Das Neue Evangelium (The New Gospel, 2020)

© Fruitmarket_Langfilm_IIPM_Armin Smailovic

"I couldn't do a Jesus film here as Pasolini did" explains director Milo Rau, partway through The New Gospel "without including these real social problems we have and go back to the Gospel and go back to the social revolution for which Jesus stands for in his time." Charged with reworking Pier Paolo Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) as part of Matera's stint as the European City of Culture in 2019, Rau initially headed to the ancient southern Italian town imagining a more conventional take on Pasolini's famous adaptation, but things changed when he encountered the improvised migrant settlements around the outskirts of the city. 

The economic migrants and asylum seekers that stay there were living in severe poverty, often working on the surrounding farms for around four euros a day in stiffling conditions and returning to improvised homes without water or electricity. Rau decided this was the situation that should be at the heart of his multidisciplinary project which not only included documenting the lives of those living in temporary migrant settlements, and casting them in a Jesus film, but also taking part in non-violent marches and protests that sought to draw attention to the issues.

In the lead role of Jesus, Rau cast African-Italian activist Yvan Sagnet, who was given the Italian Order of Merit in 2016 by Italy's then president Sergio Mattarella. Sagnet first became an activist in 2011 when working as a student labourer he witnessed first hand a colleague passing out due to heat exhaustion. The foreman docked his wages to cover the costs of getting him medical attention. Such practises are not uncommon particularly on tomato and orange farms, which are often mafia run.

What makes Rau's "utopian documentary" so interesting is the way it juxtaposes Matera's apparent serenity with the struggles of these migrants. It was similar levels of rural southern poverty that attracted Pasolini to Matera in the first place. The lack of development that left the city unspoilt was primarily a sign of poverty. In the years since Matera doubled for Jerusalem in Pasolini's Matthew, it has been used subsequently for a string of other Biblical films including King David (1985), The Nativity Story (2006), Young Messiah (2016), Ben-Hur (2016), Mary Magdalene (2018) and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in 2004. But it's Pasolini's film that is very much front and centre here not only in terms of ideology and direct homage but also artistic form. Pasolini described himself as a "pasticheur" cobbling together disparate source material drawn from both "high" and "low" culture.¹

The film continues this tradition, but with a new twist for the 21st century. Careful shot-for-shot reproductions of scenes from Pasolini's 1964 film sit alongside documentary-style making-of footage  that recall his location scouting films such as Sopralluoghi in Palestina (1965) and Appunti per un'Orestiade africana (1970). And in weaving these two elements together Rau recalls Pasolini's tragi-comedic short from La ricotta (1962). It blurs the boundary between documentary and fiction taking "making-of" type footage and blending it back into the mix. In one shot straight out of Pasolini's film Jesus has his head bowed and eyes closed as if having breathed his last. But then teh director says "cut" and Sagnet open his eyes and breathes a sigh of relief as the camera keeps rolling beyond the end of the scene.

This juxtaposition of contrasting images kicks in early in the film between the first and second proper scenes. One minute of Rau and Sagnet chat as they survey the beauty of Matera at sunset, the peaceful old city bathed in dusky light. Suddenly there's a cut to a roving daytime shot within one of the temporary settlement on the outskirts of the ancient city. 

While it's the kind of contrast that Pasolini would have loved, the cross-references go far deeper than this. Rau is joined on set by the star of Il vangelo  Enrique Irazoqui, now in his mid 70s and a freeman of Matera, a status he very much appear to enjoy (alongside his role in international chess). Irazoqui fulfils several roles not only does he act as an ambassador for the film within Matera (a fan expresses their admiration for him at one point and he swiftly takes the opportunity to encourage them to come to the shooting later in the day), but also he acts as a coach to Sagnet as well as appearing in the film as John the Baptist - handing over the mantle to his cinematic successor. Moreover Irazoqui also features in the film as his younger self. Two excerpts from the 1964 film are shown firstly as Irazoqui, Rau and some of the other crew watch it from within a tiny cinema, and then later as the film is shown in the open air to a group of the migrants. 

Rau's New Gospel also incorporates various sections of music from the original - a reminder of how transformative that music is - though interestingly it's the older, classical pieces that Rau retains. The more modern songs from Il vangelo's soundtrack are replaced by other more contemporary songs again an interesting blend of folk and more contemporary African music. 

These direct references are complemented by more oblique ones Sagnet (out of character) arrives at a fig orchard only to find this time fig trees have been destroyed by hail and rain, rather than by Jesus' curse. And of course Pasolini's original is repeatedly recalled in views of the city (both in precisely matching compositions and 'just' in the background) and in discussions about the project they are undertaking, including that opening scene where Rau and Sagnet discuss Matera's cinematic pedigree. 

The two also discuss Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) in this scene, and as with Pasolini's film, numerous verbal and visual references to The Passion follow. Also starring is Maia Morgenstern the actor who played Jesus' mother in Gibson's film. Here she reprises her role re-enacting identical shots, most notably during the crucifixion, but also at times evoking images of Pasolini's mother Susanna in the same role. The other scene that recalls Gibson's film is Judas' suicide where already troubled local children hound him and chase him far from the city.

In The Passion of the Christ that sequence was one of the most troublingly antisemitic parts of the film. Here the question of race cuts in a different direction. Firstly, the children's faces do not distort (whereas in Gibson's film this perpetuated the children of the devil trope). Secondly, whereas in The Passion the issue of race centred on the depiction of those playing Jewish characters, here the suggestion is the persecution these children dish out is racially motivated. In isolation that could also be read as antisemitic, but the difference is the way the film consistently centres itself on the modern parallels. The film's terrain indicates the children here meant to be Italian not Jewish. 

There's a similar unease during the scene with Jesus and the crowd before Pilate. Again this is one of the problematic elements in The Passion and here the question of race is at the fore as someone in the crowd racially abuses Jesus for being black. That could be read as indicating that the crowd here was loyal to Rome (is there always more of a sense of this in Italian Jesus films than in those of Hollywood I wonder?), but it could also be read as drawing a sharp divide between the proto-Christians and the Jewish people. Again the way the film persistently invades the historic footage with its modern context throws the focus heavily onto modern interpretations, but, in honesty I'm not entirely comfortable in either scene. But then I suspect I'm not meant to be.

But perhaps the film's most disturbing scene occurs during an audition for the guards. In what feels like the film's longest shot a seemingly mild-mannered practising Catholic removes his shirt, picks up a whip and beats a plastic chair to within an inch of its life, all the while unleashing a tirade of racial abuse. The film gives little indication as to whether the man is improvising or if these are lines he has been given. Something is unmasked in that moment, but is it an unrecognised acting talent, or an indication of of the strength of racist feelings that exist towards African migrants. The options are so stark that is feels a little reckless to leave them without comment or clarification.

In a sense, this is just one of many examples of self-perception and reality being out of step. In addition to this actor, and Matera itself (with rich tourists flocking seemingly unaware of the poverty hidden around the city's fringes) we could add the city's mayor. He chooses the role of Simon of Cyrene and is shown pontificating about how a his official role is about servanthood.² Yet he also represents the town's authorities who are not only failing to act to alleviate the migrants suffering and exploitation, but also exacerbating it. Viable accommodation for the migrants remains empty for years. Meanwhile the mayor's police destroy even the meagre temporary accommodation some migrants had. Having visited one of the improvised migrant settlements searching for people to join his march into the city, Sagnet returns later to find the police have bulldozed it. "Foxes have dens..but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head".

The film highlights the illegality of some of this activity n(paying below minimum wage for example) and is at pains to point how rules in place to protect migrants and farm workers are either not being applied or actively broken. This is why the first words of Jesus spoken in the film are from Matt 5:17 - "I have not come to break the law but to fulfil it". This seems to be the heart of much of the activism of Sagnet and the others. The rules are in place to protect them. Often what is happening is either neglectful or illegal. 

The film does manage to end on a positive note, a resurrection of sorts I suppose, as the church manage to provide some space for accommodation and Sagnet is able to celebrate the creation of a mafia-free brand of tomato sauce, but it's set against a backdrop of tragic stories: acquaintances and family members lost at sea, racism facing those who survive, and system that either unwillingly or deliberately works to prevents the many migrants entering the country from thriving. For all its celebration of Italian culture and )religiously inspired?) activism, this is not a film that dishes out easy answers.  

