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.

Os Dez Mandamentos: O Filme (2016)

A few weeks ago I mentioned a series of biblical telenovelas from Brazil which typically ran for dozens of episodes for each biblical story. The Moses series - Os Dez Manadmentos ran from 2015 delivering an incredible 243 episodes by the time in ended in 2016¹ and was even covered in The Guardian. According to UOL the series had an audience of 144 million. At some point, the producers Rede Record decided to create a film version of the series that could play in cinemas. Then came reports of sold-out shows, but half-empty theatres,² presumably due to over-enthusiastic church leaders buying up tickets to give them away - a strategy used widely with The Passion of the Christ (2004)?

There's an extra layer of intrigue here as well. A significant majority of RecordTV is owned by billionaire Edir Macedo, the bishop/leader of Brasil's biggest church network Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Macedo has been charged with various crimes, but, importantly, has never been found guilty. At the time Brazil's largest TV news website Notícias da TV reported UCKG services heavily promoting the film and encouraging people to give money to buy tickets for others. If Macedo were to have used his pulpits to promote his own business interests then that would seem to be something of a conflict of interests. Either way, the film took 116 million Brazilian dollars at the Brazilian box office in the end, making it the highest grossing home-grown film for 2016, taking only a little less than the film which topped box office sales in Brazil overall that year, Captain America.³

The film itself largely recycles material from the TV show, which is hardly surprising given that so much material was available. Having not seen the original series I don't know if any new footage was shot, or if the film's framing narrative - which has Joshua recall the events that have happened as the Hebrews prepare to conquer the Promised Land - was a new device for the film, or was carried over from the series. Either way the film soon flashes-back to the Egyptians murdering Israelite baby boys, and only rarely returns to the Joshua scene.

However, this framing device fundamentally alters the message of the Moses story. Instead of being a story of gaining freedom from oppression and slavery, it becomes about God's "promise to our people that we would become a great nation". There's echoes here of Macedo's 2008 book "Plan for Power: God, Christians and Politics" where he describes God's "great national project" for Brazil. "To be an Evangelical in Brazil is like being a foreigner in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs...Moses’ mission was to liberate the people of Israel, recover their citizenship and guide them to possession of their own kingdom".⁴

Moses' father Amram is shown as a slave, but one who can slip away to attend to Moses' mother Jochebed when she goes into labour - an interesting take on how we typically imagine slavery. Interestingly, the first shot of the Hebrew slaves is a "God shot" looking directly down on a team of slaves dragging a huge statue of the Pharaoh. When Moses' basket ends up in the arms of Pharaoh's daughter, Miriam's suggestion of a Hebrew wet nurse results in Moses being allowed to return to his parents, but then, when he is around five years old, we're showed him wrenched away from his mother and returned to the princess.

And so Moses grows up in the palace, very much one of the royal household. He is aware he is adopted, but not that he is Hebrew. Indeed as with the three most famous Hollywood versions of the the story, Moses' young adulthood is closely connected to that of Pharaoh's future heir Ramesses.⁵ As with The Prince of Egypt (1998) and Exodus: God's and Kings (2014) the two men are close friends. There are plenty of nods to these films as well. In one scene Moses and Ramesses fight alongside one another in battle with strong echoes of the 2014 film. Moments later Moses unrolls a scroll bearing hieroglyphics that look like they were practically peeled off the walls of the set of Prince of Egypt.

In contrast to those films, however, certain elements of the film's style are very different from the aesthetics of America and Europe. Some of these are questions of convention rather than a universal measure of quality that is, um, set in stone. There's frequent use of slow-motion, time-lapse sequences, and montage, often in combination. The film's colours will also not be to everyone's taste. Likewise the reliance on melodrama - for example, when Moses re-enters Pharaoh's throne room after a forty year absence his wife drops her goblet and a slow-motion shot captures the wine spilling all over the floor. But two faults in particular plague this production (sorry the puns will stop shortly). Firstly, the film's CGI backgrounds are often blended poorly with live-action footage of the actors. On a small screen it looks bad, so I can only imagine how it would seem in a cinema. Secondly, the lighting, particularly for the interiors, looks off.

Much of this is because the film is an edited down version of a much longer show filmed in a typical soap-opera style. To record so much material in a short space of time (and cheaply) fixed, even, lighting is used for an entire scene rather than varying the key, fill and back lighting each time the camera moves. It also accounts for the overly melodramatic moments in the production. And, of course, the reduction of such a volume of material into a mere two hours goes partway to describing the heavy reliance on montage. At times a brief montage feels like highlights of entire episodes' worth of footage, such as the sequence of Moses' courtship of Zipporah. Likewise, towards the end of the film, the incidents between the Sea of Reeds and giving of the Ten Commandments - so often omitted entirely - are presented in a 90-second montage featuring the sweetening of Marah's bitter water, the provision of quails and manna, and the victory over the Amalekites. Similarly it occasionally feels like the cuts have been a little too abrupt.

