The Blind Christ (2016)

Christopher Murray's El Cristo Ciego (The Blind Christ, 2016) leaves Netflix tonight after a 5 year run in which it's garnered almost no attention, even among those who should really be most interested. Rotten Tomatoes only lists a single review, in Spanish. IMDb lists a few more, but only one is in English, by the inestimable John Bleasdale, and even then it has the URL wrong. I checked with friends from Arts and Faith and none of them had seen it or even heard of it, despite it feeling, to me at least, like exactly the kind of film that has always fared well in their Top 100 lists. And tonight it sinks without trace, leaving Netflix unlikely to return and still without an English language DVD release.

To me this feels like a significant error on the part of those interested in the Bible and film. "Sometimes..." the DJ of my current favourite radio show says as he reflects on a great track from the 80s that failed to make the charts "...we got it wrong". This is a film that deserves better even if people don't like it's conclusions, it's undoubtedly worthy of discussion.

Despite Murray's English-sounding name, both he and his film are Chilean. Murray, interviewed here by Variety, was born in Santiago and graduated from the Faculty of Communication at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he is now a professor. While lead actor Michael Silva is a professional, most of the rest of the cast are non-professionals, inhabitants of Chile's Pampa del Tamarugal.

Even without knowing Murray's affiliations, his understanding of Catholicism is unmissable. The title alone, cut down from the working title "Parable of a Blind Christ",¹ suggests as much and it's not long into the film before the centrality of Chile's surviving vestiges of Catholicism becomes apparent. The proportion of the population professing Catholicism has dwindled from 70% in 2006,² to just 42% last year,³ and there's a sense in which, the buildings remain, and desire for something beyond the people's experience remains, but they only rarely coincide. Like the rest of the film's architecture found in desert villages the churches are crumbling, the priests have gone, leaving the remnants of what was, perhaps, once a thriving community. Poverty permeates almost every shot, yet Murray finds a dignified beauty in that, which never detracts from the sense that these are people who are both desperate for something to happen, yet highly sceptical that it ever will. "God abandons and is abandoned".⁴

So when a stranger comes visiting there's a mixture of anticipation and detached cynicism. The stranger is Michael,⁵ the film's central figure, through whose eyes and voice we witness much of what we're shown and told. The film opens with Michael recalling a story, and there are a lot of those, of a boy who asked his friend to nailed his hands, Christ-like, to a tree , while a waited three hours for a sign. "His sacrifice... attracted God's attention". It's unclear, though, who the boy was and what actually happened. Did Michael himself witness a miracle, or is it just a story, a parable, that so reflects Jesus' often enigmatic way of talking?

Either way when Michael hears that his friend's cousin, Mauricio, has pneumonia,⁶ he sets off across the desert to see if he can enable a similar piece of divine intervention. Michael's actions carry a high price. His father immediately tells him that he'll disown him if he goes and when regardless he leaves that night, he encounters similar opposition elsewhere.

His first port of call is to a desert shrine/grotto where people queue up to partake in the ritual. Michael insensitively says "You only have to pray to God. He's inside you" and tells the story of an artisan, who work became revered so much that he created a sculpture of a volcano so spectacular it unintentionally burned down all his work. When he follows this up by saying "Man's work disappears" and pointing out that the shrine's central "figure doesn't walk or talk" he's forcibly moved away from the shrine, tied to a stake and left there. Eventually a local woman, who's tells him she's a carer for her mother, helps liberate him and he comes to her house and helps bathe and care for her mother. 

Michael makes many similar statements and tells many such stories. "I don't believe in any religion" he says at one point, "God doesn’t talk to the church he talks to the people. When you’re alone the Christ inside you opens his eyes". Michael, despite what people begin to think, is not that he is special, but that "Anyone can heal. Anyone who realizes they come from God". "All you have to do is believe". "If god is with you you shouldn’t be scared." Phrases like this crop up at regular intervals. There's certainty that typifies many young people of his age, that lacks empathy, or at least awareness of the lives that people have lived

Yet Michael too wavers in his self-assurance. The audacity of his journey and occasional claims such as "I'm going to heal him" at times contrast with his delivery. When a man asks him to pray for him he suddenly seems to lose confidence at the last minute sensing that God has abandoned him. But it's also around this point in the film that Michael develops his most significant relationships in the film, first with the teenaged Bastian and then with his mother. Bastian idolises him; his mother enjoys his company and shares her story (including a shocking story about Bastian's father – "a fucking psychopath". The evening after an impromptu driving lesson, the two sleep together. 

That night, in the darkness, a young girl calls him " the Chilean Christ and prays with some folk as they gather round a campfire. It's unclear if it's because of this, or because of what happened with Bastian's mother, but either way Michael leaves before sunrise to resume his travels. This time however he faints in the desert and is rescued by another small community.

Here there appears to be some sort of functioning faith community, albeit one led – in the loosest sense of the word – by an ex-prisoner who had been handed the reins by the last, rapidly departing, official priest. He attempts to convince Michael to look after the village's tiny chapel (though he questions "who am I?") and he completes some baptisms in a nearby stream. When this meets some opposition he tells the story of a hit man released from prison shoots himself only to find love. And so he undertakes the final leg of his journey. 

At this point I'm going to raise the [SPOILERS] tag as I want to discuss the end of the film, but don't want to spoil it for anyone that's reading this before watching the film.

[SPOILERS]When he finally arrives it's clear that stories about him have gone ahead of him and people come seeking miracles. Yet he finds Mauricio not only ill, but in a deep state of depression: "Everything’s happened to me. I sometimes wonder why God keeps me alive. I want to be dead. I don’t want To kill myself. I want him to do it." Yet the number of people who have turned up persuade them that Michael should pray and see if Mauricio will be miraculously healed. The resulting scene is reminiscent both of Andrea Mantega's "Lamentation of Christ" (1480) as well as the climactic scene in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955). 

[SPOILERS]Yet unlike Ordet, when Michael prays, his friend is not healed. Mauricio tries to reassure Michael (and perhaps himself) by insisting "Your company is enough" but Michael leaves. Having been barefoot for most of the film – perhaps a symbol of his spiritual idealistic naïvete – he slips on a pair of boots – a returns to the prisoner-turned-church leader of the penultimate visit on his travels. Now it is a crestfallen Michael who laments "God has abandoned us". 

[SPOILERS]But now it's the older man's turn to tell a story, one of a girl hadn't slept for 2 weeks. Jesus was brought in, and goes to consult his father, but hears nothing so tells the girl that God is waiting for her in her dreams. The girl slept. Michael describes it as a con, but the older man explains that God "went away so Jesus would fill the emptiness. Then Jesus went away so we would fill the emptiness". He rings a nearby set of altar bells and further clarifies "Faith is the sound that fills the emptiness". He heads up to the roof, but when Michael follows his new friend has disappeared and he has a vision (perhaps) of the sea.