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1 - Stack, Oswald (1969) Pasolini on Pasolini. London, Thames and Hudson/British Film Institute. p.28

2 - When the scene does arrive there is an interesting role reversal here. Ever since Sidney Poitier played Simon of Cyrene in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) he has often been portrayed by black actors, usually assisting a white Jesus.

Here are some interesting links which I don't have time to embed in the above text just now.

The Guardian Review

Peter Chattaway's preview

Casting call & details from Matera

New York Times: A director asks...

New York Times: Director Turns an Immigrant

Variety Venice Film Festival review

Official Website - Photos, clips, presspack

Producer/Distributer summary

Online streaming 1-4th April 2021

Histoire de Judas (2015)

As the cradle of cinema in general, and biblical movies in particular, France's religious films (often featuring long static takes) have travelled from the Lumieres, Pathé Passion plays and Alice Guy, via the likes of Robert Bresson and Philippe Garrel, to find recent expression in works such as Le fils de Joseph (2016) and now Histoire de Judas (The Story of Joseph). Of course this kind of slow, contemplative cinema is hardly unique to France, but the connection between the two is certainly well-established.

Histoire is a strikingly beautiful film. Director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche sets his take on the Jesus story in the midst of some remarkable exteriors on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Ameur-Zaïmeche was born in Algeria, before his family moved to France two years later, which is perhaps why he chose to locate the film in the Biskra province in northeastern Algerian and the Roman ruins at Thamugadi in the Aurès Mountains.  While his film is very much anti-epic in style with it's long static takes and its slow pace, in an odd way the breathtaking scenery lends the film some of the same kind of feeling the original audiences might have got from a DeMillean spectacle; one is seduced by the striking images, even though there's an historical unlikeliness inherent in their eye-catching nature. Riccardo Centola sums up well the film's anti-epic style:

Lo stesso Gesù viene rappresentato volutamente secondo canoni antispettacolari, in atteggiamento quasi sempre meditabondo, a viso semi-coperto, mentre snocciola frasi celebri nel modo meno enfatico possibile.

Often Jesus' representation is deliberately according to anti-spectacular traditions: in attitude, almost always brooding; his face half covered, while he rattles off celebrated phrases in the least emphatic manner possible. (translation mine).¹

Irina Lubtchansky's cinematography brings a sensuous, materialist quality to the images here. When a woman anoints Jesus with perfume - which we have just witnessed her bartering prized possessions to obtain - you can practically smell the aroma of the oil as it dribbles tantalisingly across Jesus' forehead. As with other films directed by Ameur-Zaïmeche's, the ambient sounds are enhanced giving the impression of a world that endures beyond the confines of the narrative. Elsewhere it's the lighting. In contrast to the bright, colourful exteriors dominated by blue skies and ocre rocks, the interiors opt for more a tenebristic feel. Indeed Ameur-Zaïmeche cites Caravaggio and Rembrandt as the inspiration for these scenes. ²

Visually Histoire de Judas recalls a number of Jesus films. The anti-epic and desert locales recall Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo (Gospel According to Matthew. 1964) and Albert Serra's less familiar El cant dels ocells (Birdsong, 2008), but also, to a lesser extent, Le lit de la Vierge (The Virgin's Bed, 1969), although that may be partly due to both films - and perhaps French-language Jesus films in general - typifying the tendency to veer into philosophy. (Indeed, the trial scenes feel similar to those from Jesus of Montreal (1989), for this very reason, and that's only French-Canadian). Surprisingly, the Jesus film to which Ameur-Zaïmeche actually refers to in the press pack is Carl Theodore Dreyer's (ultimately unmade) Jesus of Nazareth.³ However, the most striking piece of intertextuality is with Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Both films rely on desert locations, even during the trial scenes and both films are set amongst Roman remains which whilst largely ruined nevertheless both feature prominent columns.  

One other Jesus film that comes to mind while watching Histoire is Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Both films re-cast Judas as Jesus' closest friend, who knows him even before his temptation in the desert and who remains faithful even after Jesus' crucifixion. Ameur-Zaïmeche's film goes several steps further, however, for here Judas is not even responsible for leading the guards to Jesus.⁴ Indeed this attempt to "rehabilitate Judas" with a more sympathetic portrayal is the film's main premise.⁵ The opening scene shows Judas ascending a mountain to retrieve Jesus after his 40-day fast, which has left his master so weakened by the experience that Judas has to give him a piggy back all the way back to Nazareth. Later Judas persuades his former zealot colleagues to arrange for a crowd to attend Jesus' triumphal entry in to the city and he quickly follows his master's lead in destroying the cages and tables in the temple. "No living being deserves to be in a cage" he announces as the people begin to contribute to the carnage.

However the biggest and most significant deviation from the Gospels surrounds the Last Supper and Jesus' arrest. Earlier in the day Judas witnesses a man from Qumran (who is presumably meant to be an Essene, the group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls) writing down what Jesus is saying. Judas knows Jesus is opposed to this (he "distrusts the word that is frozen, and which will inevitably become dogma, a tool of power, an instrument of domination and submission") and so having confronted the man, seeks permission to destroy his writings. And this what Jesus means at the Last Supper when he tells Judas to do what he has to do quickly.

[SPOILERS]So while Jesus and the other disciples head to Gethsemane (seemingly without the knowledge that Jesus is to be arrested there) Judas heads to Qumran and burns the Essene's writings. However, shortly afterwards the man finds his records in ashes and rushes to confront Judas, stabbing him in the stomach and leaving him for dead. Judas is found and returned. A Samaritan (named so in the credits⁶) returns him to the city, but by the time Judas awakes and staggers to Golgotha, Jesus has already died on the cross. Judas finds Jesus' recently vacated tomb and unaware of the significance of what has happened lies down 'in Jesus' place' and dies. The shot deliberately evokes Hans Holbein the Younger's "The Dead Christ in the Tomb" (1521-22),⁷ and is the first film I can think of where Judas dies not by hanging as in Matt 27:3-10, but in a way that more closely relates to the Bible's other description of Judas' death in Acts 1:15-20.[END SPOILERS]

But the film's inherent sympathy for Judas is perhaps best embodied by the fact that Ameur-Zaïmeche himself plays Judas and that he chose his close friend Nabil Djedouani to play Jesus. (Djedouani is a director in his own right and is also credited by Ameur-Zaïmeche as an Assistant Director, one of a number of cast members to also take roles in the crew - Marie Loustalot cast as Bathsheba, was assistant editor).⁸

Ameur-Zaïmeche's five other major films - Wesh wesh, qu'est-ce qui se passe? (2001), Bled Number One (2006), Dernier Maquis (2008), Les chants de Mandrin (2011) and Terminal Sud (2019) - have, to a greater or lesser extent, explored Algerian-French identity, and the accompanying internal and external conflicts. His Berber family moved to France when he was just two, so just as all his other films have primarily been in French, and so too is Histoire. This does seem to have raised a few eyebrows,⁹  However, whilst it's understandable that a director born in Algeria might seek out Algerian locations to stand in for the Holy Land, as someone who has lived in France since the age of two it's only natural that his film is shot in French. Rather than being a purely Algerian film it's more nuanced and complex than that.

However, the use of French in an Algerian context does recall the country's suffering under French colonialism. In particular the extended scenes where Pilate (Régis Laroche) and his colleagues - played by a white actors -  interrogate Jesus adds an extra dimension, almost as if they are events from the fringes of the Algerian War. Pilate fears Jesus is a revolutionary and wants to quell the threat to the empire. "Look all around you. Your empire lies in ruins" says Jesus at one point, "it’s in my name that nations will place their hopes".

That said the tone of the discussion here is decidedly philosophical compared to standard Hollywood fare. It feels like a number of French-language Jesus films similarly pit Pilate and Jesus against one another in a battle of philosophy, though perhaps my impression of that is exaggerated by my love of existential New Wave movies. Nevertheless, both Golgotha (1935) and Jesus of Montreal (1989) feature relatively long sequences where Jesus and Pilate engage in philosophical tête-à-tête. It perhaps also reflects Ameur-Zaïmeche's uses of Roger Caillois' "Ponce Pilate". I have to say I'm not hugely in favour of these kind of portrayals: The more Pilate appears as philosophical, the less he seems like the brute of Luke 13, Philo and Josephus, and the more the blame for Jesus death deflects from him onto the Jewish people. That said, given that Ameur-Zaïmeche's motivation for making Histoire de Judas was to counter antisemitism, it's less of a concern in this case.

