The Bible (2013) - Part 5

Episode 5 of The Bible (Survival) picks up one of the parts of the book that most adaptations tend to miss, so packed into this episode is both a bit on Jeremiah and a good deal of the Book of Daniel. This is definitely one of the episodes in this series that keeps on track to covering the biblical material without getting waylaid in invented subplots.

Jeremiah's story is reduced more or less to him turning up in King Mattaniah's court wearing an ox-yoke and telling his monarch to surrender to Nebuchanezzar.  Nebuchanezzar here is played by Peter Guinness, who I've always enjoyed seeing pop up ever since Spender (1991-93). Mattaniah takes no notice of course so it's hardly surprising when just a few moments later we're treated to Nebuchanezzar putting out the king's eyes. By hand. Because, everything in this series, particularly the violence, has to be completely over the top

Jeremiah is played by Raad Rawi and appears old and shaggy looking, (in keeping with Jeremiah's likely age at this point). Certainly he's nowhere near as hot as Patrick Dempsey, from the 1998 film version, though that film focused far more on the start of Jeremiah's ministry. The contrast is all the greater, then, with the actor playing Daniel. I must admit that when I've read Daniel in the past, it never occurred to me that he might have a six-pack. I suppose I should probably blame the lack of a major-studio produced 50s biblical epic adaptation for that.

The Daniel section of the film not only includes the Lion's Den scene but also has time to show Daniel's rise to prominence via dream interpretation; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego surviving the Nebuchanezzar's furnace (thanks to a suspiciously Jesusy-looking angel); and Nebuchadnezzar descent into madness. Guinness isn't quite munching-grass in these scenes, but that's probably because he's already had his fill of the scenery.

It's not really made clear why on top of being fed to the lions Daniel also has to undergo this trial in just a loincloth, aside from the opportunity to show off the prophet's abs. In any case what the film does do well is to show show a genuinely fearful Daniel, even if we know it will all be okay in the end. I suppose Daniel's near nakedness heightens the sense of his vulnerability. And then the Israelites get to go back to Jerusalem and there's still 7 minutes left to talk about the Romans ahead of the next episode. All in all this is one of the better entries in the series, not only covering a lot of material without getting sidetracked, but by providing one or two genuinely insightful moments.

Prefiguring Jesus in Jeremiah (1998)

Way back in 2009 I compiled a scene guide for The Bible Collection's 1998 film Jeremiah and concluded a write up of a few additional comments on it by saying:

I'm going to make a separate post another day to look at the way that the Jeremiah of this film prefigures Jesus, particularly the Jesus from the later film in the same series.

So I thought it was probably about time I got around to it, particularly as somebody asked me about this the other day.

I don't think there is a cast iron case for saying that the filmmakers were trying to make the Jeremiah of their film into a "type" of Christ. However, there are a few points of interest where the film makes a few additions/interpretations which move things in that direction and particularly in the direction of the Jesus of the Bible Collection's own, later, film Jesus (dir. Roger Young, 1999).

This tendency is most pronounced at the start of the film. Early in the film, when Jeremiah is still a child, he goes to the temple and we're led to believe - by his wide eyes if nothing else - that this is his first time in the city itself. There are quite a lot of similarities, between these scenes and those of The Bible Collection's Jesus being left behind at the temple. The visual identification here is quite strong, not least because the both films are shot on the same set, but there are also similarities in the way the two scenes are shot as well. The scenes include shots from behind the groups as they enter through an archway which frames the temple, and point of view and reaction shots as the two boys both take in the sights of the temple for the first time. It can be argued that this is, if not an actual coincidence, then just a result of the nature of the Bible Collection project, but I'm fairly happy with the school of interpretation which takes each film as a visual "text" not limited by authorial intent.