[SPOILERS]And so Michael returns, first to his father's house, where a shrine has now bee set up, to reconcile to his father, who himself has been impacted. "You brought faith son" he tells him by way of explanation for the way the streets near his house are festooned with night lights. Perhaps these are types of crucifixion and resurrection scenes, the death of self and the new life that follows.

[SPOILERS]Finally, Michael returns to the boy and his mother, but like so much of the film even this is left unclear, inviting the view to make up their own mind. It's so typical of the film, it's reliance on the vagueities of story, with their multiple interpretations and invitation to participate.

[END OF SPOILERS]

What I like about the film is that it consistently refuses to tell you what to think. Is Michael, this "Chilean Christ" a modern version of Christ; Christ himself; a Christ-like figure; or just a deluded, if charismatic, man who has some growing up to do? The character's name, Michael, captures this brilliantly being both the name of God's number two messenger ("angel" means "messenger") and the name Michael itself literally means "Who is like El?" (i.e. God). Or it could just be an ordinary name that remains popular in "Catholic" countries. Did Michael experience the divine when he was younger, or did he just feel like he did after 3 hours in the sun losing blood? How do the people come to believe in him even before he arrives in their village?

The parallels with the Jesus of the Gospels are certainly there, but interestingly they do not follow the contours of the typical Christ-figure. For one thing there's no cruciform pose, nor are the episodes that are paralleled those that are typically included. The parallels are either with more obscure elements (like Jesus's failure to heal on occasion) or they are more tenuously linked. It raises the question, am I just looking for parallels because of the film's title (The Blind Christ) and how people refer to him within the confines of  the film itself ("The Chilean Christ"). This is, in itself, feels like the medium being the message. It is not just the characters in the story that don't quite know how to pigeonhole Michael, or what to think about the possibility of divine activity.

And then, of course, there are the stories, which appear regularly throughout the film, often introduced in a way so typical of the Gospels "Let me tell you a story" which chimes with some of the little introductory phrases we find in the synoptics, with their sometimes unclear meaning and their more experiential method of conveying meaning.

The film is beautifully shot, and moves along at a slow contemplative pace that allows you to savour and immerse yourself in the story. The performances never feel like the work of amateurs, and the genuine concern for the plight of the people of the Pampa del Tamarugal evokes the ghost of neo-realism. Some of the lines of dialogue are hard to unpack and fly past a little too quickly, but that's a minor quibble with a thought provoking, challenging and deeply affecting film.

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1 - An old bio from Torino Film Lab used this name about his "forthcoming project".

2 - According to the "Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario 2016: Religió" survey, available online: http://web.archive.org/web/20171107025524/
https://encuestabicentenario.uc.cl/wp-content/uploads/2016/
11/encuesta-bicentenario-2016-religio%cc%81n.pdf.

3 - According to the "Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario 2021: Religió" survey, available online: http://web.archive.org/web/20220121091337/
https://encuestabicentenario.uc.cl/wp-content//uploads/
2022/01/Encuesta-Bicentenario-2021-Religion.pdf.

4 - It's the film's leading character, Michael, that says this, but it would have spoiled the flow of the review if I've said this there and I don't have the time at the moment to re-write this to fix that.

5 - See notes on the use of the name "Michael" in 4th paragraph from the end.

6 - This is the condition as described in the subtitles earlier in the film, but, once revealed, the actual condition seems to be a skin/wasting disease/infection of the ankle.

Redeeming Love Review Round-up

I've not had the opportunity to see the new Hosea/Gomer film released this weekend, Redeeming Love (2022), but a number of outlets have reviewed it so I thought I would link to the more key articles and highlight a few excerpts.

Larger Publications
The film has been reviewed by a number of larger publications in the USA. Variety's Guy Lodge calls it "long, lumbering and ideologically retrograde" and finds it's links to the Book of Hosea "superficial". He criticises the overall tone for being "drippy", "teen" and typified by "Hallmark sunrises". Finding the repetitive plot tedious particularly excoriating the "together-then-apart dance" between it's lead characters which features "no fewer than three separate shots of a wedding ring being left on a dresser." Moreover he asks a more foundational question "Does Angel need to be 'redeemed' by love, or does she just need men to cut her a break?" and jokes that "its gender politics, at least, are authentically immersed in the 19th century." 

Katie Walsh, the reviewer for the LA Times is not alone in drawing attention to the Shakespeare quote that opens the film ("All that glitters is not gold") quipping that it "doesn’t yield any cinematic riches". She is the only reviewer I've read so far to pick up one of the things I found troubling about the trailer, specifically that the film could be interpreted as making its hero Michael...

"an isolated religious zealot who believes he receives a message from God that a local sex worker is intended to be his wife, spurring him to kidnap her from the brothel while she’s in a weakened state and press her into a life of wifely duties though she attempts repeatedly to escape."

Indeed she concludes that the film "plays like 'tradwife' fan fiction" and worries about why the decision to adapt this source material was made, now of all times. Walsh's review also appears at the Chicago Tribune.

The Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan only gives the film two stars out of four, but is perhaps the most positive I have come across. He praises director D.J. Caruso 's "slick work" and calls the film  "an engrossing but superficial epic" ultimately finding it "an incident-rich saga populated by cardboard heroes and villains and outfitted with greeting-card sentiments and cartoon villainy".

Christian Critics
In terms of more specifically Christian reviewers, Peter Chattaway has, as ever,  been all over this one, trailing Friday's release with one post looking at older more incidental uses of the Hosea/Gomer story and another looking at 21st century adaptations of the story including Oversold (2008), Amazing Love (2012) and Hosea (2018). Peter's review of the film itself is here and one of its main complaints is that the Hosea character (Michael Hosea) is not sufficiently developed:

But if you’re going to ditch the prophetic message that is the Book of Hosea’s point, then at the very least I’d like to see some realistic human behaviour; if you’re going to tell a story about a man who dedicates his life to a complete stranger’s sexual salvation, you have to give me some sense of who he is and why he’s doing what he does.... if I’m going to believe in a relationship, I need to believe in both partners as people. Instead, what we get feels like mere wish fulfillment.

Peter's piece also ends with a few notes similar to Peter's treatment of the other "Hosea/Gomer" films. For what it's worth I find the male character's name notable for two reasons. Firstly it just sounds bad. Michael Hosea? But also in Christian tradition Michael happens to be the name of the third original archangel after Gabriel and Lucifer (though the non-canonical Book of Enoch mentions 7). Given that the lead female character here is called Angel, the association of "The Duke" with the devil (i.e. Lucifer) and Michael's perfection this seems an unlikely coincidence. After all, the Archangel Michael is known for fighting for good over evil, defending God's people and empowering them.

Another review from a Christian perspective is that of  Mike McGranaghan for Aisle Seat. Going for the jugular right away ("Redeeming Love is the most sexually-charged faith-based film I've ever seen. And, frankly, one of the most misguided.") and condemns its unenlightened and "relentlessly  old-fashioned" story of "a whore who's lucky to have a good man to rescue her" as well as it's use of shocking plot points just to grab attention.