These concerns are also offset by the film's handling of the Barabbas figure. Here he is called Carabas and he appears to have a severe cognitive disability. Pilate has him arrested but the chief priests seeing the injustice appeal to Pilate and persuade him that Carabas is not a threat. By dismantling the way the Gospels place the two men in opposition, and by making distinction (found in Mark 15:6-8) between trying to save Carabas / Barabbas and trying to have Jesus killed this also counters many of the ways that the text has often been presented which reinforce antisemitism.

However, perhaps the film's biggest weakness is that it's unclear who exactly was driving Jesus' execution. Judas is recast as Jesus' great friend, nowhere near the events in Gethsemane. The priests have some qualms, but don't seem particularly involved and even Pilate seems reluctant. Things kind of fall on one of Pilate's advisers, but it's not exactly convincing.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting take on the story and one which is beautifully shot. For those who are interested, it's currently available on Mubi along with several of Ameur-Zaïmeche's other films.

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Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat have also reviewed this film at spiritualityandpractice.com. Moreover Reinhold Zwick has written more extensively on the film in the soon to be published T&T Clark Handbook of Jesus and Film (pp.67-76) edited by Richard Walsh and also containing an essay from me.

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1 - Centola, Riccardo (2015) "21 MFF Histoire de Judas" at Cinemafrica, 11 November. Available online: http://www.cinemafrica.org/spip.php?article1603 

2 - Frodon, Jean-Michel (2015), “An Interview with Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche,” in Sarrazink Productions (ed.), Presskit for Story of Judas. Available online: https://medias.unifrance.org/medias/7/42/141831/presse/story-of-judas-presskit-french.pdf

3 - Frodon, "Interview"

4 - In Last Temptation Judas does this only after Jesus' emphatic instructions to do so. It's hardly what could be called a betrayal.

5 - Ameur-Zaïmeche, Rabah (2015) "Director’s Note" in Sarrazink Productions (ed.), Pressbook for "Story of Judas". Available online: https://medias.unifrance.org/medias/44/47/143148/presse/story-of-judas-presskit-english.pdf

6 - Zwick, Reinhold (2021) "Inculturation and Actualization: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Histoire de Judas" in Walsh, Richard (ed.) T&T Clark Handbook of Jesus and Film, London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. p.69

7 - Frodon, "Interview"

8 - Frodon, "Interview"

9 - Not only does Frodon ask Ameur-Zaïmeche about this in the press-pack interview, but both Centalo and Zwick (p.67) have also questioned this decision/choice/move.

Lamentations of Judas (2020): Podcast

It's been 11½ years since I last posted on the Bible Films podcast. Podcasting has come an awful long way in that time - to the extent that I'm somewhat embarrassed by the older entries, but I've been wanting to return to it for a long time, and to try a new, more conversational approach.

So I'm delighted to have just posted a discussion about the recently released Lamentations of Judas a fantastic part drama-part documentary which tells both the story of Jesus and the modern(ish) day story of some of the combatants in the Angolan Civil War. 

It's a very special film typified by the kind of natural lighting and straw-tinted landscapes that made films such as Timbuktu (2014) and Wallay (2017) so special.

This time round I'm in discussion with Melanie Pegge most widely known as an artist, musician, but an art psychotherapist by profession. As some of the film's publicity talked about how it was the process of re-enacting the story of Jesus' betrayal that enabled these former soldiers to open up about their experiences and subsequent rejection I thought Mel would bring a fascinating perspective to the film and indeed she does.

Please have a listen and please, if you could, "like and share" that would be fantastic. My old podcast channel currently only has a couple of votes and, as one of those is a "one-starrer", it doesn't encourage others to give it a chance! You can find it at one of these places:

Podbean
iTunes
Google

Black Jesus (1968)Seduto alla sua destra/Out of the Darkness

This week marked the 60th anniversary of the Democratic Republic of Congo's independence from Belgium. Belgium's relationship with the Congo has been back in the headlines in recent weeks after recent Black Lives Matter protests resulted in the toppling of statues of former king, Leopold II, who was responsible for 10 millions deaths in the former colony in the late Victorian era. On Wednesday the current monarch, Leopold's descendant King Philippe expressed regret for "painful episodes" and the "injuries of the past".

Congo's transition to independence is the subject of one of the more explicit Christ figure films, Black Jesus (1968) by Italian director Valerio Zurlini. The title, which was added for the film's American release several years after it originally debuted at Cannes (Kinnard and Davis, 167), puts a strong interpretative slant on the film which was less forceful in the original Italian title Seduto alla sua destra (Sitting at the right hand). However, the original English title Out of Darkness combined with its setting in DRC during Belgian colonialism and its theme of the savage nature of supposedly civilised Europeans closely align it to Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella "The Heart of Darkness".

Moreover, like other Italian productions of the era, the film was original intended as just one part of a four-segment composite Vangelo '70. The three other segments saw Carlo Lizzani's take on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Bernardo Bertolucci's adaptation of the barren fig tree and Pier Paolo Pasolini's La sequenza del fiore di carta (The Sequence of the Paper Flower) featuring a man so lost in his bliss that he is deaf to God's calls to respond to the misfortune around him. When Zurlini's material proved to be too long it was recut into a film in its own right, while the original project replaced Zurlini's material with shorter films by Jean-Luc Godard and Marco Bellocchio and was released as Amore e rabbia (Love and Anger, 1969).

Both the biblical nature of the original project and the film's evolving title give a heavy indication of the allegorical element of the film, but the plot itself is a fictionalised retelling of the death of DRC's first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba came to power following his victory in DRC's 1960s elections and the subsequent granting of its independence on the 30th June. Just ten days later Belgium sent in troops to protect its citizens (who were still resident in the country) and, at the start of September, Lumumba was dismissed by DRC's new president. A military coup followed on the 14th September 1960 and shortly after Lumumba was confined to his home. Two months later he left his home to tour the villages in a bid to regain power but was arrested after four days. In Feb 1961 the military government announced his escape and three days later reported he had been killed by villagers, but even at the time this was viewed as a cover up.

While Zurlini's film named its lead, played by athlete-turned-actor Woody Strode, "Lalubi" the resemblances are unmistakable, even in an era when Lumumba's reputation was still in flux. Originally released just seven years after the events portrayed, the change of name allowed a little room for manoeuvre. As is typical of  Zurlini's work he eliminated "all unnecessary elements, including aspects of the historical and spatial context" (Brunetta, 237). 

The film opens zooming in on a poster offering a rewards for Lalubi's capture accompanied by the sounds of machine gun, There's a cut to crowds listening intently to Lalubi at night. The script (by Zurlini and Franco Brusati) cleverly combines Lumumba's words with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and commissioning his followers ("Destiny has chosen the meek to defeat the strong", "Whoever saves food, let him divide it, whoever has plenty, let him give to those who have lost everything"). Various shots of Lalubi rallying in a series of remote locations are intercut with scenes of white soldiers scouring Congolese villages as the reward money offered by the wanted poster rapidly increases. Remote sounds on the soundtrack give way to the sound of violent machine guns, human cries and crackling fires as the soldiers tighten the net around Lalubi. Eventually a Judas figure discloses his master's location to a Colonel in the Belgian army. Up to this point, Lalubi's face has been hidden from us. Now it is shown in close-up, the start of a sequence of three such shots overlaying Lalubi's face first with that of his eventual executioner (as he steps into the darkness), and then by one of Oreste who at this point is unknown to us.

That final shot in the sequence ends the extended prologue, and moves to the location where most of its action will take place, inside an improvise army base where Lalubi's interrogation and torture will take place. From the start of the film the claustrophobic inside world is contrasted with the apparent freedom of the wide open space outside. There's repeated use of doorways, where the high contrast between the bright sun outside and the silhouettes of those inside signify characters moving from light into darkness. We first encounter Lalubi being forced down a set of steps, as if descending into hell. The shot is taken from the angle of Oreste - a fellow prisoner whose torture prefigures that which Lalubi will receive and who quickly forms a strong bond with Lalubi. Whilst the torture scenes, the most horrific violence is left off camera, conveyed instead by the subjects horrific screams. This is particularly harrowing in the case of Lalubi's screams later in the film which echo through the makeshift prison, terrifying Oreste, whose reactions match our own.