An additional factor in this scenes is that when Jeremiah enters the temple the shots from his point of view and the accompanying reaction shots convey a mild sense of disgust. It's difficult to pin down what this is due to but it's something that the film expands on when Jeremiah returns to the temple as not only an adult, but significantly as an adult who is now seeing these sights through God's eyes as well as his own. (It's interesting that these later PoV shots, then, become a shot from God's PoV, not just Jeremiah's).

Before all that however, we have the scene where Jeremiah hears God's call. It's notable how the film very much interprets and embellishes this scene - in the Bible Jeremiah says he's "young" but that could mean a young man and there's no specific mention of him being caught up in a vision. These combine then to mean that rather than Jeremiah being a young adult who hears God's call, that this Jeremiah is someone who knows from a very early age that they are in some way very special, chosen by God and set apart for a particular role. Again this nudges the portrayal of Jeremiah towards that of Jesus and increases the similarities between the brief, corresponding scenes of young boys with a special divine calling on their lives visiting the centre of worship for the first time.

A while after this the adult Jeremiah revisits the temple and again we get these PoV shots and the suggestion that Jeremiah is unhappy with what he is seeing. As this opening act of the film progresses it becomes clear that there are two things which are disturbing him.

The first seems to be linked to the slaughtering of the lambs. Whilst this isn't verbally expressed it appears that this is more than mere squeamishness, there seems to be some suggestion that Jeremiah thinks his message, and living faithfully before God, means that this rather unpalatable system is a little defunct.

Secondly, however, these point-of-view / reaction shots are also very familiar, for those who have watched a good number of Jesus films at least, to the shots that frequently precede Jesus' clearing of the temple. And true enough, a little while after this Jeremiah ventures down some of the side streets in the temple region and there he encounters some kind of market trader who is selling idols. The seller tries to persuade Jeremiah to buy something, but Jeremiah's outrage at this affront to God is palpable. And so he turns over the tables, in a way that is classically reminiscent of all those other turning the table scenes (for example, no-one lays a hand on Jeremiah or confronts him, they all just stand back and let him get one with it). This is the film's clearest attempt to draw parallels between its protagonist and Jesus - there's no corresponding passage to this in Jeremiah, it pure invention, or perhaps I should say borrowing.

Another such embellishment is the romantic relationship Jeremiah has with one of his near neighbours. The text of Jeremiah does make it clear Jeremiah is not to marry (16:2), but this is a general command of celibacy, there's no indication that this prevented him from marrying a specific woman.

Whilst the Gospels are silent about Jesus' marital status, in Young's film we find a very similar scenario: Like Jeremiah, Young's Jesus has to reject the woman he looks destined to marry to focus on God's call. This is a not uncommon feature of the Bible Collection series which inserts an extra-biblical love story into several of the biblical narratives which it covers, but the similarity is particularly notable here because in both films the lead character is in love but feels the call on his life in incompatible with this particular romantic relationship.Whilst Jeremiah has things work in a different way (the girl is sold as a slave), at its heart Jeremiah still has to reject the girl because of the call God puts on his life. There are several points of similarity with Jesus (1999) - the relationship appears chaste, but at the stage where an engagement looks on the cards. The girl still lives with her family and both families seem to approve. Then the girl is told it is off suddenly and that this sudden change of course is due to God's call.

There are several other notable similarities between these two films. Firstly, some of the parental relationships are similar, in the first half of the film there are strong relationships with at least one parent and the protagonists is very much still under their wing. Ultimately, however, the lead's parents don't fully understand their child's call and things transition from the son being at the heart of the family home at the start of the film to almost no connection with parents in the respective films' second halves. The protagonists' fathers disappear in the second act having once been very prominent and close to their son in the first half of the film. The reasons are, of course,  different - Jeremiah's father's suffers an extreme embarrassment whereas Joseph dies in Jesus - but it seems strange that family relationships that are presented as being so close at the start of the films just disappear without a great deal of regret or mention of them in the second part of the film.