Leah MarieAnn Klett, the editor of Christian Post disagrees arguing "Redeeming Love tries hard to deal gently with tough topics, but there’s no way to sugarcoat prostitution, sex trafficking, murder and incest." Ultimately, though, Klett finds that the "film’s redemptive and biblical themes are evident, but ... overshadowed by explicit, sometimes unnecessary content" suggesting "conscientious viewers would do well to pass." 

Given its usual support for Christian Movies I thought MovieGuide might be a little more in favour and it does support its "strong Christian worldview". However it ultimately summarises the film as "lackluster and unnecessarily graphic". Reviews like this make it interesting to see how the film will perform at the box office. It's clearly pushing the envelope for Christian movies/faith-based films, but it's based on existing IP - Francine Rivers’ 1991 novel which was a major hit in large part due to Christians - and it may be that this same audience likes this kind of content despite the warnings of its film critics. At the moment the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 95%. I don't think it's too much of  a stretch to assume that the majority of those viewers will be professing Christians.

Other Web Critics
Elsewhere on the web Nell Minow's 2-star review for rogerebert.com nevertheless notes how "the novel has a lot of passionate fans who will want the movie to be exactly what they imagined on the page, and that is what they will find... [it's] a story that fits comfortably and reassuringly into a particular spiritual world view." Likewise while the film's numerous instances of sexual abuse may shock some, interestingly Minow cleverly observes how this is perhaps in keeping with "the 'Hell House'-style fascination with (and amplification of) the sins of the world". She does note some positives though especially such as its "beautiful settings" and the way that leads Abigail Cowan and Tom Lewis "make a very appealing couple, warm and natural".

If the above reviews seem bad then Anna Venarchik for The Daily Beast goes even further, even the url pulls no punches ("evangelicalisms-toxic-slut-shaming-tale-gets-the-hollywood-treatment"). Venarchik is seemingly more familiar with the Rivers' novel than many of the above reviewers which allows her to highlight things that are not explicit in the film, but nevertheless there in the subtext (for many at least, including the filmmakers) such as Michael's unintentionally hilarious description of Abigail as "a soiled dove". She ends pondering "the fates of the harlots who didn’t catch the farmer’s eye" and how the writers seem to "confirm the correlation between beauty and a woman’s prospects—the unredeemed are consumed in a hell this side of death when they perish in a fire at the brothel." It's a great review which expertly tempers its ire at the film's problematic worldview with biting wit.

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If I can find time I might try and write some of my own thoughts about all this, albeit based on little more than the above reviews, the trailer and my knowledge of Hosea. I'm particularly intrigued by the way that Hosea and Gomer were largely absent from our screens for the first 11 decades of  cinema history and have now been depicted four times in the last 15 years.

I mentioned above the film's audience score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.  I should note that the critics score for Redeeming Love on Rotten Tomatoes is at the other extreme, 11%. IMDb currently has it as 7.3, but it's metascore is 31%. Edit: Box Office Mojo is recording an opening weekend domestic take of $3.7 million. That's slightly less than the $4.2 million that Christmas with the Chosen made but, as Peter Chattaway reports, it's still the top ranking new movie for last week and highest film that isn't a sequel.

It's hardly the first film to divide audiences from critics, but it's interesting to see that even the concerns of Christian critics are not putting off "the faithful". I'm curious to know how church leaders are framing this. Do they share the concerns of critics about the sexual content (or the depiction of women) or the apparent early enthusiasm of everyday churchgoers?

Redeeming Love coming in 2022 feat. Jamie-Lee O'Donnell, Famke Janssen

Over at FilmChat, Peter has news of the release date for Redeeming Love, a sort-of modernised take on the book of Hosea, as it's set in 1850s California. The release, from Universal Pictures, has been delayed due to the pandemic (I made a passing reference to it in my book and it's probably too late now to get that corrected), but is now lined up for 21st January 2022. 

Whilst the film is an adaptation of Hosea, it's come by way of Francine Rivers's 1991 best-selling novel of the same name. The plot, of the novel at least, revolves around Sarah/Angel, a sexually-abused orphan who is forced into becoming a sex-worker who one day meets Michael Hosea who has heard God tell him to marry her. There's a trailer on YouTube now, which reveals fairly little.

While the stars are relatively unknown there are a couple of bigger names attached to the cast. Famke Janssen, who played Jean Grey/Phoenix in several episodes in the X-Men franchise and Liam Neeson's ex-wife in the Taken trilogy, is the biggest star. Janssen also featured in the biblical satire The Ten (2007). Interestingly Cindy Bond, who was a producer for another 2007 Moses-related film, the animated The Ten Commandments, as well as a string of other Christian movies, is also a producer here.

The big news, for UK folk at least, is that it appears that Derry Girls star Jamie-Lee O'Donnell is playing Angel's best friend Lucky. I'm not sure how far Derry Girls has travelled, but O'Donnell is now such a big star in the UK (and presumably the Republic of Ireland) that she's seemingly the main star of the forthcoming Channel 4 drama Screw (still not listed on IMDb). 

Other notable names who are involved include director D.J. Caruso, who directed XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Disturbia (2007) as well as an episode of Smallville way back in 2002; and the IMDb lists The Bible's (2013) Roma Downey as an executive producer, though Peter seems to have reason think she is no longer involved with the project.

Having been largely overlooked by 20th century filmmakers, this is at least the fourth Hosea film to be released this year including 2008's Oversold. Perhaps I'll make some comments on all that another day.

The official website is here.

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.

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- 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

The Brand New Testament (2015)

"God exists. He lives in Brussels. He's a bastard. Horrid to his wife and daughter. We've heard a lot about his son, but little about his daughter." 

So begins Jaco Van Dormael's The Brand New Testament (2016) an off-beat Belgian comedy that sets the Almighty on a collision course with his only...daughter. Deciding she has had enough of the way her father runs the universe, and egged on by her brother 'JC' (who appears only as a living statue), Ea begins a to try and counteract his tyranny. Firstly she texts everyone the date of their deaths. Then, having managed to escape from the Brussels flat where they all live she asks a gentleman of the street to help her add six new disciples to JC's original twelve, because of her mother's love of baseball and it's teams of eighteen.

The majority of the film, then, features the testimony of each of these disciples as they talk about their lives  - a brand new testament. There's an unmarried data manager; a beautiful twenty-something with a false arm; a gunman with an obsession with death; a lonely sex-addict; a teenage boy who wants to be a girl; and a lonely housewife played by Catherine Deneuve. Given she is by far the biggest star associated with the film Deneuve's casting is particularly interesting. We're told her character has an incredible depth of feeling in her heart, but she plays the icy blond just as she so often has before. Van Dormael shoots her in pale grey against white backgrounds. Whilst she is perhaps best remembered for her role as a fantasising housewife-turned-prostitute in Buñuel's Belle du Jour (1967), here she hires a young male prostitute, before ultimately settling down with a Gorilla. Buñuel would have loved that, I suspect.

