film in the tradition of the Passion plays, of Jesus of Montreal, of Corpus Christi, of Man Dancin’. It is a presentation of Jesus and selected Gospel episodes, not to give a theological interpretation but to explore some spirituality aspects of Jesus’ life and mission. Using contemporary rhythms, songs, and dance, it suggests questions and evokes feelings about the Gospel message.

This pattern of Jesus film has the potential for all kinds of modern settings and question raising. As Davide Ferrario said about this type of exploration and not knowing where it will lead, Columbus set out to find India but didn’t; he found interesting alternatives.

Almanya: Willkommen in DeutSchland

There is an intended shock toward the latter part of Yasemin Samdereli’s Almanya, a serious though often gentle and funny tale of Turkish immigrants in Germany, when the little boy at the center of the story has a nightmare. He is Muslim and is finding German culture and way of life puzzling and sometimes alienating. He has been told that the Germans are Christian and that Jesus is God. In his nightmare the boy sees Jesus on the cross and cannot understand why the Christian God has to die. The sequence highlights quickly and effectively how difficult it is to understand what others take for granted, the meaning of Jesus and his death, when all one has is unexplained information.

Neds

Toward the end of this very Scottish story of John, a young lad who becomes a vicious delinquent (NEDS means Non-Educated Delinquents), John is glue sniffing. He looks up and sees a statue of Jesus on the cross. Then Jesus steps off the cross and begins a physical fight with John, punching and kicking. Director Peter Mullan has a Catholic background—and said that mere social realism bores him, so he likes to use his imagination and go beyond the merely real and functional. This vision puzzled many audiences and alienated those who could not appreciate the meaning of this moral struggle.

Note

1. Ricardo Yanez, “The Son of Man (Facing Southeast): Jesus Christ in the Films of Eliseo Subiela,” in Through a Catholic Lens: Religious Perspectives of Nineteen Film Directors from around the World, ed. Peter Malone (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2007), 112.