Not unconnected is the similar kind of plot structure the two films share. We start with the protagonist in the family home, there's a brief scene of their childhood, and they look like they are following in the family trade. Then there's a break in those family relationships as God's call on the hero's life starts to come into effect and they leave home. There's a pivotal scene in the wilderness and then their ministry starts, getting up the noses of some, but crucially in both films not all, of the religious and political establishment. Of course, Jeremiah never dies, but there is a scene where he's tied up in a cage in a cruciform pose and hung up high for all the see (and when he's released the camera focusses, briefly, on the damage to his wrists).

A couple of other things that might have been on my mind when I wrote that comment 7 years ago Firstly in the opening scenes - when all is supposedly well in the tribe of Judah - Jeremiah's family arrives in the temple in the middle of some kind of celebratory procession with lots of palm branches being waved in a very similar fashion to those we tend to see in many depictions of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. There might be something in the text behind that decision, but, if so, I don't recall it.

Then there's the way that Jeremiah's family are kind of seen as outsiders.At one point Oliver Reed's character asks "Why would God send a prophet from the wilderness when you are surrounded by schooled priests?", but Jeremiah was the son of a priest so this is kind of an odd thing to be added in to the text. Jesus of course was from an unknown family and a backwater town. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"

Finally there's the presentation of Jeremiah himself. The biblical Jeremiah's suffering is obviously one of his most well-known characteristics, and this is very much to the fore (corresponding to Jesus which doesn't really give much motive for his persecution at the hands of his enemies, but also Jesus as the suffering prophet in general), but other aspects, particularly ones that are quite unlike Jesus (such as chapters 40-49 where Jeremiah prophesies against other nations) are omitted.

This isn't to say that the filmmakers are seeking to present Jeremiah as a type of Christ, or even that the parallels between the two men, or rather the two portrayals is remarkable, but there are certainly some parallels and some of those go a way beyond what is gleaned from the text itself.
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Incidentally a previous post on this subject referenced Neil MacQueen'S outline to the film which has since been moved. It is now available (again) at Sunday Software

Jeremiah Notes on Scene Guide

I was a little pushed for time on Friday when I posted a scene guide for Jeremiah, so I postponed writing a few notes on it until today.

The first thing to say is that whilst the vast majority of the material is drawn from the book Jeremiah, there are a few places where the film draws on parts of 2 Kings to fill in the historical gaps.

It's also interesting to note that most of the material taken from Jeremiah, aside from the opening, is taken from chapters 20-30. There's not a single reference from chapters 40-49 (where Jeremiah is mainly cursing the other nations), and only one from 10-19 (Jer 16:1-4). This passage - where Jeremiah is told not to take a wife - and Jer 34:8-11 - where Mattaniah frees the slaves before reversing the decision some time later - are used to insert the film's only real extra-biblical sub-plot where Jeremiah falls in love. This is actually a fairly common device employed by The Bible Collection's films, and in some of the other cases the picture is severely derailed as a result. Here the filmmakers manage to keep it under control so it forms interesting speculation that highlights Jeremiah's sad and introspective character.

Working out this scene guide does give me more of a feel for just how jumbled the book's chronology is. Of course some of this is down to the filmmakers rather than the source material, but material from the siege of Jerusalem, for example, is really spread around in such a way as to make me wonder why. Is there a purpose to this ordering, or was this just not considered important or in any way useful?Overall I think the film does a great job of summarising Jeremiah and putting him in his historical context, and it manages to include most of the book's famous passages. One surprising omission, however, is the story of Jeremiah at the potter's house and the attached sayings (Jer 18:1–23). The film does include the vision of the upturned pot, and perhaps the writers thought that too many pot symbols might be confusing. Even so, I would have thought the potter's house passage would have been the one to be selected.

