Slant Magazine on Passion of the Christ and Last Temptation

There's a great piece comparing and contrasting The Passion of the Christ and Last Temptation of Christ over at Slant Magazine. Essentially it's a conversation between Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard who disagree on various issues, in particularly the weightiness of The Passion.

It's quite long though so I hope to have time later onto read it in its entirety. Thanks to Ron Reed's Soul Food Movies for the tip off.

Channel 4's Jesus Christ Movie Star Available on YouTube

Way back in 1992 I caught the end of a documentary about Jesus films as part of Channel 4's Easter schedule. At the time I regretted missing the rest of it, and remember being intrigued by Jesus of Montreal. It was the first time I had heard of the film, although it would be eight more years until I finally got to see it.

Fourteen years later Channel 4 revisited the subject, broadcasting The Passion, Films, Faith and Fury presented by Robert Beckford and included two excerpts with me. Participating in that documentary got me thinking about trying to track down the older one. The problem was that all I could remember was th subject matter, the approximate year and Jesus of Montreal. I also seemed to recall Baryy Norman's involvement but that seemed to clash with the idea that it was on Channel 4. Eventually I worked out that it must have been Jesus Christ Movie Star from Channel 4 in 1992, but any attempts to get hold of it failed.

Then yesterday when Неделковски Ѓорѓи let me know that some wonderful person has posted it up on YouTube. It's in six parts (due to the way YouTube do things) and runs for just short of an hour. There are a couple of bits missing, presumably due to someone not starting the video again after the advert break, but the only major omission is (I presume) the section on Jesus Christ, Superstar, which is ironic given the programme's title.

The documentary itself was actually quite good, with interviews with those involved in all of the recent major Jesus films: Max von Sydow, George Stevens Jr., Enrique Irazoqui, David Greene, Lew Grade, Robert Powell, Terry Jones, Martin Scorsese, Willem Dafoe and Denys Arcand. There were also a couple of experts: Harvey Cox (Harvard) and Sheila Johnston (then of The Independent now of The Telegraph) and it was narrated by Ian McShane who has a bit of experience with Bible films himself.

For an hour long documentary it covers quite a lot of ground, and there are some real gems in the interviews. It was also apparent that someone had actually worked quite hard on McShane's script. There were a number of fine turns of phrase, perhaps all the more notable because of the relative paucity of well-crafted words in most documentaries today.

I was also pleased to see a bit of footage from a film I was not at all familiar with, James B. Sloan's Barabbas from 1935. It prefigures 2001's The Cross and the film about Mohammed The Message with it's use of Point of View shots in order to comply with a ban on showing Jesus on screen.

I'm not sure how long this film will remain up for, as it's not on the official Channel 4 YouTube Channel. That's good news for those outside of the UK as they will be able to watch it, but it's possible that 4 might ask for it to be taken down at some point. It is of course well within their rights to do so, but it would be a little churlish if they never intended to make it available in another format, so lets hope not.

Bale in Mary the Mother of Jesus

I've started re-watching the Jesus-as-a-grown-up section of Mary the Mother of Jesus and thought I'd write down a few notes.

Locating the transition from Jesus' life as a child to adulthood turned out to be harder than you might expect. Sometimes DVD makers fail to do the most obvious things, and for some reason no-one seems to have thought that it might be a good idea to start a new DVD chapter when we jump from Jesus as a 12 year old to him as an adult.

When we do encounter him as an adult he's 30 (as in Luke) and working as a carpenter. After a shot or two with him banging about bits of wood, there's a phony scene of him dealing with a customer who can't afford the service he has just provided. Jesus just smiles. "Pay me when you can". It's not that I struggle to accept that Jesus may have been compassionate with his customers, or even that he let some of them delay payment that gets me. No it's the sense that this customer's failure to mention his financial situation until after the work was done would be received in such a wet-blanket fashion. And the filmmakers deciding that of all his years working as a carpenter, this would be the moment to show as if to force the point "hey look Jesus is so compassionate".

