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The Jesus Films: Verbal Jesus-Figures

While we expect the Jesus films to portray Jesus visually, there are several films that talk about Jesus, creating a portrait from the verbal descriptions.

One of the difficulties for Christians in cinema of the last thirty or more years is that “Jesus” and “Jesus Christ” have become frequent unnecessary and unthinking expletives. Sometimes, these uses of the name Jesus, Christ, or Jesus Christ are considered blasphemous. However, blasphemy is an offense with intent. The casual use of sacred names is more a profanity of something held sacred.

With the offense taken by Muslims concerning the publication of cartoons in Denmark and other countries, it can be seen how profanity (in this case labeled “blasphemous” by many who were offended) strikes deep into the religious psyche. Commentators have pointed out that many Muslims have declared that the Prophet was never insulted and, therefore, it should never be done. Other commentators say that he was insulted and mocked in his lifetime. There is quite a contrast with Jesus in his lifetime, with insults and abuse culminating in his Passion and death. Throughout the centuries, Jesus has been insulted (and there are mocking images on YouTube to corroborate this). Christians are often upset and draw on the treatment of Mohammad and Islam compared with that of Jesus and Christianity. The right of freedom of speech was invoked to justify the publication of the cartoons. Little was said about obligations for respect.

It would seem that the battle against prolific profanity has been well and truly lost. However, the issue of humor and mockery in good faith and bad faith is still an issue. A small example: In the romantic/sex comedy My Best Friend’s Girl, the obnoxious central character takes a Christian girl for a date to a pizza parlor, Cheesus Christ, where the menu has religious references and the waiters look like and are dressed like Jesus pictures. A joke that anyone ought to be able to take? Offensive humor? Something incidental with religious reference in a secular world? The girl in the film is offended and the man apologizes. What are the limits of humor, freedom of speech, respect, and good taste?

However, it is worthwhile considering some serious presentations of Jesus verbally.

Lilies of the Field

An easy example of the verbal Jesus-figure is the ending of Ralph Nelson’s Lilies of the Field (1963) for which Sidney Poitier won the Best Actor Oscar. After helping a group of refugee East German nuns build a church, Baptist Homer Smith joins them in singing “Amen.” The verses, sung with verve by Poitier and the sisters, take us through the life and death of Jesus.

Wise Blood

John Huston made a striking version of a bizarre novel by Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1979). She has referred to the southern United States as the “Christ-haunted South.” She brings this observation to life through a negative experience. Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) is a strange, ambitious young man. Disillusioned by organized religion, he decides to form his own version of Christianity, “The church of Christ without Christ”—“and it does not cost a dime.” Aided by a simple young man (Dan Shor), he preaches his Christless church in the streets and on top of a car, attracting disciples, a blind preacher, con men, and religious charlatans who argue for the commercialization of religion. Hazel is an anti-Christ figure, whose obsession with religion leads to his own destruction, passion, and death. Wise Blood is a powerful film.

Jesus is a fact, says the blind preacher, you can’t run away from that. Hazel spits and retorts,

I don’t believe in sin. . . . I come a long way since I believed in anything . . . nothing matters but that Jesus don’t exist. Maybe you think that you ain’t clean because you don’t believe. I tell you every one of you is clean and it’s not because of Jesus Christ crucified. I ain’t sayin’ he wasn’t crucified. But he wasn’t crucified for you. I don’t need Jesus. What do I need Jesus for?

Hazel says he is preaching his church without Christ

where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way, where the blood of Christ does not foul it with redemption. . . . There was no fall, no sin, no judgment. Nothing matters except that Jesus was a liar.

He reflects on the Crucifixion and how it does not means anything for people. There is no peace. He goes on to say that the Church does not need Jesus . . . but it needs something in place of Jesus.

Hazel ultimately goes through his Passion and death.

The challenge of Wise Blood and this talk about Jesus is to ask what true religion is and what the real meaning of Jesus’ life and sacrifice were for.

At Close Range

This film has a brief but effective use of Jesus’ name for expressing feeling when Sean Penn’s character is being threatened with, “I’ll beat the Jesus out of you,” and he answers, “I haven’t any Jesus in me.”