There are a few things I noticed about the call of Jeremiah. Firstly, the film enhances Jeremiah's call with elements from the call of Isaiah (Is 6). In the book of Jeremiah, there's no mention of a vision, and God touching Jeremiah's lips appears to be more of a metaphor than anything else. We're also not told where this call took place. In the film, however, Jeremiah also sees a vision, twice, and on both occasions it occurs in the temple. It's interesting that the second of these quotes part of Jer 5:14 "I have put my words in your mouth", but cuts off before the use of the word "fire". Instead this element is represented visually as part of Jeremiah's call.

There is actually a further part of Jeremiah's call - the vision of the almond tree, but I noticed that the interpretation of this vision alters some of the details of this vision. The text simply says that the sign means that God is "watching to see that my word is fulfilled". But the film expands this to say "as this tree is in a hurry to sprout, so God is in a hurry to carry out his work".

Lastly, I'm going to make a separate post another day to look at the way that the Jeremiah of this film prefigures Jesus, particularly the Jesus from the later film in the same series.

Jeremiah - Scene Guide

I've been working away on a scene guide for the Bible Collection's Jeremiah ever since I re-watched it a couple of months ago. Of all the scene guides that I have done to date, this has certainly been the most difficult to put together. Not only is Jeremiah the Bible's longest book (based on number of words), but it's chronology becomes increasingly unlinear the closer you look. Furthermore, an odd verse can carry a great deal of narrative weight, but trying to find it, even with the wonders of the internet, can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

As well as my guide that follows below, I would also like to recommend an excellent outline of this film by Neil MacQueen. MacQueen's outline gives timings and descriptions rather than verses like my own, so the two complement each other quite well.

Book of the Law Found - (2 Kings 22)
Jeremiah's ancestry - (Jer 1:1)
Josiah's Passover - (2 Kings 23:21-23)
[Extra-Biblical Episode - Josiah enters Jerusalem]
Call of Jeremiah - (Jer 1:4-10)
[Extra-Biblical Episode - Nebuchadnezzar crowned]
[Extra-Biblical Episode - Jeremiah's Girlfriend]
Prophecy of the Almond Tree - (Jer 1:11-12)
[Extra-Biblical Episode - Jeremiah's first sacrifice]
Prophetic vision/2nd call - (Jer 4:22; 5:28-29, 14)
Jeremiah prophesies at the temple - (Jer 7:1-11)
Jeremiah beaten - (Jer 20:1-2)
Overturned pot - (Jer 1:13-19)
Jeremiah told not to take a wife - (Jer 16:1-4) (complains)
[Extra-Biblical Episode - Jeremiah meets Baruch]
Prophecy about fall of Jerusalem - (Jer 22:1-5)
King tears and burns the scroll. - (Jer 36:1–24)
Jermiah asks Baruch to re-write scroll - (Jer 36:28)
Babylon invades Jerusalem - (2 Kings 24:1-12)
Temple stripping & deportation - (2 Kings 24:13-17, Jer 27:19-20)
Jeremiah the ox-yoke and Hananiah - (Jer 27:1-28:17)
Jeremiah imprisoned in courtyard - (Jer 32:1-3; 36:31)
Jeremiah calls for surrender - (Jer 21:1-9)
Mattaniah frees the slaves - (Jer 34:8-10)
Jeremiah put in prison - (Jer 37:11–16)
Mattaniah unfrees the slaves - (Jer 34:11)
[Extra-Biblical Episode - Judith killed]
Jeremiah's complaint - (Jer 20:7-9)
Jerusalem under siege - (Jer 52:1-6)
Mattaniah seeks God's word - (Jer 37:17-20)
Word against Jerusalem - (Jer 21:10)
Officials speak against Jeremiah - (Jer 38:4-5)
Promise of Return - (Jer 32:37-40)
Jeremiah calls again for surrender - (Jer 20:4, 38:17-20)
Jeremiah thrown in a cistern - (Jer 38:6)
Ebed Melech frees Jeremiah - (Jer 38:7:13; 39:15-18*)
Jeremiah confronts Mattaniah - (Jer 23:1-2, 38:17-21)
Jeremiah buys a field - (Jer 32:6-15)
Babylon capture Jerusalem - (Jer 39:1-3, 52:6-7)
Mattaniah captured fleeing - (Jer 39:4-5, 52:7-9)
Mattaniah's sons killed, blinded - (Jer 39:5-7, 52:10-11)
Jeremiah freed - (Jer 39:11-12)
Jerusalem destroyed - (Jer 39:8-10)
God promises to rebuild the temple and the people's hearts - (Jer 31)