Indeed Oreste stands in for the audience. Like the majority of the intended audience he is a white Italian and like Lalubi his role is also composite. Historically he corresponds to one of  Lumumba's two colleagues who were also taken into custody, but he also corresponds to one of the two thieves executed at the same time as Jesus. The precise reason he is in prison is unclear but he is drawn to Lalubi/Jesus from the start and rapidly becomes a caring and protective figure for the would be spiritual/political messiah. Later in the film a second "bad thief" is also imprisoned with Lalubi and Oreste. Oreste's name, however also recalls the Greek Hero Orestes and perhaps Aeschylus' trilogy on the subject which contrasts revenge with justice and which Zurlini's friend Pasolini was looking to adapt in an African context.

The structure of this main section of Black Jesus is fairly simple. Oreste is tortured. Lalubi is brought down an interviewed by the Colonel. Oreste and Lalubi are placed in the same cell and strike a bond with one another. Lalubi is tortured and returned to his cell, Oreste tries to comfort and look after his now battered friend.

Each of these five scenes is masterfully executed, from the distressed, bleached white crumbling plaster on the walls and enticing diagonal compositions to the dialogue which impresses even in the English language dub. Oreste's interrogation features plenty of low angles and fast editing in contrast to the relatively civilised discussion between Lalubi and the Colonel who offers to release Lalubi if only he will sign a declaration rejecting those who fight to defend him and his cause. 

This scene, in particular, crackles. Strode does not particularly resemble Lumumba, but he makes for a striking Christ-figure, strong yet polite, sharp-witted and erudite but physically tough. He exudes a calm that never compromises his passion or clarity of focus. His opponent in this scene makes for a world weary Pontius Pilate. In one sense Lalubi is utterly in his power and you don't need to have much knowledge of European oppression in central African countries to know how things are going to turn out. Yet in another sense lacks any power whatsoever over his prisoner, and he knows it. Having seen his halfhearted attempts to bribe Lalubi with his freedom fall flat, he attempts to outwit him. "When white men abandon these countries what happens? I'll tell you. They shed enough blood to overflow the rivers of the Congo" the Colonel argues. "If Africa is like that Colonel, either you never taught us anything, or it would have been better if you hadn't" comes Lalubi's dismantling reply.

The real strength in the portrayal of the Colonel is the way it decodes the typical portrayal of Pontius Pilate. Despite various sources describing Pilate as a vicious tyrant, he always seems to come out as a compromised everyman. He's weak, but under tremendous pressure. Here the Colonel is the same. An easy figure for the audience to relate to. But the reality is that he is a monster, The colonial racism and white supremacy in the quote above. The willingness to have his prisoner tortured even though he knows it will change nothing. When a senior African figure - presumably modelled on the leader of the military coup and future president Joseph Mobutu - orders him to have Lalubi killed he offers little resistance and passes on the order. He's the kind of man who is happy to have a cosy chat with a victim before getting someone else to do his dirty work for him. 

Yet for most of this interchange it is only the violence of Lalubi's supporters which is debated. The Colonel blames Lalubi for the deaths of Belgian soldiers, When the prime minister replies "I'm not a man of war and I hate violence", he counters "it ought to be consoling for their mothers to find out that this is the action of men who are 'peace loving'". Lalubi's reply, however cuts to the heart of the issue highlighting these soldiers complicity in oppressing those native to the Congo: "You can tell their mothers their sons died here and not in Belgium."   

It is here where the film's presentation of Lalubi as an intermediary between Jesus and Lumumba is at its starkest. On the one hand it includes the film's strongest association between its hero and the historical figure of Lumumba. The Colonel quotes Lalubi's words "We're not your monkeys any longer". While these words are widely held to be a rebuke Lumumba delivered to Belgium's then ruler King Baudouin on Congolese Independence Day, there's little evidence he actually said it (Baugh 92-93). The film references this ambiguity, and the broader mythology that built up around Lumumba, by not only having the Colonel say it rather than Lalubi, but also by having Lalubi debunk various aspects of the mythology that is building up around him. Given that this has increased significantly in the years since his death, particularly since the start of the century, the film is almost prophetic in the way it highlights the widening gap between popular perception and historical reality. That such a divide is often claimed between the historical character of Jesus and the 'Christ of faith' seems unlikely to be coincidence. The film implicitly questions the reliability of the Gospels as a source of truth about Jesus. 

Not dissimilarly at one point the Colonel asks if he is a "witch doctor" based on Lalubi's intuitive feelings about his captor, but Lalubi denies it. There's very little indication of the miraculous or supernatural in Black Jesus and when it does arise it is either directly contradicted, as here, or open to interpretation. Perhaps most striking in this respect is the film's epilogue. Having not only murdered Lalubi, but also the two other prisoners who witness his demise, the soldiers drive on, only to have their path blocked by a small boy dressed in a pristine white sheet. Following their logic to its grim conclusion they fire a machine gun at him as he turns to flee, but he remains unharmed. The soldiers stop shooting and watch him disappear into the background, though whether it is because they "have been transformed by the transcendent mystery of life beyond death" as Baugh claims (110) or simply because the effort to track him down, combined with the a realisation of the immorality of doing so, seems unlikely to be worthwhile.

Certainly there is a hint of the angelic about this figure. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that Dornford-May's more well-known African Jesus film Jezile (Son of Man, 2006) also portrays angels as small boys similarly attired. The way he runs into the vanishing point clouded by smoke only enhances that interpretation, but perhaps he to is (partially?) responsible for the truth about Lalubi/Lumumba eventually coming to light, or the symbol of hope for the future for the newly liberated nation. Incidentally this does not appear to be the only influence on Son of Man. The shaved head of that film's Jezile, the shots of murdered villagers by government officials and, most tellingly, the shot of a Pieta composition taking place in the back of a truck all seem to reference Zurlini's film.

Despite undoubted good intentions, both films also share slightly problematic depictions of sub-Saharan Africa. While both films could be described as presenting an African Jesus both are the product of white, European directors. In Black Jesus it seems significant that despite the known interference and political pressure from Belgium and the US, the character at the top of the power-structure is the African Mobutu figure, who is presented as utterly ruthless and entirely dismissive of the Colonel's qualms. While the Colonel corresponds with the Pilate of popular and artistic imaginations, it is the Mobutu figure who represents the historical Pilate. Lalubi may counter the Colonel's statement that "when white men abandon these countries...They shed enough blood to overflow the rivers of the Congo" but he does not entirely dismantle it and the later ruthlessness of the senior African figure also seems to support the problematic trope that still exists today that in the absence of white rule, Africans turn to bloodshed.

Similarly whilst the setting of Jezile is never made explicit, numerous factors suggest South Africa, yet it is a South Africa where white colonialism seems entirely absent. West describes the film as "one set in a post-liberation South Africa, with the dream of the 'new' South Africa and its 'rainbow nation' in tatters...one more example of Afro-pessimism" (427). Both films portray an Africa that once given over to black rule has become mired in corruption, chaos and bloodshed, rather than one enjoying the benefits of its freedom and liberation. 

Furthermore Kinnard and David cite an uncredited reviewer from the Chicago Sun-Times (it sounds like it is probably Roger Ebert) who is concerned about its "dangerous lessons" that "black people have a beautiful nobility...that comes from being oppressed" and the film's suggestion that they "can only maintain this nobility if they remain forever passive" (167-8). Undoubtedly Strode's is a suffering saviour and Lalubi's words in the prologue though his scenes with the Colonel allow him the chance to voice his ethos and mission, in stark contrast to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004). While there is some validity to these criticisms, it's also worth recalling the way his friend Pasolini was challenged about his stereotypical views of the continent by those he interviewed filming his documentary Appunti per un'Orestiade africana (Notes toward an African Orestes) released two years later in 1970. 