At times the filmmakers rely on the audiences familiarity with the text. Indeed, perhaps we should say 'texts', as viewers who either know the original telenovela, or who are familiar with The Ten Commandments (1956), The Prince of Egypt and Exodus: God's and Kings will have more idea than those who only know the first few chapters of the Book of Exodus. I kind of like the way the telenovela draws heavily on the three Hollywood films, but in being abridged in this fashion it also leaves fleeting traces of the fuller work. There's a whole subplot, I'm sure, around the palace servant who overhears Moses confessing his killing of the Egyptian to Ramesses and then informs the king, but all we see is a brief shot of her listening through a crack in the door.

This hint of intertextuality contrasts with the film's attitude to the text of Exodus itself. Whereas scholars have long asserted that the "finished" form of Exodus was concocted several centuries after Moses using several pre-existing sources, here we see Moses writing Genesis and the start of Exodus. Aaron looks on admiringly and he is even more impressed when Moses' starts predicting what the finished text will say about the (still future) events of the Exodus. It's a strange inversion of the biblical angle on the teaming up of Moses and Aaron. In the Bible Aaron is brought in to compensate for Moses' poor vocal skills: here he is impressed by his brother's impressive oration. This is perhaps typical of the film's highly idealised and sexualised Moses figure, played by the Guilherme Winter. In The Ten Commandments, for example, Charlton Heston loses all sense of his earlier sexual availability once he encounters God; here Winter continues to smoulder long afterwards.  Moreover, he is also more active and virile than his cinematic predecessors. I can't recall another Moses who runs after his commissioning at the Burning Bush, so it's particularly striking towards the end of the film to see him sprinting back to urge his people through the walls of the Red Sea, with shouts of "Vamos!"

It's a sign of how greatly CGI has revolutionised visual effects that the Burning Bush scene is barely worthy of comment. Back in 1957 this scene - modest by comparison with its equivalent in this film - was much discussed and ultimately the only Oscar which DeMille's film won was for Visual Effects. Here the scene is fine, its just perfunctory rather than profound, spiritual or moving. Perhaps this is highlighted by the reception Moses gets when he first returns to Egypt. Ramesses, now Pharaoh, welcomes him with open arms, as do the rest of his former family. As Moses explains to Aaron later "it was really hard to see the happiness and love they showed me". Only Ramesses' son Amenhotep seems to take exception to Moses, glancing dismissively at him and questioning the poverty of his clothing. In fact the costuming is really on point here. Even before Moses enters the palace there's a stark contrast between the pristine and luxurious Egyptian costumes and the shabby, well-worn outfits of Moses and his brother. I don't recall Moses ever seeming so out of place in the palace.

Despite the warmth of Ramesses original welcome his attitude quickly seems to change, seemingly without a great deal of motive. This is not a problem the Bible - which often doesn't explain the motives of its characters and, in this case, never contends that Ramesses and Moses even knew each other - but having built a great deal of affection between the two men (including Moses saving Ramesses' life) the change of heart rings a little false. It's perhaps a casualty of having to abridge the original footage so drastically. The subtlety of the gradual deterioration in the two men's relationship left on the cutting room floor. Obviously things only deteriorate further once the ten plagues arrive.

If the first half of the film was typified by its soap-opera origins, then the second half, once Moses returns to Egypt, is far more dominated by effects and CGI. While the Burning Bush scene was somewhat underwhelming, the plagues are depicted much more successfully. Clearly a great deal of thought, planning and money was sent on this section which is apparent from the first plague. The water turning to blood provides the film with two of its most arresting images. Firstly, Pharaoh's wife caught swimming in a pool comes up for air literally covered head to foot in blood. Moments later her husband dips his hand in water only for them to emerge covered in blood. Both elements draw on horror tropes and the metaphor with the latter is made more effective due to the shot foregrounding Pharaoh's bloody hands in front of his horrified face. The grossness of the plagues is similarly reinforced with all ten being depicted, and particularly the infestations of frogs, lice, flies and locusts. Meanwhile a great deal of the budget seems to have been spent on the seventh plague. The "making of" documentary on the DVD largely concerns itself with this scene emphasising the "flashing fire" within the hail, causing some fairly spectacular, if a little over the top, footage. Finally, the death of the firstborn is shown, not by a creepy green mist as in 1956, but by streaks of bright white light, which prove no less terrifying. The terrible inevitability of what is happening is brought home by showing the moments leading up to Amenhotep's death. The film has stacked the pack somewhat by making Amenhotep seem unlikable, but those present have heard Moses' words. Their surface scepticism quickly dissipates as they see the streaks of light encircling them. There's a moment of fleeting defiance before the sheer inevitability of the situation reaches its grim conclusion.

