JESUS FILMS

My father was a spy. He would never call himself that; he would say he worked in the underground during the war, THE war, WWII, the one that was supposed to end all wars.

He told me how the men met in secret after the pubs closed. They met with scraps of information from all over London, written on bar napkins. One man had heard a number, one man heard an aircraft type, one heard a time and another, a location. The men laid out the napkins on a great table and pieced together clues of the enemy attack.

Perhaps the mystery of God is pieced from similar fragmentation. Each person’s telling of the story of God holds some truth, but nobody has the whole truth. The Tree of Knowledge has many branches. Perhaps we are meant to work together to understand God. This is my best Juess to explain the array of Jesus films.

I made the mistake of getting a jumbo soda when I went to see The Last Temptation of Christ. I had no idea it was going to be a three hour movie. I made it to the crucifixion and I thought, no problem because the movie’s almost over. WRONG! And furthermore, the last hour of Temptation was completely off-book from what I already knew was going to happen. I was ready to pee in my soda cup.

Now I felt The Last Temptation very clearly stated the ultimate sainthood of Judas, the disciple willing to give his soul, not just his body, so that Jesus could fulfill his Messiahship. So I’m not sure what all the fuss was about just last year over Judas, as if that were a new subject. The idea’s been a mote in the public eye for nineteen years. At least.

I don’t think Franco Zeffirelli portrayed the betrayal of Jesus quite that way in his Jesus of Nazareth. I can’t remember. I do recall, however, that movie has absolutely everybody in it. It was like they pulled the fire alarm in Hollywood for the casting call. Olivia Hussey plays the Virgin Mary. She looks fresh from Romeo And Juliette, where we know she ain’t no virgin. Most memorable was John Wayne as the surly Centurion at the cross: “Surely this man…was the son of God,” as only John Wayne could do it.

The Monty Python crew has had their crack at the story with Life of Brian, a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern version of the life of Jesus, where a minor character is extolled while the true hero suffers unobserved. Actor, Graham Chapman, steps out onto a balcony, nude, and the crowd shrieks! They were supposed to react; they were Brian’s adoring followers, but main cast and crew didn’t realize it was actually illegal for Chapman to publicly expose himself like that. The production had hired locals for the extras to cut down on union wages. The locals knew the law. They reacted all right!

And of course there’s Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail in which they manage to rhyme “Camelot” with “spamalot,” what more should I say? I only mention it as a comic segue to The Da Vinci Code.

I once tried to write an apocalyptic tale of a nuclear physicist who chases down the Higgs boson, the God particle, using a particle accelerator. Then I read the introduction to Angels And Demons, the precursor to The Da Vinci Code, and found that author, Dan Brown, had done a much better job and actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about. And so I’ve never sought the holy grail.

I went to Paris the summer New Coke came out. Tears for Fears was touring Europe. All you heard was “Shout” from every discothèque. Pei’s pyramid was not built yet at the Louvre. I read about it later, in a French magazine, back when I used to could read French. So I’ve had to wonder if the glass pyramid isn’t something faked, like the moon landing. Nevertheless, it plays a prime role in the architecture of the movie, The Da Vinci Code.

For of those of you who have seen this movie or just don’t care, please read on. For those of you who haven’t, I’m about to ruin the plot.

The Da Vinci Code is grossly lacking in a lurid sex scene, but most God movies usually are. Immaculate conception and all that, I suppose. If you haven’t figured out by halfway through that Sophie is the chalice of the Lord’s blood, then you really haven’t been paying attention. Audrey Tautou as the holy vessel and the tacky sexual implications are tastefully unstated. Even leading man, Tom Hanks, only gets a hug and gives her a kiss on the forehead at the end, then he’s back on the pursuit of dead non-virgins. Not much of a sex life for him, huh? Anyway, the clues are so well spelled out the movie comes across more like the DUH Vinci Code. And the apple. God didn’t give Adam what Eve did. God didn’t give A-dam what Eve did and she ruined Him for it.

Him who?

God.

She, the archetypal she, calls into question His divinity by underlining His humanity. That’s what the movie’s about.

(As for The Last Supper painting, I always thought Jesus was saying to His disciples, “Look, if you don’t like what’s on the table, you don’t have to eat it, but I’m not serving you anything else.”)

And who could forget/forgive Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and its epic controversy? Sensationalism gutted the heart of truth in this film, kind of like the way this sentence is overwritten. The story of a guy who believes he is the son of God and dies to prove it is powerful enough and doesn’t need an extravagance of Hollywood enhancement. The ware wolf theme with the moon and the devil come off more like a Michael Jackson music video. I half expected Jesus to moonwalk the Via Dolorosa. And I’d hate to see the budget for the stage blood. The blood makes a point, but after the first ten minutes of it you’re drowned in ambivalence toward it. Even the Roman soldiers look bored. The pod racing in Star Wars suddenly becomes more compelling by comparison.

Two elements which I do have to admit worked in Passion were the tear from God and Mary’s long take at the end. The tear from Heaven was a magnificent effect and it made me think back through the film to look for other God’s eye shots—so allegorical to our lives where we miss how much God is watching us. Then there’s Mary’s look at the end with the camera receding into black-out. To have a character look directly into the camera is powerful. It breaks sacred movie-making convention. Burt Reynolds does it in Smokey and the Bandit for comic effect. Bandit shows us that he knows he’s a character in a movie and it’s just a bit of fun, really, like when Buzz Lightyear realizes that he’s a toy. But that’s not what’s going on in Passion.

I don’t know how many seconds the shot lasts, but I had to blink twice while actress, Maia Morgenstern, looks steady on at me. The wind gently buffets her hair around her face to show it’s not a static frame and yet she doesn’t break her stare. Obviously she’s not wearing contact lenses like I was. The Mary character doesn’t even know the whole story yet. She’s unaware of the resurrection, but she knows that this is an important story. The death of Jesus is important and her look purports a mission to tell the story and retell it and keep telling it until you have no more breath to put behind the words you must tell. Through her eyes she seems to say, “You can tell it better. The powerful truth of God is in you and it is for you to use.”

I had a whole bunch more notes on this film and I was going to go on a lot longer than I already have, but when I went to put them together there was a hymnal open in my view, open to the song “I Love to Tell the Story.” I cannot top the sentiment which is apparent in all the above mentioned movies—the enjoyment to tell a story that compels you to your very soul.