Despite such concerns overall this is a positive depiction of a subject that remains controversial, that of a Jesus with dark-skinned. Zurlini skilfully emphasises the links between Lalubi and Jesus by his compositions and symbolism which echo so much traditional iconography without slavishly rehashing overt and clichéd poses from famous religious paintings. The precise links between other works are difficult to pinpoint. Nods to Morandi and Mahler are present, but the cinematography and compositions also seem to echo much of the 1960s (white) Jesus films of Ray, Pasolini and Stevens. Moreover it lives on in the later work of Zeffirelli, Dornford-May and LaMarre,

What is most interesting about the film is the way Lalubi is presented as an intermediary between Lumumba and Jesus. It raises "what-if" type questions without providing easy answers. Might things have been different for Lumumba if he had more closely resembled Zurlini's Prince of Peace? Today Lumumba is celebrated as a symbolic figure and for his oratory, but perhaps if he had succeeded in drawing diverse groups together his leadership may have stood a better chance. At the other side of the Lumumba-Lalubi-Jesus spectrum, the comparison highlights the political element of Jesus' life, which saw him to killed on political grounds (as "King" of the Jews) because he was seen as a political threat. The strength of Strode's performance, and the film in general is that it manages to bring these different elements together in a way that can evoke both a political and a religious optimism while also reminding us that such change rarely happens without determination, compassion and sacrifice.

==============

- Baugh, L. (2011). "The African Face of Jesus in Film: Part One: Valerio Zurlini's Black Jesus." Gregorianum, 92(1), 89-114. Retrieved June 30, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/23582561

- Brunetta, Gian Piero (2003) The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from its Origins to the Twenty-First Century. Trans. Jeremy Parzen.  Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.

- Giordano, Rosario (2020) "The Masks of the Savage: Lumumba and the Independence of the Congo" in Matthias De Groof (ed.) Lumumba in the Arts, Leuven: Leuven University Press. pp.192-206.

- Kinnard, Roy, and Tim Davis (1992) Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen, New York: Citadel–Carol Publishing Group.

- West, Gerald O. (2016) The Stolen Bible: From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon, Boston: Brill

Nollywood Jesus: Our Jesus Story (2020)

 

The Nigerian film industry, often dubbed Nollywood, is one of the largest in the world. Reliable statistics are not that easy to come by, but UNESCO claim that in 2009 it produced more films than any other nation on Earth except India and it's been claimed that, in 2013 at least, the Nigerian industry is/was third in terms of revenue behind India and the US, largely off the back of strong home video sales. So given that around 45% of the country's 191 million people are Christian, I've long wanted to do a little digging to find out about any biblically themed Nigerian films.

As, it turns out I didn't need to search very long or very hard. There are a number of titles, which I'll investigate more closely in future posts, but among them is a film which premiered in March this year. Our Jesus Story has been produced by Ojiofor Ezeanyanche's O.J. Production and was directed by Tchidi Chikere. Chikere has over 100 films to his credit (though IMDb does not yet list a lot of them, including Our Jesus Story).

There's a trailer up on YouTube, from which it looks like the film mixes ancient and modern imagery - the trailer's opening scenes feature men dropping from trees and firing rifles, but in other places the costumes more closely resemble first century Judea. Precious 'Mamazeus' Nwogu reads the trailer as establishing "a plot twist of ritual killings and a story of a Christian missionary trying to fight the system". 

Four, things stand out to me from the trailer. Firstly, that aspects of Nigerian culture will be in the foreground, which will make for fascinating, and hopefully challenging, viewing. That ties in a little to the second point, namely that the supernatural looks to be a prominent element of the film. We're shown Lazarus raising and at least two instances of lightning/electricity type effects. Thirdly, given the masses of footage circulating on social media in the last week of authority figures violently assailing, unarmed black men, the footage of Jesus screaming in agony as he is beaten and crucified feels particularly visceral.

Finally, the start of the trailer features a number of Jesus' quotes about relational division. Jesus tells the women of Jerusalem to "weep for your daughters" and this is followed up by the quote "I've not come to bring peace but the sword". This is followed by a moment from one of the subplots where a man acknowledges his father, and the father replies "So you have come back here to challenge me".

There's also a news report from the Première on March 26th including an interview with Frederick Leonard who plays Jesus. Perhaps the most interesting part of it is when he recalls being asked what he found most challenging about the role and he replies that it was "the fact that he's very soft-spoken, very meek, yet very authoritative, very strong, very stern, and very direct. So how do you portray all of those emotions without coming off as brash? It took a lot of work." From the snippets of Leonard's work in the trailer it looks like a really good portrayal.

I'm hoping to be able to review this film, but as Nigeria went into lockdown just a few days after the première I imagine the film has not yet even had a proper release.

La Genèse (1999)

One of the things that is most powerful about studying the Bible on film is the way it forces you to look at the biblical texts through another's eyes. It enables us to see our blind spots and to catch things we might otherwise we may have missed. It can be argued, of course, that the benefits of this are only limited with Hollywood films - after all they are a product of broadly the same cultural understanding that he vast majority of us in the English speaking west all share.

Clearly, then, Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La Genèse (1999) bristles with fresh opportunity. Far from being the product of a group of wealthy middle class westerners, it tells the story of Isaac’s family from an African perspective, specifically that of the Bambara speaking people of Mali, who number only few million people. Whilst it's important to stress that this too is a different culture from pre-historic Canaan, it understands the nomadic tribal context in which these stories are set, far better than any number of Hollywood films. It provides a fascinating series of insights, bringing the tribal context to the fore and exploring the stories with an authenticity that is largely absent in other portrayals.

It's temptingly easy to dismiss some of the ways this adaptation deviates from how we perceive the text - it deviates from the biblical order of the various stories for one thing - but of course that is exactly the kind of thing to which we should be paying most attention. Even after two decades of non-linear story telling through films like Pulp Fiction and Memento people in our culture tend to assume that a series of narratives strung together in a certain order, occurred in that order. But of course that is an assumption, which may or not be valid and the fact that it is not necessarily valid in another, not dissimilar, culture should make us think about its validity.

Given how achronologically we tend to read scripture anyway (for example reading a bit from Mark, then a bit from Jeremiah, then a bit from Genesis and then a verse from Paul etc.) there's much merit in this approach. The convoluted plot line, with flashbacks and stories within stories actually makes the narrative flow much better than The Bible Collection's two films Joseph and Jacob which takes a more straightforward approach. As a filmic device it gives a broad sweep of how unreliable Jacob's clan was in a single snapshot - undermining the Sunday school image of the patriarchs as noble and grandfatherly. Somehow presenting them altogether highlights the instability there.

By refusing to lionise its protagonists it emphasises just how dysfunctional this family was at times. Too often these characters have been stripped of their humanity, and shown simply as one dimensional heroes. La Genèse gives a more realistic picture which testifies to a God who uses such ordinary, broken unreliable people further his will, and offers us hope that he can use us as well.

Sissoko's newly arranged narrative starts with a brief shot of Esau and his servants. Esau pops up regularly throughout the film in similarly brief fashion; as an almost incidental figure around the margins of the story, yet the potential conflict which Esau seeks looms large, casting its shadow across all the other events that are unfolding.

However the incident that drives the plot is Dinah's rape by Shechem and the resulting revenge her brothers wreak on the Shechemites. Perhaps rather troublingly it appears to hold Dinah partially responsible, depicting her as a precocious flirt who, along with a couple of young boys, teases Shechem a little too far.

This attitude is reflected by the Shechemites themselves, who hang around whilst Dinah is being raped and criticise her people for being rootless and without culture. A bloodied sheet is even held aloft for the waiting crowd's approval. The film thus portrays this as a political act as much as a sexual one. Initially Hamor, also, blames Dinah for what has occurred, but then the film becomes the first to give Dinah a voice. She speaks back and rebukes Hamor and he seems to respond to her chastisement and decide to speak to Jacob.

When Hamor seeks out Jacob finds him confined to his tent mourning the death of Joseph. Indeed, Jacob is confined to his tent for much of the film and his inability to lead his people at the time seems to be held responsible for many of the problems that afflict his family. So it is left to Leah to express the family's anger over Dinah's rape and the idea of getting Hamor's people to get circumcised arises from a discussion Jacob has with his sons.

Whilst the film doesn't really make it clear how closely Jacob and Hamor are, it emphasises their connectedness, the "brotherly" nature of their relationship, rather than portraying them as entirely independent of each other. It comes to the fore in particular once Hamor's son Shechem marries Jacob's daughter Dinah as the two men become related, not only through marriage, but also because Hamor and his people partake in the Hebrew ritual of circumcision.