Other characters also fall in love. God's daughter may not have inherited her father's temperament, but she is certainly capable of working in mysterious ways. The sex addict is miraculously reunited with his childhood crush; the data manager falls for a woman living in the Arctic Circle; the trans teen forms a deep bond with Ea herself. Most strikingly of all, the gunman realises his obsession is not death, but fate. The unfailingly accuracy of Ea's texts inspires him to shoot randomly, knowing he can chalk any resulting deaths down to fate, rather than personal responsibility. When his first shot hits the twenty-something's prosthetic arm the two end up falling hopelessly in love.

Indeed it's the question of fate that's the main theme here, rather than morality. As the opening narration suggests God does not come out of things very well - a petty, vindictive and abusive bureaucrat who fails to find redemption. But while he and his misanthropic rules provide a few smirks, that side of the story always feels a little like a comedy sketch given too much latitude. Whilst the film has so much empathy for its characters from the margins of society (typified by Van Dormael's characteristic concern for those with disabilities), it has seemingly no compassion for the lonely self-hating deity at it's heart. Van Dormael's God is a "slob like one of us" but without the relatability inherent in Joan Osborne's song.

Visually Van Dormael's work is perhaps a little less controversial than his theology it also has its idiosyncrasies. It has the look of films like Amélie (2001) though Sight and Sound's Leigh Singer claims Van Dormael did such "whimsical fable"first. The darker moments and accompanying cinematography are also reminiscent of Delicatessen (1991). There's a focus on Christian art that is not only present though the many religious paintings which appear during the film, but also in the frequent use of the kind of tenebristic lighting most of us associate with Caravaggio. Yet this contrasts with other brighter, greyer or geometrically precise scenes elsewhere. Van Dormael contrasts God's oppressively dark and gloomy flat with the liberating breeze and warm light of the outdoors. Similarly the use of religious music throughout adds to this mishmash of the sacred and profane, not least in the song-avatars that Ea discerns for each of her disciples. 

There are also numerous little quirky visual touches to the film which add to its humour as well as minor, unrelated story lines to keep things ticking over. Realising he will not die for many years a vlogger starts throwing himself from ever higher platforms for the thrill and media attention. Moments such as these not only offset the blackness of the film's darker moments but also conceal further questions about fate and morality. The first time the vlogger's jumps his fall is broken by one less unfortunate than himself, yet he carries on, even as he accumulates several serious injuries. It's no coincidence that the role that Van Dormael gives to himself is as "l'automobiliste qui n'a plus que 0 seconde à vivre" (the motorist who has only 0 seconds to live) who is distracted while driving by the very text message announcing his death.

Ultimately though the characters find their personal 'salvation' through love and self determination. The film leans heavily into the idea of the Gospels as accounts about personal connection, though there is also an emphasis on the importance of a faith community, growing together.  

However, sadly the film ducks the more profound questions about fate and determinism and aside from the difference Ea makes to the lives of her chosen six, her work on Earth is arguably not much greater than her father's. He meddles by inventing irksome rules about bread always falling jam side down, or about the other queue always moving fastest; she tweaks the lives of only a handful of followers, to bring them happiness. She's 10 of course, but the film suggests she is done meddling with the world, and that we will be better without her or her father's interference. 

Perhaps the difference is that Ea seems like one of us. Whereas her father exists in the dark, tucked a way in a huge room with wall to wall filing cabinet, she lives like one of us. Her message, perhaps, is that we can all have a small impact on the lives around us. As endings go, it's nice enough and the time spent getting there was entertaining enough with a few moments of interest. Somehow, however, I had just hoped for a little bit more. 

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The Brand New Testament (Le Tout Nouveau Testament) is available to stream via the Channel 4 website (in the UK at least) until the 16th July. 

Cain and Abel (2009)

I discovered a Korean series on the UK version of Netflix last week (just before it expired...) which has been given the English title of Cain and Abel, but is set in modern times. At 20 episodes long, the first of which is over an hour long, I only managed to watch the first episode, but thought I'd post my findings for anyone interested enough to want to give it a look.

The series takes place in a hospital and is centred around two brothers, both of whom are doctors. One (Lee Seon Woo), seems to be some superstar surgeon that swans in to the hospital from elsewhere for special surgeries; whereas the other (Lee Cho-in) prefers to work in the emergency room, where homeless people turn up for treatment with life threatening conditions, only for him to swoop in and offer for payment for their treatment to be "added to his account".

On top of this both of the brothers' parents are also at the hospital. The father, somewhat oddly for a show based on a patriarchal story, is in a coma (so far at least) and so present and yet somehow absent. I suppose this might be some kind of metaphor for the way Adam seems strangely estranged from his children, given that, according to the most popular reading of the text, there are only four people on earth at that point in the story.

More interesting is the mother character, who has some sort of senior medical role at the hospital - at least that's what I infer from the fact she wears a white coat and keeps walking into rooms barking orders at younger looking doctors. She is also somewhat estranged from Lee Cho-in. The two have to talk in a professional context, but both there is conflict, both personally and professionally.

All of which brings me to the naming of this show. Korea has a large Christian community, but I have no idea to what the Bible has permeated the wider culture, which gives me a range of questions. Is the 'Cain and Abel' tag a literal translation, or something that Netflix, (or whoever first brought it to the English-speaking world), called it in order to grab viewers attention? Is one of the key players in the production a Christian? None of the leading characters' names seems to be linked to the original story so at what point did this become a "Cain and Abel" story?

Indeed thus far the story fits the set-up of the Jacob and Esau story at least as much that of Cain and Abel. Even the start of the show - which starts ahead of the rest of the main story with Lee Cho-in staggering through the desert injured - could be as much About Isaac's sons as Adam's. It also seems like naming the series after a story which famously climaxes in the murder of one of the two protagonists potentially reduces the tension. But then, if the story is not widely known in Korea then perhaps that was less of an issue.

Sadly this disappeared before I could watch any more of it, so it's possible that it's still 18 episodes away from the story reaching any kind of biblical parallel, but the IMDb summary does suggest that things do continue along biblical lines as the series progresses:

Based on the biblical story of Adam and Eve's first two sons, Cain and Abel is about Cain's jealousy towards his brother Abel. Lee Cho In is a very gifted doctor who has everything that he wants whereas his older brother, Seon Woo, is jealous of all the attention that Cho In receives. Seon Woo blames his brother for taking everything good in his life away from him. Seon Woo blames Cho In for getting their father's love, getting more recognition as a doctor, and for stealing the woman he loves.