The Name of the Rose

The film version of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1987), directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, offers verbal figures. William of Baskerville (Sean Connery as a medieval Sherlock Holmes) arrives with a novice trainee. The occasion is an assembly of Franciscan friars and Roman church authorities at a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy in the winter of 1327. The topic of dispute is, did Jesus own his own clothes? (This, of course, is not as trivial or as silly as it might sound—the Franciscans urge that Jesus did not own his own clothes and, therefore, the church should not own property, a view that is vigorously, if not theologically, argued by the bishops.) The dispute sequences dramatize comically but effectively how images of Jesus can be used and misused. But there have been some bizarre murders in the monastery and the representative of the Inquisition comes to investigate. The murders also have theological implications. It is alleged that a book of Aristotle’s Poetics has been discovered, which discusses laughter. Another seemingly trivial question is raised: did Jesus laugh? This is definitely a Jesus-figure question. However, there is a deadly political point. If Jesus did laugh, then Christians would feel free to laugh. This would lead to frivolity, the faithful not taking their power structures as seriously as they should—authority would be undermined.

Matewan

Matewan was one of John Sayles’ social concern films, looking at coal mining companies, scab labor, and attempts to form unions in 1920s West Virginia. He uses the device (as have other directors) of inserting a sermon that offers a Gospel basis for social justice, speaking about Jesus and quoting parables like that of the laborers in the vineyard. What makes Sayles’ use of the Gospels and the sermon more effective is that he counterpoints two sermons—one a fire-and-brimstone harangue (from a preacher played by Sayles himself), the other spoken by a young miner who is also a lay preacher whose words blend Gospel justice with compassion.

The Dark Side of the Heart

A symbolic story of a poet, this 1992 film by Argentinian director Eliseo Subiela (Man Facing Southeast, Aventuras de Dios) has a brief conversation between the poet and an artist. The artist raises a daring question: did Jesus experience physical love? The artist believes that he did and that the church has separated natural behavior and functions from religion. He speaks of Jesus in a series of sculptures, making love and, finally, confronting death and overcoming death in love.

Alive

Alive (1993) is the story of the football team who crashed in the Andes in 1973. Their survival dilemma turns on whether they can eat the flesh of those who have died. They discuss ethics, civilized behavior. They also pray. However, there is prologue and epilogue to the film, spoken by John Malkovich, who uses the imagery of Jesus and the Last Supper as well as the text of John 6, of eating the flesh of Jesus to have life as the basis for their decision. He speaks of the cross that was planted on the burial site later and that is photographed at the end of the film while the Ave Maria is sung. “We were brought together by a grand experience.”

As one of the survivors says, “It’s like communion. In their death, we live.”

The Big Kahuna

The Big Kahuna (1999) is based on a play opened out for cinema. It takes place over a twelve-hour period, from evening until early morning, as three salesman meet in a Wichita hotel to promote contracts for oil lubricants. One of the salesmen is a neophyte who looks on one salesman (Danny DeVito) as a role model and falls foul of the verbal attacks of the other (Kevin Spacey). One of the issues is that of Jesus, in whom the young man, a Baptist, believes and about whom he thinks he should proselytize. Instead of seeking a large contract with a prospective executive, he spends the evening talking about Jesus. He comes under fire when he returns and defends himself by talking about his faith in Jesus, backing up his arguments quoting St. Paul: “It is important to me that people hear about Jesus.” The senior salesman’s attack includes some hard talk: “What kind of lubricant would Jesus have endorsed?”; he acknowledges Jesus dying for our sins but asks the young man, who declares he believes what Jesus said, how he knows what Jesus said because he wasn’t there and others wrote it down. The other senior salesman tries to instruct the younger man about character. He also makes the point that the desire to proselytize in the name of Jesus is no different from trying to sell lubricant: “Once you lay your hands on a conversation, it’s not just a conversation. It’s a pitch.” Even in talking about Jesus in this way, he becomes a sales rep.

Dogma and Red State

Dogma (1999) is Kevin Smith’s contribution to the millennial films about religion and the church. Smith had previously made Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy, full of pop culture. Smith sees himself as a new generation Catholic, not educated in the more dogmatic styles of the past, feeling free to speculate about doctrine and practice, to mock, and to use profane and scatological images and language. A critic commented that it was the South Park of religious films.

Smith introduces Rufus, the thirteenth apostle who literally falls from the sky, interrupting the mission given to Bethany (Linda Fiorentino)—who, it seems, is descended from Mary of Nazareth—to stop two fallen angels from being absolved of their sins and so bringing the world to an end. Rufus is played by Chris Rock and is black. This gives rise to a lot of Smith humor about the early church concealing the fact that Jesus himself was black and the racist omission of Rufus altogether from the Gospels. He speaks of Jesus as a buddy, a good leader, a good friend. (And Smith has his characters refer to God as she, although God is beyond gender—but she finally appears in the form of Alanis Morissette.)