The sequence is easily the most memorable one in the entire film, at least for male viewers, portraying the Shechemites' mass circumcising in wince inducing fashion. Firstly there is the queue of men waiting ominously for their appointment with a man wielding a large, but crude looking, knife and then there are the post-operation scenes of the various men hobbling around trying to minimise the pain. This highlights the link between the crowd complicity in Dinah's rape and their communal punishment. Nevertheless, the women, who also witnessed Dinah's humiliation, not only avoid this "punishment" but make things worse standing by and mock the men. Jacob's sons also mock Shechem: "His crown has fallen and he can't bend to pick it up".

Judah and Simeon take this as their cue to wreak their vengeance and the slaughter is disturbingly thorough. One of the Hebrew attacker pauses when faced with a baby boy, but a fellow countryman insists that even this boy should be killed. The only survivor is Hamor himself (in contrast to the text where he also is killed by Simeon and Levi), who is left to face the cruel implications of his fate: not only has he lost his son and his friends but his tribe will die out with him.

Hamor returns to speak to Jacob who is horrified by his sons' actions, but Hamor takes the incident to the council of nations and the film is there for the majority of its remaining run time. As well as deciding what to do about Jacob's tribe, they also hear the case brought against Judah specifically by his daughter-in-law Tamar.

Tamar's story is another which is covered very sparsely in film. Like the story of Dinah, it casts the man who gave his name to the Jews in a terrible light. Not only is he a co-conspirator regarding the slaughter of the Shechemites, but also a hypocritical user of prostitutes and a man who would deny his daughter-in-law her rights as a widow. Judah is portrayed as vain and foolish in contrast to Tamar who takes things into her own hands. It's no surprise, then, to find Dinah involved in presenting the case to the council of nations. Throughout the film Dinah is portrayed as a strong woman, unwilling to submit to what the various men and what the patriarchal culture expects of her and she is ultimately vindicated in the final scenes when she appears as a witness before God..

It is this sequence that feels most embedded in Malian culture. Tamar's case is serious, yet its telling is accompanied by bursts of rhythmical music and dance and much mocking of Judah. This feels alien to us - as do the images presented as a flashback that accompany it - but again this serves to emphasise the gulf between the original story's culture and our own.

With the assembled group having ruled on these cases Jacob emerges having left his tent and tells the story of how his mother and father met. This, also, is shown with a flashback to accompany Jacob's narration. Jacob intends to use the story to contrast how things have changed between his parents' betrothal and the time in which he now lives - "before the world was torn asunder", but his interpretation is challenged by one who has appeared in the darkness outside the tent: Esau.

Esau challenges Jacob's nostalgic claims that there was a time before "the rift between father and son...between God and man." He reminds Jacob that their father turned his back on Esau and his mother cutting him off and argues that "Since the dawn of time, children have been into rift and discord". At his command Esau's men attack and burn the tent where the council of nations had been meeting and kill their animals. Esau has dreamt that God will bring him justice in the morning and leaves Jacob to tell Benjamin how the two brothers became estranged (accompanied again by a depiction of the events in the story). Jacob repeats his lament - "God no longer hears men".

But no sooner are the words out of his mouth than an angel, in the form of a boy, summons him to an encounter with God. Jacob pleads at length* with God for Esau's forgiveness so that his family will not be destroyed. Interestingly God is portrayed as many voices as a crowd of children in white in the film's most visually creative moment.

However Esau too meets the angel and is told "Put down your knife. Justice is for God alone to will". Furthermore he witnesses his brothers ordeal such that his heart towards him is changed. In the morning it is Esay who turns peacemaker, reconciling with Jacob but also seemingly knowing the truth about what happened to Joseph. And it is he rather than his brother that sends Jacob's sons to Egypt, tantalisingly setting up the story of Joseph as the next chapter in their family's story.

Visually, La genèse is beautifully filmed making the most of the wonderful Malese landscapes, and capturing something of the empty space that typified the world several thousand years ago. Sissoko also uses colour to great effect contrasting the bright blue of Jacob and his family with the orange of Hamor's people, the use of two complementary colours highlighting the gulf that exists between the two peoples. It's notable also that when God arrives it is in a dazzling display of white. Yet nevertheless the film is, at times, very stark and brutal in what it captures – starring unflinchingly at some of the more earthy elements of the story.

Yet for all its grounded-ness in an African tribal culture, the real power of La genèse is the way it testifies to universal human values. Fear, love, hate, revenge, the desire for justice, all of these are present in all human societies from the most primitive early tribes to the supposedly advanced western economies of today. One of the reasons that the stories of Jacob and Esau still have such power today is the way they give voice to those emotions. And La genèse is one of the best Bible films not because of some novelty value, but because it is able to take the latent emotions in the story and give them extra depth and verve, bringing them closer to home even for those of us who reside far away from Jacob and his tribe and kinsmen.

*The discussion is complex and lengthy and would bear a lengthier examination than time permits here.

Dinah and the Shechemites in Film

Having looked at The Red Tent last month I thought I'd things off with a quick look at how different films portray the incident with Dinah, her brothers and the Shechemites. Given that it's a relatively obscure part of Genesis, it has only been covered a few times on the screen, but there are some significant variations between the four depictions with which I am familiar.

The Bible: Genesis (1979)
The first Bible film to cover the story of Dinah was one that pretty much had to. The New Media Bible project was meant to deliver a word for word portrayal of the whole Bible, though in the end only Genesis and Luke were covered and even then I say "pretty much" because certain parts of Genesis (e.g. the Tower of Babel) were omitted.

At the time this film was made the broadly accepted view of what constituted rape was different than it is today. Most, now, (in the UK at least) would agree that what is sometimes called date rape fully qualifies as rape. 36 years ago when this film there was no such cultural consensus. So it's perhaps not surprising that this film depicts the rape of Dinah as being of the more violent variety. She is grabbed, out of the blue, in the town square and pulled off to a more discrete location. This is the only film that depicts the incident in quite such a black and white manner.

In a not-dissimilar vein, it's interesting that as Dinah is "rescued" from her brothers from the smouldering ruins of Shechem, she is shoved around by them as if they are angry with her. I think this blaming of the victim seems to be something the film wants us to see and accept as offensive, though whether this is due to what they see as her complicity in her rape, or her acceptance of her subsequent marriage is unclear.

The strangest thing about this clip is the way in which the men of Shechem are so compliant in accepting their fate. On hearing the news they simply shrug and walk off and the camera neither seems to anticipate a further reaction or find their fate shocking in any way. The scene is only a little longer than 5 minutes.

The Bible Collection: Joseph (1995)
The Bible Collection devotes separate films to the stories of Jacob and Joseph and, perhaps surprisingly, this episode is covered within the longer Joseph film rather than the more obvious location within her father's story. In the cultural understanding of the time, daughters were seen as the property of their father's before marriage.

The story is given quite a more screen time here - around 15 minutes - and is set at a wedding celebration, contrasting the "right" way of doing things, rather than the way Shechem chooses to act. Dinah herself is far younger here: she's very much still a girl rather than a woman. This is a slightly tricky area. Whilst on the one hand marriage did take place at a far younger age (and of course Dinah has not yet been considered ready to be married) the Bible Collection's leading actors are consistently very much of the western contemporary world, ethnically white and of ages to match (e.g. Louise Lombard who was 29 when she played the young virginal Esther in the Bible Collection's 1999 adaptation).

The situation is further complicated by the seemingly flirty eye contact between the obviously underage child and her rapist-in-waiting. When she is suddenly taken ill and is lead out to a back room her attacker makes his move. Whilst the scene makes it clear there was no consent, not least Dinah's screams, I find the eye contact rather troubling. I'm not convinced the film wants to rule out any blame on Dinah's part.

When Hamor subsequently approaches Jacob the idea of these Shechemites getting circumcised is very much Jacob's idea and, again, there are more objections from the sons of Israel than from the soon to be scarred men of Shechem. They attack and give a rather clichéd war cry as they 'sneak' up to the "unsuspecting" city, but the depiction of the slaughter is not very graphic and Jacob's rebuke to his sons is no particularly powerful.


La genèse (1999)
The longest and most interesting portrayal of these events is from Cheick Oumar Sissoko's La Genèse (1999) which retells the story as an African tribal conflict. Like Joseph it does seem to hold Dinah partially responsible. She is depicted as a precocious flirt who, along with a couple of young boys, pushes Shechem too far.