The Book of Life (1998)

"It was the morning of December 31, 1999 when I returned, at last, to judge the living and the dead. Though still, and perhaps always, I had my doubts". So ends Jesus' opening monologue in Hal Hartley's The Book of Life (1998). It's a moment that sums up so much about the film: the premise; actor Martin Donovan's deadpan delivery; the sharpness of the script; and it's irreverent, but not offensively so, approach to the subject matter.

The Second Coming has been responsible for some dreadful movies, not least the original Left Behind film (2000) and The Omega Code (1999), not least because their attempts to portray the Book of Revelation's bizarre imagery in a pseudo-literal, yet modern, manner tends to make it all seem rather absurd. In contrast, Hal Hartley's The Book of Life (1998), takes a rather different approach, playfully toying with the imagery. 666 is just the number of a locker where Jesus stores The Book of Life, which, it turns out, is just a Macbook computer, albeit an "ancient" model made by a foreign manufacturer in Egypt.

If that sounds like the film is about to turn into a trip to the near east to hunt out its secrets, you can rest easy. It doesn't. The film is set solely and firmly in New York. There are numerous indicators of this location, where almost all of Hartley's early work was filmed, as much for reasons of  convenience and expediency as anything else.

Here, though, the location has a great significance. There are numerous clear indicators that the film is set in New York, even to those who have never been, the yellow cabs, the Twin Towers, the view from the Staten Island Ferry (above), the Empire State building, Subway signage, Flatiron building. As Sebastian Manley suggests "a focus on recognizable regional details and identities functions to ground the films in the familiar and particular" (Manley 103). Manley's analysis is good, particularly that "the image serves to underline the weight of responsibility borne by Jesus," and that "an image that describes the frame of mind of the protagonist" (105), but it does not go far enough. New York here has a specific role as a specific representative of Earth as a whole. Put it another way, were Jesus to return to Earth today, to a specific location, there are few other places that would seem as likely as New York - the kind of a cultural melting pot that is home to those from all nations. Where else could stake such a strong claim to be the capital of the world?

The sense of place and location is just one of a number of characteristics that are typical in Hartley's films. Not unrelated to this is the absence of establishing shots in his films. Hartley also returns to the same actors again and again, in this case, Martin Donovan and Thomas J Ryan who had played the title role in Hartley's Henry Fool the previous year.

For Manley, "one particularly strong mark of distinction, which has remained relatively constant across the director's filmography, is a preference for stylized performances: broadly, actors tend to adopt a 'flattened' style of line delivery, implementing few variations in either tone or facial expression." (7-8). The result of this is to shift the focus onto the characters internal emotions. Here, in particular, the film's Jesus is conflicted internally about his role in the Apocalypse, and Donovan's muted performance enables the audience to sympathise with his dilemma. This sense of sympathy is enhanced by Donovan's voiceover - another Hartley trait. Furthermore, whilst there is less focus on Magdalena (a beguiling performance from PJ Harvey) and the Devil (Thomas J Ryan), and neither of them has a typical voice over, they too deliver longer speeches in this flattened style, with a not dissimilar effect. The devil's three monologues are particularly significant, not only delivered whilst looking towards the camera, but also spoken into a visible microphone seemingly set up for that very purpose, drawing attention to the film's artificiality, whilst simultaneously making easier to understand his point of view.

Another of Hartley's characteristics is the focus on relationships, particularly on forming what might be called alternate 'families', often in contrast to their actual families is retained here. Jesus is torn between his father, represented by the officious law firm Armageddon, Armageddon and Jehosophat ("To him, the law is everything. Still, to this day, attorneys are his favourites.") and his fellow humans ("you're addicted to human beings" the Devil tells him at one point, something Jesus later concedes). The film ends with him relaxing in the company of the rest of the main characters in the film, his companion from the beginning of the film Magdalena; a dishevelled Satan; Dave and Edie, an unlikely couple from the bar; and Armageddon, Armageddon and Jehosophat's former receptionist.

That said, The Book of Life marked a departure from much of Hartley's earlier work. It was his first film shot on digital video and he uses it to draw attention to several formal elements of film. Most notable element of this is his use of slow motion blur and light distortion. Hartley reclaims "what might seem digital video's decidedly cinematic, even "ugly" limitations -- the jittery, blurry, not-quite-stable quality of the image's texture, the tendency to exaggerate or otherwise render somewhat "off" the properties of color and light -- as its own new, exciting palette, with its own potential for visual beauty." (McQuain). Hartley has spoken on various occasions as these distortion effects as being the "visual equivalent" of distortion effects for electric guitar, "there's much more freedom in music about using distortion. All that blurriness comes out of that aesthetic." (Eaves)

This combines with various other visual techniques such as the repeated use of unusual camera angles - not simply by placing the camera above or below eye level, but also tilting the angle - and alternating between black and white. Many of these techniques are shared with Hartley's later The Girl From Monday (2005), very much a companion piece to this one with it's other-worldly lead character arriving, somewhat unannounced, on Earth. Indeed the result of the visual distortion, unusual camera angles and so on is to give the film a disorientating, somewhat surreal, other-worldly feel. Dubbed "a controversial retelling of the Apocalypse" the film's playful visual and comic elements enable more profound questions to be asked than would be possible with a retelling that were either more literal, or more closely resembling the world as we generally experience it.

Stylistically the film is a pastiche of different styles and genres including science fiction, travelogue, the western, film noir and of course the Jesus film. The plot is essentially driven by the line quoted at the start of this discussion. Having returned to Earth to judge humanity, Jesus finds he has reservations. God's legal representatives try to pressure Jesus into getting on with the apocalypse. The Devil wants the book so that he can prevent it ("Revelation 12:12, Not my favourite passage."), whilst continuing to try and claim a few last souls. Encountering an atheist in a bar called Dave he offers him a Faustian pact his girlfriend Edie's soul in exchange for winning lottery tickets. Meanwhile Jesus delays his decision as long as he can. Seen twenty years later it's easy to forget that when The Book of Life was produced, real trepidation about the Y2K-induced computer collapse at the new millennium did exist" (Berrettini 58).

The film's Jesus has a heavy emphasis on compassion. He was seemingly changed forever by becoming human, and his feelings only intensified on his return to Earth. It is noticeable, for example that the last line of his closing monologue shifts from 'they' to 'we' as if for the first time he is accepting his place as a human. His smart suit and white shirt contrast with the Devil's red shirt, scruffy overcoat, bruised face and sticking plaster. Jesus is portrayed as intellectual, rational and thoughtful in contrast to the grubby pragmatism of the Devil.

Ultimately, the decisive moment comes when Jesus punches the devil in the stomach (in similar fashion to the way Donovan's character in Trust (1990) punches his father in the stomach at a similarly pivotal moment) [SPOILERS] and he decides to call off the end of the world. He tricks the Devil into releasing Edie's soul and finally the characters reassemble to see in the new millennium. The following morning, his mission abandoned, Jesus leaves the city at the end of the film on the Staten Island Ferry, with no indication as to where he is going. The film's focus on and location in a specific place, leaves this open. is he moving on to another place as when the hero moves on at the end of many westerns, or is this symbolizing his leaving Earth, where New York has functioned as a specific representative of Earth as a whole?[END OF SPOILERS] Either way he ends the film with a stunning monologue, reproduced below, about the potential possibilities awaiting the human race.