Just over ten years after Dogma, Smith made another film with religious themes, Red State (2011). It is quite a savage parody of evangelically fundamentalist church communities who impose a rigid biblical morality on all who are outside their privileged, “saved,” family, using entrapment to lure “sinners,” whom they torture and execute during prayer services. They are led by a charismatic leader, played by Michael Parks, who is given one of the most terrifyingly bigoted sermons, a call to judgmental violence, all in the name of Jesus and the Bible.

Deliver Us from Eva

Watching some films like Life of Brian and History of the World: Part I, one asks the question whether Jesus himself might enjoy the tongue-in-cheek humor. There’s a particular line in Deliver Us from Eva (2002), a black updating of elements from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. One of the characters, trying to describe how hard Eva is, remarks that someone gave her a present of a crucifix—and the next day Jesus was gone!

Saved!

After the success of The Passion of the Christ, some publicists rushed articles to the press about religious films being popular again and headlined Saved! Either they had not seen it, or they had their tongues firmly in their cheeks. Yes, the film is about Christianity, but the film is light-years away from The Passion—except that most of the characters in Saved! would have been the first to buy tickets for The Passion. It is about born again Christians. It targets the more-righteous-than-thou kind of Christians, parodies their behavior, and makes quite a few satiric digs at the double standards of many professing believers who justify whatever they do (good deed or bad whim) by attributing it to Jesus. There is quite a deal of “Jesus language” as well as images of Jesus, including the crash of one when the upset prom queen drives recklessly into it. Saved! is a mixture of comedy, critique, and some serious questioning of what it is to be a true Christian.

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code became something of a second bible (or a first for many!) in the first years of the twenty-first century, a reading phenomenon, creating an industry for supporters and for critics alike. It presented its own Jesus-figure, generally limiting it to Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene. For the film, which toned down some of the more outlandish claims of Dan Brown’s novel, there were not major visual Jesus-figures (more suggestions from traditional art). Rather, the presentation of Jesus was verbal.

The hypotheses about Jesus veer away from the four accepted Gospels (except in some discussions about the Last Supper) and put all the narrative emphasis on apocryphal and Gnostic Gospels of the second or third centuries (or later) without acknowledging that it was a common enough practice in the early church for writers wanting to fill in the traditional Gospel stories with more colorful detail to invent their own Gospels and ascribe them to a New Testament personality. They often gave names to unnamed Gospel characters—it is only in this period that names like Salome, Dismas, and Longinus first appear. Some writers wanted to illustrate their particular spirituality of hidden knowledge being revealed to them by the Holy Spirit or to advance the status of particular Gospel characters. These latter were Gnostic Gospels.

The hypothesis that Jesus was merely human, certainly a great prophet, and that this was the thinking of the early church until the fourth century ignores the writings of John and Paul, many of the early writers like Justin or Iranaeus, and the records of theological disputes before and leading up to the Council of Nicaea, where Constantine did not impose the divinity of Jesus on the participants. (Actually, the fourth-century church was still divided for many decades on whether Jesus was equal to the Father or subordinate—the widespread heresy of Arianism—and not a Constantine-unified Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.)

The hypothesis that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, pregnant at the time of the Crucifixion, and fled to France where she gave birth to a daughter is all much later speculation.

Stories of the Grail—which did not emerge until the early Middle Ages with the tales written by Chretien de Troyes—became popular and encouraged several more books on the Grail and locations where it was taken (to Spain, to Glastonbury in England, where Arthur’s knights could go on quests). The screenplay suggests that Christian faith is centered on the Grail as the cup of the Last Supper—which would be news to most Christians. The development of the code of the Grail, that it be interpreted not as san grael (the holy vessel) but as sang real (the holy blood). Sir Leigh Teabing explains this with a PowerPoint illustration in the film.

This discussion has led to the hypothesis that Mary Magdalene was the Grail, holding the child of Jesus in her Grail-womb, the vessel of the holy blood royal. This is where Leonardo da Vinci comes in with the speculation that John in his painting of the Last Supper is really Mary Magdalene, linked to Jesus in a feminine V space, thus establishing the Sacred Feminine—which means that Mary Magdalene’s story was suppressed in favor of Peter’s authority in the early church. She should have been the leader of the church—which, of course, means male cover-up and a two-thousand-year-old lie.