But the film's African perspective highlights other concepts that westerners easily overlook. For example the city dwelling Shechemites resent the nomadic Israelites and criticise thm for being rootless and without culture (all the while Dinah is being held in their city). There's also the grim image of a bloodied sheet being displayed for the waiting crowd's approval. They are made complicit in the act which somehow transforms from an ac of sexual frustration to a political act on behalf of Hamor's subjects.

Perhaps it is a father defending his son, but initially Hamor blames Dinah for what has occurred, but then the film becomes the first to give Dinah a voice. She speaks back and rebukes Hamor and he seems to respond to her chastisement. Throughout the film Dinah is portrayed as a strong woman, unwilling to submit to what the various men and the patriarchal culture expects of her.

When Hamor seeks out Jacob he does not do it face to face initially as Jacob remains mourning in his tent. It is left to Leah to express the family's anger, even in the face of many gifts from Hamor. The idea to tell Hamor's people to get circumcised arises only once Jacob has held a second discussion with his sons.

But in marked contrast to 1979 version this film grimly portrays the Shechemites mass circumcising in wince inducing fashion. Firstly there is the queue of men waiting ominously (and unforgettably) for their appointment with the man with a meat cleaver and then there are the post-operation scenes of the various men hobbling around trying to minimise the pain. I highlights the link between the crowd complicity in Dinah's rape and their communal punishment. Meanwhile their womenfolk just stand by and mock them. The Hebrews mock Shechem also. "His crown has fallen and he can't bend to pick it up"

When the slaughter does come  it is disturbingly thorough. One of the Hebrews gives pause when faced with a baby boy, but a fellow countryman insists in no uncertain terms that all the males should be killed. The only survivor is Hamor - in stark contrast to the text where he also is killed by Simeon and Levi - left to face the cruel implications of his fate: not only has he lost his son and his friends but his tribe will die out with him.

The Red Tent (2014)
I've expressed my views on this film already elsewhere but essentially what The Red Tent does is stress how in the cultural of the time the story occurred/was written rape was primarily about the lack of the father's consent rather than the daughter's. This is why, for example, in that rather troubling passage in Deut. 22:23-29 we find s girl potentially being given in marriage to her rapist, or even stoned, but not being punished if the "rape" happens in the country. The passage simply doesn't start from the perspective that consent is the woman's to give. So in this film Dinah is not taken against her will, but her father and brothers are incensed because Jacob has not given his consent.

The film also has Dinah staying over at Shechem/Shalem's palace the night they have sex which hints at the importance of ancient near east hospitality codes. This further softens up the ground for the brutality of the slaughter scene which follows. It is considerably more violent than any of the previous four.

I must admit I'm in two minds as to what I think about the way this film portrays the "rape". On the one hand it could be seen as powerfully exposing the sexism of this part of biblical culture where a woman didn't even have a right to control who had sexual access to her own body. But on the other hand it could be criticised for airbrushing or infantilising a potentially horrific event into a teenage girl's romance fantasy. The sheer brutality with which the film shows Dinah's brothers wreaking their revenge suggests the former, but even with that Shalem and Dinah's love affair still feels a bit twee.

Zimbabwean Jews & A Round Ark

Occasionally I post things here just so I know where to find them later (I do also use Delicious, but try not to overcrowd it).

Anyway, the BBC website has a story about the Lemba, a lost Jewish clan which has lived in Zimbabwe for two and a half thousand years. It sounds like one of those lost ten tribes of Israel stories that circulate every so often but what caught my eye was the fact that DNA evidence "confirm(s) their Semitic origin". The article was a forerunner for a special programme on the BBC's African Perspective which I think you might even be able to downloaded outside the UK.

This reminds me of the story in The Guardian from New Year's Day about Noah's Ark being round. I meant to blog it at the time but assumed it would be all over the biblioblogs. In the end it only made a few of them (Mariottini, PaleoJudaica - apologies if I missed you off), and even then it was relatively late. That's maybe because for this story to become relevant to Biblical Studies you have to accept that the ark story is relatively late and based on an earlier Babylonian myth. That said, I'm still surprised not to have seen it mentioned more widely.

Al-Mohager (The Emigrant)

For some reason the story of Joseph has never really appealed to me. Perhaps it's just that it's never really clear what, if anything, Joseph learns along the way; or that the story seems to skip by the interesting parts of the story early on, but spends an age over the film's protracted conclusion. So my hopes for Youssef Chahine's Al-Mohager (The Emigrant) were not particularly high, even though the synopsis on the back of the DVD promised to tell the story from the Egyptian perspective, rather than the Hebrew.

The film was released amid a storm of protest in Chahine's native Egypt for depicting an Islamic prophet, despite it changing the name of all its characters. So Joseph becomes Ram, Jacob is known as Adam, Potiphar is called Amihar, and his hitherto unnamed wife, Simihit. Initially this is a little confusing particularly as the film also takes a very unconventional approach to it's source material. Whilst the film doesn't really come from an "Egyptian perspective", it does strip the story of its supernatural and mythical elements, suggest different motives for its characters' actions, and fill in the gaps in the biblical narrative - all of which is a little disorientating. Yet these alterations actually become the film's biggest strength. Shorn of his miraculous ability to receive and interpret dreams, the film is able to focus on the person of Joseph far more than other such productions. And ditching Joseph / Ram's famous coat of many colours distances Mohager from the campy excesses of Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. Good - the idea of the coat being multicoloured was all down to mistranslation anyway.The end result is that Chahine and Khaled El Nabaoui, his leading man, craft a Joseph figure that we can really care about. He still has something of a superiority complex, but his desire to improve on his life, rather than simply settling for his family's hand-to-mouth existence, becomes his driving force. He decides that he wants to discover how to farm the land rather than wander from place to place and it's the start of Joseph's interest in agriculture. The Bible's never really clear how Joseph became such a brilliant agricultural strategist, but this idea is perhaps this film's biggest concern.

Once sold into slavery in Egypt, Ram's audacity and confidence gain the attention of his otherwise unreachable master. Having repeatedly expressed his desire to learn how to farm he is eventually given a strip of desert to experiment on. Good coaching, hard work, luck and Ram's cleverness make the endeavour a tremendous success.Having succeeded, however, he is drawn back towards the city and Simihit, his master's wife. Simihit also happens to be the high priestess of the local cult and, as her husband is a eunuch, she looks to Ram for fulfilment. As in the biblical version of the story she makes a pass at Joseph and quickly tries to cover her tracks by claiming he was forcing himself on her, but here she relents shortly afterwards, meaning that Joseph's time in jail is significantly shorter than we are used to. Having regained his freedom he now has the requisite experience to be able to advise on national agricultural policy. It's still a bit of a leap, but it seems much more understandable given his love for, and understanding of, farming.

Much of the film's success is due to Khaled El Nabaoui strong performance as a cocky yet likeable Ram. Whilst some of the other performances are a little weak, El Nabaoui expertly combines youthful exuberance, drive, fearless confidence, with boundless energy. There's a twinkle in his eyes that remains even as he matures which, again, suggests an explanation for why he treats his brothers the way he does when they turn up at his door asking for food. The story is, mercifully, abbreviated at this point and Ram limits the games he plays with his brothers before revealing his identity.Aside from El Nabaoui's performance and the innovative handling of the original text, the film also owes a lot to Chahine's eye for a good image and his ability to evoke so strongly nomadic and civil life in the Egyptian region almost four thousand years ago. There's much that's alien about the world that Chahine takes us to, yet much that is also familiar. It's also good to see the story acted out by characters who are racially similar to the original characters.

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Derek Elley, author of 'The Epic Film' has also written a review of this film for Variety.

Jezile (Son of Man) – Jesus’s Key Speeches.

Ever since my review and scene guide for Jezile (Son of Man) I’ve been meaning to post something specifically about the various speeches Jesus gives in the film. Jesus’s speeches in this film are more political than any other Jesus film I can think of, and this has been considered one of the reasons why the film has yet to have a wide release in the US. Claiming a political stance for Jesus is a risky business (although that doesn’t seem to stop many people), but I think this film does it reasonably well. Whilst it may look on the surface like this film’s Jesus makes ‘political’ speeches as opposed to the ‘spiritual’ ones of the gospels, I want to examine the two key speeches in the film to see exactly what they do say and how much of it has a basis in the source texts. (Inevitably this list will not be exhaustive).