Seen today what is striking about the film is how that final monologue - which talks about what the future, and of course for its original audience - what the new millennium would hold, is accompanied by a shot from the ferry of the Twin Towers. To them it was so emblematic of what humanity can achieve, of its promise. To us it summarises so jarringly, the awful possibilities of the destruction that humans can wreck, and what the awaited new millennium has thus far come to be defined by. The dashing of the very hopes the movie dares to imagine. "The possibility of disaster and the possibility of perfection". Even despite all that has happened in those twenty years these possibilities remain. We can only hope we can find the compassion we need.

And the New Year arrived. The new millennium. Just another day in a lifetime of similar days, but each one of them crowded with possibilities. The possibility of disaster and the possibility of perfection. To be there amongst them again was good. The innocent and the guilty all equally helpless, all perfectly lost, and, as frightening as it was to admit, all deserving of forgiveness. What would become of them, I wondered. In another 100 years, would they all be born in test-tubes? Or perhaps evolve through computers to become groups of disembodied, digital intelligence machines? Would they remember who I was? Would they remember what I said? Would it matter? Maybe someone else will come along and say pretty much the same thing. Would anyone notice? In a hundred years, would they be living on other planets? Would the Earth still exist? Would they engineer themselves genetically so that disease was a thing of the past? Would they all just become one big multi-ethnic race? Would they discover the secret of the universe? God? Would they become gods themselves? What will they eat? What sort of houses will they live in? Cities - think about it. What will the weather be like? Will they still have to go to work everyday? What will they wear in the future? How smart will they get? And will being smarter make them happier? Will they all speak the same language in the future? Will they make love? Maybe there will be more than two sexes. Will they still believe life is sacred? Will it matter? Do we matter?

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Berrettini, Mark I. (2011) Hal Hartley - (Contemporary Film Directors). Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Available online at https://www.scribd.com/document/289391982/Mark-l-Berrettini-Hal-Hartley-Contemporary-Film-Directors

Eaves, Hannah (2005) "Free to Investigate: Hal Hartley" at GreenCine, April 24. Formerly at http://www. greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=206 Now only available via the Internet Archive - https://web.archive.org/web/20150613061209/http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=206

Manley, Sebastian (2013) The Cinema of Hal Hartley, Bloomsbury

McQuain, Christopher (2013) "The Book of Life / The Girl from Monday" on DVD Talk 14th May. Available online - https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/60528/book-of-life-girl-from-monday/

Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter

Inspired by a line from Thriller, and blazing the trail for a series of films such as Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Lee Demarbre's Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter (2001) is an ultra-low budget, B-movie style kung-fu horror comedy musical that gained a solid following and Honorable Mention for the Spirit of Slamdance award. Not one for the devout, the film is not so much a biblical adaptation as a pastiche of snippets from the gospels and translated into a modern day, and often bizarre context. It's undoubtedly blasphemous, but, as Ken Eisner put it, "too silly to offend" (2002). Given that the title tells you more or less all you need to know about the film, and that it's not exactly easy to track down, why go out of your way to see it if it sounds like it might offend you?

Like many low budget cult hits, what might be considered as cheapness or sloppy craftwork are often a deliberate part of the joke. The bad dubbing references low-budget kung-fu movies of years gone by. The grainy 16mm footage also reminds audiences of films from their youth. The over the top story is a hat-tip to Hammer Horror. The bizarreness of the Santos character will probably be lost on those not familiar with the rather niche Mexican Wrestler fighting supernatural creatures sub-genre (real life masked wrestler Santo starred over 50 such films).

Indeed there are plenty of other references for film fans to enjoy. The opening shot of road dividing lines flashing past the camera a reminder of Detour (1945) and slew of other nourish B-movies and road trip films. Demarbre cites Russ Meyer as the inspiration behind both the opening  narration and for his opening credit, and plainly Meyer's influence saturates the film, winking at every bold move. There's also an early 70s style dance scene feels like a deleted scene from the similarly named Jesus Christ, Superstar (1973) and as if to ward off accusations of all his references being too  low-brow, there's even a musical reference to François Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959). And of course, one of the leading vampires is called Maxine Schreck, tipping the hat towards the original vampire movie - Nosferatu (1922)

Whilst it's easy to imagine that the film very much began with the title, there are plenty of biblical references to complement the cinematic ones. Of course, the western vampire myth has it's roots in medieval Christianity, so mentions of drinking Jesus' blood almost come full circle. But the plot is, very, very loosely based around the Jesus story and a number of more direct elements remain. Jesus comes to earth and takes on the forces of evil. Along the way he meets a Judas figure and a Mary Magdalene figure (dressed in a shiny red jumpsuit), before facing defeat and death before a sort of resurrection at the climax. The scenes paralleling Mary anointing Jesus' feet, or the Good Samaritan, might not make for a helpful sermon illustration, but it does suggest the filmmakers have looked to incorporate elements of their source material beyond their leading character's name.

Some have seen deeper connections. Laurel Zwissler has argued that the film "is essentially a Christian text that presents Christ as a hero much as Jesus' first-century followers did" (Beliefnet). Just as they presented Jesus as a "combination of...past heroes" such as Moses, David and Elijah, "Jesus is Bruce Lee, Shaft, and John Travolta all rolled into one" (Beliefnet). Whilst it's worth emphasising that there's more to the film than just its humour, this does perhaps go a little too far.

Indeed, perhaps all of the above is an overly serious analysis of a film that is essentially very silly (in the best possible way). It's worth remembering that the other key driver of the plot is an evil doctor harvesting the skin of lesbians after he discovers grafting it onto vampires enables them to go out during the day. Not something that might easily be mistaken for striving for rigorous plausibility. Jesus is only able to save the people of Ottawa by teaming up with the masked Mexican wrestler and making a sign of the cross with a pair of windscreen wipers.

What I can't quite decide is whether my personal disappointment that Jesus loses his stereotypical beard and long hair early in the film - and his first century-style dress shortly afterwards - is justified. It normalises Jesus and makes the rest of the film a further step away from the character's roots. Yet that somehow limits the film's potential to offend and reminds its audience not to take it too seriously. It's also an indication that the filmmakers are not content just to rely on the one gag.

Indeed, writer Ian Driscoll's script contains a number of smart lines, many of which are easily missed first time around. Not all of them come off, and the second half of the movie drags a little. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter is an entertaing and, I suppose, unforgettable movie which may not greatly advance the light, but may at least enable to laugh a bit more at the darkness.