Like Jesus (1999) this initial focus on Jesus as a carpenter is quickly overshadowed by the death of Joseph. Before he dies Joseph croaks to Mary "Jesus: everything he is, you've made him". Whilst the Yoda-esque sentence construction, and Joseph giving Mary all the credit for how Jesus has shaped up are just about forgiveable, Mary's silence and refusal to share the credit is not. I imagine this dialogue was conceived to highlight May's all-round wonderfulness, but it just makes her appear arrogant and uncaring. Not only is Joseph's statement the rising of a last desperate cry of a man fearing his imminent death - which surely calls for reassurance - but it's utterly unrealistic to imagine that a parent could have been with his son for 30 years and had yet no influence whatsoever on his son (no matter who the son in question was).

Both films also explore the idea that Joseph's death acts as a trigger for the start of Jesus' ministry. Further, both films contend that Mary's advice is pivotal in helping Jesus realise this. The films were released at more or less exactly the same time so it's unlikely this is the result of copying. That said, the way this film does this is particularly galling: Mary conveniently decides to let Jesus know that he actually has a cousin and fills Jesus in as to his behaviour at the River Jordan. Jesus replies that the reason he went to the temple aged 12 was because he heard God tell him to, and now, through Mary's words he has heard God speak again.

So Jesus, along with Mary, goes in search of his cousin, and after hearing his message Jesus decided to take the plunge, but bizarrely Mary then wades into the water to share in the moment. It's a strange moment not because it could not have happened - mother and son being baptised together is eminently reasonable - but because, again, it rings false. The gospels bracket off Jesus' baptism as in some way exceptional. Here Mary is brought, unwarranted, into that bracket, and in a way that is laboured and awkward.

Having only made it as far as 10 minutes through I'm going to have to stop, at least for now, partly because it's late and partly because it's already all got a bit too much. Jesus and Mary have just been discussing his plans for saving the world. "
Those stories you used to tell" he says, as if incapable of original thought, "that's how I'll teach them..."

Does Anyone Recognise this Film?

Photo by Ceoln, used under a Creative Commons Licence

I got an email from someone earlier today asking me if I knew the identity of a film from the 70s, which I guess is kind of a modernised (if species swapped) Jesus film. The picture above is NOT from the film (it's just to look pretty). Here's the description I was given:

I am searching for a film I saw at my church in the 1970's. A reel to reel for sure! It depicted God as a gardener sending his son to a colony of ants. As Christ became an ant, (no dialogue, of course) he was mistreated and ultimately killed. Strange, but very moving, especially for a teenager.

I don't think I've ever heard anything about it. Does it ring a bell with anyone else?

Geza Vermes on Radio 4's Sunday

Just caught part of Geza Vermes's interview by Edward Stourton on BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme. You can listen to the interview on the programme's podcast

Danny Miller on Bible Films

I've not got much time today but for a while I've been meaning to link to three of Danny Miller's articles on Bible films, one on King of Kings (1961), The Ten Commandments (1956) and a general article on Jesus films. Miller is apparently Jewish, and his write-ups have a nice humorous edge.

Mary Mother of Jesus for £2

Just flicking through the latest sale at Play.com and it turns out they have Mary Mother of Jesus for just £1.99 (including delivery!) It's been at least 6 years since I saw that film, during which time star Christian (geddit?) Bale has gone from strength to strength, but as I remember it, it's pretty awful.

I'd be interested to revisit it though, if only to see what Bale does with his part. As far as I recall he's actually only third in terms of amount of dialogue / screen time. The film's main focus is on Mary and just under half the film focusses, therefore, on Jesus' birth (starring Melinda Kinnaman as a young Mary), which obviously excludes Bale. The larger part of the film stars Pernilla August as Mary so Bale is more of a character in her story than vice versa. As I say, it's been a while since I saw this, so that may all be wrong; as may my distant memory that Kinnaman's section was passable (also featuring David Threlfall as Joseph), but August's part was very poor.

There's also one other interesting point of trivia in relation to this film: the same year that this film was released (1999), Pernilla August also starred in another film where she played a young virgin who somehow manages to conceive a son who is expected to be some kind of messiah. That film is somewhat better known, even if it's no more highly regarded - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.