Speech 1 (~30 mins)The occupiers and elders blame the people for the robbery, unrest and killing. Unrest is due to poverty, overcrowding and lack of education. We must prove to them that we are committed to non violent change. Then negotiations can begin. We must not let ourselves be corrupted, but rather fight poverty, epidemics and thuggery. Listen, listen..Each human life is important. It’s our right to protect our beliefs…

But this never becomes the right to kill.

We don’t need weapons to fight this battle
[The disciples hand in their guns]

This is perhaps the least sourceable of the speeches Jesus gives. Even so there are echoes of John 11:47-48 in the first sentence, Matt 26:52 in the third (although this verse needs to be balanced with Luke 22:36 & 38), and Matt 5:48 in the fifth. The line “this never becomes the right to kill” is clearly linked to not only the sixth commandment, but also Jesus’s teaching on how this should be expanded (Matt 5:21-22; 38-39; 43-44). Whilst these verses have certainly been selected to bolster a certain point of view, there’s no doubt that they are in the screenwriter’s mind. The call to the disciples to leave their former lives behind them also evokes the stories of Matthew/Levi and Zaccheus

Speech 2 (~ 37 mins)
We are too busy with modern trivialities as if they are the most important things. If you constantly find fault with yourself, you will lose the struggle with real sin. All authority is not divinely instituted. If you follow me we will have peace.

I’m not here to destroy beliefs and traditions but to create them anew. We must forgive those who offend us and those who trample on our comrades, otherwise our hatred will destroy our future.

When those with imperial histories pretend to forget them, and blame Africa’s problems on tribalism and corruption, while building themselves new economic empires, I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall.

When I hear someone was beaten and tortured in the Middle East I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall.

When I hear that in Asia child labour has been legislated for I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall.

When politicians in Europe and the USA defend trade subsidies and help restrict the use of medicine through commercial patents I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall

When you are told, and you will be, that people just “disappear” you must say we have been lied to. And evil will fall.

This is perhaps the Key speech that the film presents. The opening sentence seems to summarise Matt 6:25-34 nicely, but the rest of that paragraph sounds more like the kind of things we think Jesus would say, rather than being things he actually did say. In fact, it could be argued that these sentences go against certain things Jesus said. For example, Jesus considered that each person needs to eradicate the personal sin in their lives (based on say Mark 9:43-48 and parallels). Alternatively, John 19:11 records Jesus telling Pilate that his (corrupt) power was divinely instituted. That said it’s also worth noting that Jesus says “All Authority on Heaven and earth has been given to me”. But this paragraph is just the opening to the speech, when it gets going it is clearly expounding the teaching of Jesus evoking Matt 5:17 (“I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil”), Matt 5:38-48 (Love your enemies), Matt 6:14-15 (Forgive men their sins). The final part of this speech is reminiscent of the sending of the seventy two in Luke 10, particularly the line about seeing “Satan fall” (v.18). From the film’s point of view, however, this final line is also significant because it explains the significance of the film’s later variation of Jesus’s “crucifixion”.

In some ways, however, picking through these two speeches to find echoes of verses from the gospels is only one way to approach this, and it is perhaps more reasonable to examine the speeches as a whole and ask whether they fit a biblical perspective or not. There is a huge swathe of individual verses which are used to justify non-violence as something Jesus both taught and practised, but no single speech that neatly sums up that philosophy. Clearly the filmmakers have taken the stance that it is appropriate to lump these disparate quotes together in order to forge two such speeches, and I’m certainly sympathetic to that approach.

The problem with this methodology is that things are not always that simple. Jesus may have said "those who live by the sword, will die by the sword" (Matt 26:52) after Peter had cut of Malchus’s ear, but the reason he had the sword in the first place is because it seems that Jesus told him to bring it (Luke 22:36, 38).

On balance, I personally see the various words from the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’s example as he is arrested, tortured and killed, as outweighing the verses that are routinely used to argue for violent / military methods on occasion. I have to admit, however, that the Luke 22 verses trouble me. But then it’s easy to sit in my ivory tower and pontificate about such things. What Dornford-May and co. have done is take a radical message about non-violence to a context where the words of Jesus still need to be heard.

Jezile (Son of Man) Scene Guide

Having reviewed Mark Dornford-May's Son of Man a fortnight ago, I now want to examine the passages from the bible it utilises. This is slightly more complicated than usual as the modernisation necessarily distorts some of the passages. It's also difficult because the imaginative treatment of Jesus's death is a more symbolic treatment of the events than a literal modernisation, but more of that below.

Temptation - (Matt 4:1-11)
[extra-biblical episodes]
Annunciation - (Luke 1:26-38)
Magnificat - (Luke 1:46-55)
Birth of Jesus - (Luke 2:1-7)
Shepherds and Angels - (Luke 2:8-20)
Wise Men - (Matt 2:1,11)
Joseph Warned - (Matt 2:13-5)
Slaughter of the Infants - (Matt 2:16)
Baptism - (Mark 1:9-11)
Calling the 12 - (Mark 3:13-19)
Death of Herod - (Matt 2:19)
[Various Teaching]
[extra-biblical episode - amnesty]
Adulteress - (John 8:2-11)
Jesus Anointed by a Woman - (John 12:1-8)
Judas' Agrees to Betray - (Mark 14:1-10)
[Various Teaching]
Jesus Predicts his Death - (Mark 8:31)
Healing of a Paralytic - (Mark 2:1-12)
[Various Teaching]
Raising of Lazarus - (John 11:1-44)
Exorcism of Young (Wo)man - (Mark 9:14-29)
"Sermon on the Mount"
[extra-biblical episode]
Jesus and the children - (Mark 10:13-16)
Triumphal Entry - (Mark 11:1-10)
Conflict with the Elders - (John
[extra-biblical episode]
Pilate and the Elders - (John 18:28-31)
Last Supper - (Mark 14:17-25)
Jesus Predicts Peter's Denial - (Mark 14:26-31)
Gethsemane - (Mark 14:32-42)
Arrest of Jesus - (Mark 14:43-50)
Beating and Mocking - (Mark 14:65)
Peter's Denial - (Mark 14:66-72)
Burial of Jesus
Death of Jesus
"Resurrection"
Crucifixion
Ascension

Notes
The following paragraph contains spoilers. As referred to above, the most inventive re-interpretation in the film is the events of Jesus's final week. In order to create a credible scenario, and to fashion the most compelling message for it's audience, Dornford-May moulds the arrest and death of Jesus into that of modern, African, minority-resistance leaders. So the narrative departs from the biblical order of events as early as the Triumphal Entry. Immediately afterwards Jesus meets with Caiaphas and Annas ("The Elders") in the parallel of the Sanhedrin (or not) trial scenes. Pilate then meets with the elders and agrees to turn a blind eye to their actions regarding Jesus - washing his hands in the process. The film then moves to the Last Supper and Gethsemane and Jesus's arrest. However, when Jesus is mocked and beaten, he is beaten into a coma, and then placed in the grave, and then shot. It is left unclear as to whether Jesus dies from the beating or from the shooting. However, then his mother Mary learns of the location of Jesus's body and releases him from the grave (a "resurrection" of sorts). Mary then displays his body on a cross - the significance of which is discussed in my review. Finally, we see Jesus climbing a hill with a host of the feathered angel boys - a scene of ascension. The result is a iconic yet modernised depiction of the events of Christ's death which relies on visual and thematic similarities for its points of comparison rather than strict adherence to the original narratives.

The issue of laying down arms is key to this film. The common episode from John 8 where a mob is dissuaded from executing an adulteress is not only included here, but also preceded by a scene where Jesus gets the twelve to surrender their guns. Both scenes how weapons of one form or another being laid down. Later when the Sermon on the Mount is disbanded by government soldiers Peter considers throwing a rock, only for Jesus to order him not to, prefiguring the arrest in the garden. This ties in with the film's overall theme of non-violence and a call to a peaceful resistance movement. Matthew, for example, is not a tax collector called to surrender his ill gotten wealth, but a resistance fighter who has to lay down his arms to follow Jesus.

I want to revisit the various blocks of teaching in a later post, as in most cases it has been radically revised. Essentially, each section of teaching pieces together a number of disparate phrases from the gospels, and then updates them so they form coherent sermons to the modern world he inhabits. That said one speech is delivered to a crowd from the top of an iron shack - a subtle reference to the Sermon on the Mount.