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Beliefnet, "The Superhero for All Times" - undated and uncredited. - Available online at
http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Movies/2002/12/The-Superhero-For-All-Times.aspx

Eisner, Ken (2002) "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" in Variety 10 May 2002. Available online at
http://variety.com/2002/film/reviews/jesus-christ-vampire-hunter-1200549749/

von Hindman, Jared (2007), "I Bang Chicks in the Biblical Sense" at Head Injury Theatre. Available online at
http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article77.htm

Greaser's Palace (1972)

I first heard about Greaser's Palace (dir:Robert Downey, 1972) around the turn of the century on one of of the first websites to cover the Bible on Film, Pete Aitken's Post-fun Adult Christianity. Sadly the site has been defunct for many years now, though you can find it on the Internet Archive, but it's mention of a "zoot-suited Jesus" has stayed with me, such that I've always hoped to be able to find it, but never quite managed it.

The film is very much a product of its time. It was released in 1972, three years after Buñuel's The Milky Way (1969), a year after Johnny Got His Gun (1971) and the same year as The Ruling Class (1972). The following year would see the release of both Jesus Christ, Superstar and Godspell and all six movies have the same off-kilter feel about them. There was, perhaps, a temporary artistic freedom in the air that allowed for off-beat, irreverent and potentially offensive portrayals of Jesus as filmmakers toyed with Jesus' cultural capital.

It was a blip. By the mid to late 1980s the church, most notably the religious right in America had got it's act together and was no longer prepared to let artists exercise their freedom of speech unchallenged. The protests over Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ are notorious.

Greaser's Palace has never quite been popular enough to gain cult status, but it's that kind of film. Jesse (Allan Arbus) parachutes down on the outskirts of an obscure western town wearing a zoot-suit and pink fedora. The town is dominated by the fearsome owner of the town's bar, Greaser's Palace, who on spotting Jesse's arrival marches out in a celebrated long reverse tracking shot that keeps going just as yo expect it's going to end. It's the kind of technical pun that appeals to directors and film critics. Indeed you can hear Paul Thomas Anderson discussing it here.

Jesse, however, isn't here to save the world, but to meet with his agent. Sure he'll raise Greaser's Son from the dead every time his father kills him, and somehow he even ends up on a cross, but this is not the driven man of social action of so many other films that modernise Jesus. He's on his way to Jerusalem "to be an actor, singer, dancer". Faced with a body of water he not only walks on it, but performs back flips, before disappearing from sight below the water and reappearing on dry land. Even Greaser is impressed by that one. His daughter is less impressed: Jesse is starting to steal her limelight.

Despite it's intriguing premise, then, it doesn't have a great deal to say (not that it necessarily has to). It's the most overtly comic of the films listed above, and it draws on various types of humour; if the site of the Holy Ghost wearing a top hat and dressed in a white sheet doesn't amuse you, maybe the slapstick of Jesse and Greaser's son trying, and failing, to climb on a donkey will. The occasional moments of 1970s era homophobia and racism probably won't.

Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste (Man Facing South-East, 1986)

Running throughout Eliseo Subiela's Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste (Man Facing South-East, 1986) is a single question: is Rantes (Hugo Soto) suffering from delusion, or is he, as he believes, an extra-terrestrial? The film's locations, muted tones and acting styles makes its world feel enough like our world to make this seem unlikely, but then a handful of scenes show him apparently performing explainable acts, a dash of telekinesis here, a bit of mind-control there. Plus the inmates in his psychiatric hospital are starting to form long queues, just to receive his touch.

Whilst these two possibilities play out, a third concept arises primarily from Dr Denis (Lorenzo Quinteros), the specialist to whom Rantes has been assigned, namely the parallels between Rantes and Jesus. Denis, who for most of the film is unaware of Rantes's miraculous powers, nevertheless ponders the ways in which he is like Christ and whether he himself is destined to become Rantes's Pontius Pilate.

The Christ-figure element is emphasised in many ways throughout the film from early shots of Rantes with a prominent crucifix in the background, to the unexplained acts, to the growing following and the arrival, halfway through, of a Magdalene-esque character, Beatriz Dick. Beatriz's surname is an apparent reference to author Philip K Dick who work often involve scenarios "where nothing is quite what it seems" (Cornejo, 2015: 72). Dick (Inés Vernengo) initially describes herself as an evangelist, whilst Rantes calls her her a saint.

In a pivotal moment in the film Rantes delivers a Sermon on the Mount/Plain style speech during a discussion with Denis:

If someone suffers, I console him. He needs help? I give it. So why do you think I'm mad? Someone looks at me, I respond. If someone talks, I listen. You've all gone slowly crazy not recognizing these responses. By simply ignoring them. If someone's dying, you let him die. Someone asks for help you look away. Someone's hungry you are wasteful. Someone's dying of sorrow, you lock him up so you don't see. A person who systematically behaves like that who is blind to the victims may dress well, pay his taxes, go to Mass, but you can't deny he's sick. Your world is terrifying. Why don't you look at real madness for a change? Stop persecuting sad people, meek people, those who don't want to buy, or can't buy, all that crap you'd so gladly sell me.

The film's most enjoyable scene occurs towards the end when Denis, Rantes and Dick attend a public, outdoor, concert and Rantes gets the crowd dancing, before supplanting the conductor and leading the orchestra himself. Footage of this is intercut with that of a joyous riot which breaks out inside the hospital at the same time. The inmates dance and skip round the hospital as if in earshot of the music, which plays on whilst the camera flits between the concert and the inmates. It parallels the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and similarly leads to the inevitable clash with the authorities. From then on Denis is told to administer DRUGS to Rantes and to use electrocution if he becomes catatonic. Rantes's final words are "Doctor why have you forsaken me?"

Many of these elements will feel very familiar to fans of Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), but in fact the Christ-figure theme is not the film's primary concern. Indeed it's no coincidence that Subiela's film ends on a darker note. Rantes dies; none of his fellow inmates, or even Dr Denis himself discover self-actualisation. Denis finds a photo of Rantes and Dick (who he decides must be Rantes's sister) from fifteen years before with a third person torn off (though their shadow is still visible. In his satisfaction of solving the puzzle - at least in his own eyes - Denis manages to assuage, to some degree, the unease he felt when challenged by Rantes earlier in the film, and his own guilt at Rantes's death.

This conclusion is one of a number of things about the film that could easily be seen as unsatisfactory. Why is Denis not more troubled by the death of a patient he has clearly formed a bond with? More to the point why when he spots the pattern of the alcoholic father estranged from his children, is he unable to recognise how it applies to his own life? Why does the film seem to indicate that Rantes has special powers, but then conclude that he doesn't? If Rantes is unable to "feel" the emotional impact of the music as he claims, why is he so clearly moved by it in the concert scene? And what about all of the other strange touches in the film: the couple with sacks over their heads, kissing; the way Dick changes her shoes when leaving the hospital; the open windows and doors; the blue liquid that Dick emits.