For those who would like a clearer exposition of this, the film does supply one: the speech that Ian McKellen, as Sir Leigh Teabing, makes in the middle of the film. He truly believes it. Robert Langdon keeps offering cautions. Sophie is a skeptical listener.

The Da Vinci Code created a market for avid readers and television and DVD viewers. A 2008 novel purporting to tell the true story (and the author acknowledges that it is not the biblical story) of the “greatest love story ever told,” that between Yeshua and Miriam (known as Mary Magdalene). Yeshua was king but Miriam was the unknown queen. The book is King and Queen by C. A. Thomas—but, in this digital and YouTube age, there is a video promotion of one minute highlighting the dramatics of this story.

The Oxford Murders

During a small scene in a hospital, an eccentric father hoping for an organ to become available for a transplant for his daughter engages the young student at the center of the film in a conversation about not believing what you read in the paper: “It’s all lies.” This leads him to ask if the student reads the Bible and then explains that when Jesus died his body and soul rose from the dead but that he spent the forty days in visions and conversations with Peter. But his main point is that Jesus was a terrorist, a revolutionary expelling buyers and sellers from the Temple, and that the reason he rose from the dead was to avenge himself against his murderers. This seemingly marginal character later plays a key role in the Oxford murders and illustrates his further madness.

Choke

While the film based on novelist Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club was about macho violence, the 2008 film of his novel Choke is about sex addiction, particularly male addiction. The central character, a promiscuous tour guide (“history interpreter”) is also constantly visiting his institutionalized mother wanting to know the identity of his father. The film takes a humorous and sardonic tone toward its subject and includes an inmate’s invention that Jesus’ “sacred foreskin” was taken from Rome in the 1970s and used for cloning experiments, the only successful procedure being that of the hero. He begins to perceive himself like Jesus, thinking (as does Linda Fiorentino’s character in Dogma) that he is a son of Jesus. He emulates his gestures, tries to be kind and compassionate toward people, and talks about Jesus and how he is descended from Jesus and must be like him. Eventually, he realizes that this is not his lineage.

The Wrestler

Has-been wrestler The Ram is making a comeback. His sympathetic stripper friend asks him if he has seen The Passion of the Christ, telling him about how much Jesus suffered laying down his life for others. He was the sacrificial Lamb of God. She makes the connection with the wrestler’s pain and his professional name, The Ram.

Tales from the Madhouse

In Holy Week 2000, the BBC presented a series of short programs, dramatic monologues, that were made for Lenten viewing. Unfortunately, they were screened very late in the evening. The public that might have appreciated them found that they were unable to stay up to see them, although it was reported that two million people watched the programs.

The series had what might be an alarming title, Tales from the Madhouse. The basic idea was that in each episode, an inmate of an asylum would tell his or her story to the camera. Each of them had encountered Jesus in some way, and their lives had been changed because of him. The characters included the serving girl who heard Peter deny Jesus, the centurion, the thief on Calvary, the rich young man now grown older, Pilate’s wife, and the widow of Nain. Better known characters included Barabbas and Judas himself.

Each of the stories is about thirteen minutes, just enough to watch at a short viewing. The producer is Norman Stone who has worked extensively with the BBC—Religion. He also directed Man Dancin’. Stone directed more than half the episodes. One of his celebrated productions was the original television version of Shadowlands, with Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. Both these actors are back for Tales from the Madhouse. The other actors are from the best of British performers. James Cosmo is the centurion. Joss Ackland is Barabbas. Claire Bloom is Pilate’s wife. Other actors in the series include Eileen Atkins as the widow of Nain, Jonathan Pryce as the thief, Helen Baxendale as the servant girl, Peter France as the rich young man. Tony Robinson wrote and performed “The Best Friend: The Judas Story.” Writers include playwrights Nigel Forde (“Pilate’s Wife”), Arnold Wesker (“Barabbas”), and writer of The Miracle Maker, Murray Watts (“The Mourner: The Widow of Nain”).

The introduction to each story is straightforward. A coach drives into the madhouse grounds. The camera is welcomed indoors. It then picks out the subject of the story who immediately starts to tell us what it was like to have seen and experienced the presence of Jesus. The asylum itself has the décor and atmosphere of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century English country house. The costumes are of the period as are the set decoration and props. The setting suggests a cross-centuries, cross-time approach to the characters.

As the characters move about the asylum, they reflect on what happened to them. Some of the stories are very emotional. The audience, who know something of the characters from the Gospels, are able to share their feelings at once.