Notes
I've chosed to call Jeremiah's primary royal opponent by his original name Mattaniah, rather than the name Zedekiah which was given to him by Nebuchadnezzar as this is what the film calls him throughout. Interestingly scripture mainly calls him Zedekiah.

I have a few more points that I'd like to make on this, but I'm pressed for time at the moment so I'll return to this task next week.

Edit: This can now be found here.

Thoughts on Jeremiah (1998)

I got an email asking me for my thoughts on The Bible Collection's Jeremiah (1998) so I thought I may as well post them here so anyone else who's interested could read them as well. First off, I must admit that it's been a while since I watched this film in its entirety, so I reserve the right to change my mind about it when next I watch it.

Overall this is one of my favourite entries in the Bible Collection series. This may be partly due to the fact that it was one of the first in the series I watched and therefore things like the (seemingly) obligatory introduction of a love interest didn't bother me to the same extent as it did 10 or so films later.

The other main reason I liked it was far more positive. Prior to watching it I knew very little about Jeremiah, and considered his work rather dull. I believe that it's the longest book in the Bible if you count the number of words rather than the number of chapters. And most of it is fairly miserable prophecies. There's the odd high point - lots of people love to quote 29:11 (usually out of context) - but it's a hard book to really get into both because of it's size and it's make up. It's the biblical studies equivalent of exploring Russia.That said, what the film did for me was draw my attention to just how much narrative there is in the book; to make the links between Jeremiah and the other bits of the Old Testament that I was more familiar with; and to give me the broader context in which to read Jeremiah's prophecies. Most of the information was already there, but now I could see how it fitted together - perhaps the equivalent of being given a good map of Russia, or even a Lonely Planet guide or something.

There are a few memorable scenes in the film. One image that stands out is the discovery of the lost book of the law in the days of Josiah. This is shot from both inside and outside the sealed compartment which it has been stored in all these years. There's some question as to whether this passage should be taken as literally as the film takes it, but it's a memorable interpretation nevertheless. The PoV shot taken from inside the compartment almost makes the lost scroll a character in itself. It draws attention to the scroll's story, lost and neglected for years and now finally liberated.Another sequence that sticks in the mind is the one in which Jeremiah hears God's call. This is shown as a flashback if I recall correctly, and the child actor employed in the role of young Jeremiah does a decent job.

I mentioned the love interest above, but I seem to recall a scene where Jeremiah and his girlfriend are separated which is fairly powerful. It I remember rightly this spurs Jeremiah on to follow God's call more strongly. It's all extra-biblical of course, but it's an interesting hypothetical character motivation, and adds to the sense of melancholy that comes through so powerfully from Jeremiah's writings.Other memorable moments include those where Oliver Reed's General Safan throws Jeremiah in a hole, where Jeremiah prophecies with a yolk around his neck and the scene where his prophetic writings are thrown into the fire bit by bit. The film draws to a close around the time of the exile to Babylon under Zedekiah / Mattaniah and these scenes are also fairly striking.

There are a few other places that anyone wanting to read more about this film should check. Firstly the Prayer Foundation have a review featuring a few extra photos. There's also a few comments by Peter Chattaway at Canadian Christianity. Lastly there is some footage of the film available at Video Detective - it's the trailer for a 4 film set which also includes Esther, Solomon and Genesis: Creation and Flood.