These seeming inconsistencies are not the result of careless filmmaking, but more as a way to draw attention to the film's deeper meanings. Set just after the end of the Argentinian military dictatorship (1976-83), the film grapples with how seemingly rational people could overlook the horrors of the regime. The film treats "Argentina's most recent dictatorship...allegorically with reference to repression in a psychiatric institution" (Page, 2009; 182). At the same time, practices at the hospital "become symbolic of the torture and repression carried out in clandestine military during the 1970s" (Page, 2009: 18). As Kantaris explains, "the political allegory, the religious fable, and the theme of disavowal, are carefully woven into a set of subliminal ciphers which the film uses to convey messages about its own subtexts" (1998).

Some of these "ciphers" are more obvious than others. The couple kissing despite the sacks over their heads both references René Magritte's painting Les Amants (1928) as well as the hoods used by military's torturers to conceal their identities (Reati, 1989: 32). The open windows and doors also touch on the work of Magritte and other surrealists as a sign of transition and difference between dualities such as reason / madness and rational / irrational (Kantaris). Others though, such as Dick's shoes, remain obscure despite the emphasis the film places on them as a bearer of deeper meaning significance.

However, the central question - whether Rantes is an alien or not - remains highly ambiguous. The miracles are open to interpretation, shaped both by the audience's pre-conceptions and the generic conventions at play. Something is happening in the café scene, which, in many genres, would certainly be seen as miraculous acts. It's notable that the film was released in 1986, just four years after E.T. and it's interesting to note the similarities and differences between the two films. In both films the titular character believes himself to be an alien, but only in Spielberg's film is it clear he is. Both characters perform miraculous signs and contain Christ-like characteristics. Both are hiding from authorities, whilst transforming the lives of the special, more innocent, lives around them. Both face a form of death though only Spielberg allows for a meaningful resurrection metaphor.

Nevertheless, Spielberg's film is clearly from the fantastical/optimistic wing of the science-fiction genre where stories are clearly fictional and, as a result, miracles are part of the characteristics. In Subiela's film, other sci-fi conventions are largely absent. The setting feels like the real world and Dick's confession and the old photo that the camera closes in on (referencing another Christ-Figure film, Cool Hand Luke) suggests Rantes is deluded. The conventions of voice-over encourage the audience to trust the narrator, in this case Denis, and this is difficult to overcome despite his failings being clear.

In other words there is no clear, single, agreed upon answer as to who is sane and rational and who is deluded and irrational. Indeed the possibility remains that Denis is sane even though his behaviour is more irrational than his patient's. There's more than a touch of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene, 1920) here in terms of the question of who is sane and who is suffering a delusion, but Subiela goes far further than Wiene did, with the film's denouement tipping the balance back towards ambiguity, rather than revelation. Yet rather than a more typical, vague, ambiguity, here there are two perspectives neither of which satisfactory fits the evidence. Some will see the telekinetic scenes as being clear evidence that Rantes is an alien and that Denis's conclusion is incorrect. Ohers will see the photo as affirming that which is seemingly true of the non-filmic world in which we live - that aliens do not live amongst us and that, therefore Rantes is deluded. To quote Denis' response to Rantes, summarising the dilemma he faces "If you're not loony, I'd have to accept that you're an alien. That would mean I'm the loony".

There are three points here. Firstly that not only is the film's interpretation determined, by questions of genre, but also the film's genre is, to a certain extent, determined by it's interpretation. If the viewer interprets the miracles to be real and Rantes to be an extra-terrestrial then the film sits, albeit loosely within the science fiction genre. If not then it remains within the more realistic medical drama genre (though the film retains certain surreal elements).

Secondly, that the willingness, or otherwise, to believe that Rantes performs miracles reflects, to a certain extent, the viewers willingness to accept miracles in real life. Those with a pre-disposition to accept otherworldly explanations may be more likely to accept the miracles at face value rather than interpret those scenes in other ways (e.g. coincidence or Rantes' imagination) and they have to provide an alternative explanation for the photo at the end of the film. But accepting either scenario comes down to interpreting scenes in a certain fashion. The Christ-figure elements here are a destabilising force, making the acceptance or rejection of a particular position more instinctive and entrenching positions more deeply.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it can be argued that attempts to find a coherent answer to what really happened is to miss Subiela's point. There is an irreconcilable conflict not only between Rantes explanation of what is happening and that of Dr Denis, but also between either explanation and a plausible "rational explanation of events within the film" (Kantaris). This points "towards a postmodern reading where nothing is what it seems" (Cornejo 2015: 74) which ultimately questions " the very possibility of conveying narrative and / or truth through either narrative or images" (Cornejo 2015: 76). For Kantaris, the unexplained ciphers or unresolvable tensions the film create a "splitting of belief...[an] almost a necessary condition of any accommodation to life under the military regime in Argentina"(1998). Furthermore "the whole psychiatric institution, can be seen as a displaced representation of that which the Argentine middle classes had attempted to disavow and repress, those extremes of sadistic violence carried out on individuals by the very machinery of state" (Kantaris, 1998).

The film has gone on to become fairly influential, although in it's translation to US culture almost all of its allegorical power has been lost. K-PAX (2001) was more or less a Hollywood remake starring Kevin Spacey as the patient and Jeff Bridges as the doctor. Shorn of the post-military dictatorship context it lost much of its narrative power, and is reduced to 'heartwarming' moments and trite aphorisms. It also injected a greater moment of hope into its ending as scenes of Bridges reuniting with his son (a young Aaron Paul) are accompanied by Spacey's recalled voiceover offering his advice "to get it right this time around, because this time, is all you have".

A further, and unlikely, incarnation of the film is in the long running comedy series The Big Bang Theory where a visually similar actor to Hombre's Hugo Soto plays an ultra-rational character Sheldon Cooper whose detachment even from his highly scientific group of friends allows him to commentate on the quirks and irrationalities of everyday life. Here both the Christ-figure element and the post-dictatorship theme have entirely disappeared.

Nevertheless it says much about the power of Hombre mirando al sudeste that it has had an influence far beyond the borders of Argentina ans Subiela's typical audience. It's release on blu-ray late last year will hopefully enable the original to find a greater audience willing to engage with its unusual style and its deeper themes.

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Cornejo, Yvonne Frances (2015) The embodiment of trauma in science fiction film: a case study of Argentina Leicester: University of Leicester. Available online -
https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/32515/1/2014cornejoyfphd.pdf.pdf
Kantaris, Geoffrey (1998) "The Repressed Signifier: the Cinema of Alejandro Agresti and Eliseo Subiela". In Francisco Domínguez, ed., Identity and Discursive Practice: Spain and Latin America (Bern: Peter Laing Publishers, 2000), pp.157-73.
Available online - 
http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/egk10/notes/repressedsignifier.html
Page, Joanna (2009) Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentina Cinema (Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Reati, Fernando. 'Argentine Political Violence and Artistic Representation in Films of the 1980s'. Latin American Literary Review 17.34 (July-December 1989): 24-39.