What do these characters tell us about Jesus? The first story is that of the centurion. Now he is a carpenter, making crosses. He recalls his military duties and his young assistant, Anthony. When Anthony was ill, he approached Jesus for help. He speaks with great emotion of the kind reception he had from Jesus. When Anthony is healed, he goes off to follow Jesus. We finally realize that the centurion, who had done his duty with regret in crucifying Jesus, is now preparing a cross for Anthony.

The Judas story follows. Judas describes himself as a very efficient public servant with a skill for ferreting out information for those in charge. He was assigned the task of infiltrating the followers of Jesus. He despised Jesus but was touched by his appearance and his voice. However, he disguised his mission and was responsible for handing Jesus over. We then realize that Judas is tidying up his premises, commenting on documents and his public service life. He is tidying everything up so that he can hang himself.

The servant girl takes the audience into her confidence and chats about her friend, Malchy. She is no better than she should be, but she too has encountered Jesus who has looked at her, looked into her. Consoling Malchy after his ear was sliced and seeing Peter in the crowd, she realizes that things were different for her after that look of Jesus. She mentions to the audience that he was crucified but that she didn’t go to look. None of her business. But yet . . .

Barabbas is reminiscing about the boots that he acquired over forty years earlier, the most comfortable boots he ever had. They remind him of his revolutionary days, the idealism, the hopes, the songs. He then tells us of how he despised Jesus and his rebelling against Jewish society and how ineffectual he was. Barabbas describes Pilate (abhorring him) and the whole episode of his being freed while Jesus went to death. This is a jaundiced Barabbas view of Jesus but vividly describing the familiar story nonetheless.

It is something the same with Pilate’s wife. A very refined lady, she genteelly remembers the same past, her life with Pilate in the provinces, as a granddaughter of Augustus. She also remembers her dream and the effect that Jesus had on her.

Particularly fascinating as a fiction is seeing the rich young man tell us why he approached Jesus and wanted to be a disciple but couldn’t face it. Now he is a lonely old man surrounded by his wealth and his gourmet table, but full of regrets.

Perhaps the most moving of all the stories is that of “The Mourner,” the widow of Nain. Dressed somberly in black with a black bonnet, she confides in the audience, telling her life story, her marriage, her barrenness, her resorting to magic herbs and then to prayer. The plea to God is to conceive just one little baby before it is too late. She rejoices in the birth but when the boy was five, his father suddenly dies. Twelve years later, her grief is compounded as her son dies. She beautifully describes the sudden appearance of Jesus, the stranger from the hills, how he wept and grieved. She recites verbatim what Jesus said to her and tells how this story spread throughout the countryside. Jesus raised her son to life. He then left home to be a disciple of Jesus. Tragedy followed. A rock dislodged in a quarry where the disciples were, and her son was buried under rock and uprooted trees. Her son had died twice in one year.

Now the mourner rails against Jesus, no soft words but great bitterness. She describes how she went to confront Jesus about her son dying again but could not find him until she saw him on the cross, his face unrecognizable from the beatings. She knows that he is a charlatan and is glad that this is where he ended his life. On the way back home at a dingy inn in the hills, she heard rumors of Resurrection. As she says, no reasonable person would believe them. Nor did she. But she still mourns with her regrets.

The last character is the thief. He seems the epitome of self-confidence as he describes his life and career, giving a positive gloss on all that he did. He had encountered Jesus and had stood in crowds, always at the back, to listen to Jesus and see what a deceiver he was, playing with people’s minds so that the crowds believed in his miracles. It came as something of a shock to find himself arrested and, worse, incarcerated in a squalid prison. When he was taken out for execution, the thief found that Jesus was to be crucified with him. There are taunts and shared experiences on the crosses—with Jesus saying something to him. But, says the thief, that was private, between Jesus and him.

Although the audience never see Jesus, they learn a great deal about him from the testimonies of these eight people, the impact that Jesus made on each of them, their emotional responses, their understanding of who Jesus was, for better or for worse.

One of the difficulties with verbal Jesus-figures is that the name Jesus or Jesus Christ means that Christians can feel ultra-sensitive about what they often refer to as blasphemy. It is probably better to hear this expletive use of Jesus’ name as “profanity” rather than blasphemy—which is deliberately offensive. However, one might notice that there can be effective use of Jesus’ name. As in At Close Range where Sean Penn is threatened, “I’ll beat the Jesus out of you,” and he answers, “I haven’t any Jesus in me.”

One of the most effective was the telemovie Peter and Paul, where Paul spends some time with Peter in Galilee and recounts much of the teaching of Jesus.