Following the plagues, where thousands of frogs and swarms of locusts filled the screen, we get grand exodus scenes intended to look as if millions are leaving ⁶. The newly liberated Hebrews quickly encounter the pillars of cloud and fire, the latter of which is particularly well-rendered. Likewise, the path through the Red Sea looks very impressive. Miriam makes an interesting comment here about the sea-bed: "its dry". This rather sums up this film's approach to the miraculous parts of the texts. Various productions from the 1956 The Ten Commandments onwards have attempted to try and give some scientific plausibility to the supernatural elements. The 1975 mini-series Moses largely minimalised the plagues, for example, while Exodus/: God's and Kings brought in a sceptical expert to provide an explanation. This follows a similar explanation in DeMille's film where Rameses ⁷ gives the following monologue:

...word came of a mountain beyond the Cataracts which spewed red mud and poisoned the water. Was it the staff I gave you that caused all this? Was it the wonder of your god that fish should die and frogs should leave the waters? Was it a miracle that flies and lice should bloat upon their carrion and spread disease in both man and beast? These things were ordered by themselves, and not by any god.

Here however, not only is there no attempt to rationalise these supernatural acts, it intensifies them and links them to Moses' pronouncements. When Exodus 14:16 refers to "dry land" it's usually understood as idiomatic, rather than literal as Miriam's words stress here. The film is robustly and unapologetically Pentecostal in its approach with a strong emphasis on Christianity, miracles and prosperity. This is taken a step further in the words used in the supposedly Jewish Passover Seder which stress phrases about "redemption through the lamb".

This Christianisation of the text is, of course, something that also typifies DeMille's two versions of the story, and as the film progresses, DeMille's approach becomes more and more dominant (not least because The Prince of Egypt and Exodus: Gods and Kings more or less finish after the Red Sea). The scene where Moses receives the Ten Commandments is hugely reminiscent of DeMille. Tongues of fire engrave the rock with the words of the Decalogue - indeed a flaming hand stretches out to touch the rock as the first words are inscribed - and all ten are read out in full. One difference, however, is the way the giving of the different commandments here is inter-cut, perhaps interrupted, by scenes of the people worshipping the golden calf. DeMille's film maintained the purity of the moment. Here following God is contested, an ongoing battle.

Indeed once Moses returns and orders those 'faithful' to God to rally round, the film then starts to return to the footage of Joshua at the start. The Joshua footage is interspersed with that of Levites surreptitiously killing those who had not sided with Moses; of the people walking purposefully across the desert; and the 120 year old Moses writing a few final words ⁸. The words Joshua speaks become more clearly recognisable as those from the first and last chapters of the Book of Joshua, "Are we going to submit to God or our own pride?" he shouts fiercely, daring anyone to defy him.  The film increasingly resembles Braveheart (1995) as it draws to a close with the words "Now is the time to conquer what is ours", seemingly regurgitating the words from Macedo's book.

As treatments of the Book of Exodus go I enjoyed this one more than I expected. The lighting and the attempts to blend actors into CGI scenes occasionally let it down, and I must admit that I'm not a fan of the multiple slow-motion montages that recur throughout the film. Nevertheless, for those who know the story it gives a reasonably coherent version of events, even if the characterisation is a little flat in places. This is somewhat ironic as the telenovela is largely based on building back stories for all the characters. Where this lets the film down is in the portrayal of the Egyptians. It's not unusual for a Moses film not to sympathise with them, but the scene of the bodies of hundreds of soldiers floating face down in the Red Sea passes without comment, despite being such an arresting image. Perhaps it could be argued that this tones down the text of the Bible, where Miriam sings a whole song celebrating the way in which "Horse and rider have been thrown into the sea" (Ex 15:21). Where this becomes problematic is the way in which the film's validation of Joshua seems to align with Macedo equating his non-Evangelical countrymen with the Egyptians. Sadly, the film's dehumanisation of them (not to mention of the non-faithful Hebrews) casts a shadow across an otherwise interesting project.

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1 - IMDb. Other sources cite 150 or 176 episodes.
2 - http://cinema.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2016/01/28/os-dez-mandamentos-estreia-com-lugares-vagos-em-sessoes-esgotadas.htm - Retrieved from web.archive.org
3 - According to Brazilian Film database Filme B. This is roughly $20 million.
4 - Cited and translated in Zaitchik, Alexander  and Christopher Lord (2019) "How a Demon-Slaying Pentecostal Billionnaire is Ushering in a Post-Catholic Brazil" in The New Republic, Feb 7. Available online: https://newrepublic.com/article/153083/demon-slaying-pentecostal-billionaire-ushering-post-catholic-brazil.
5 - I find no direct traces to DeMille's original The Ten Commandments (1923) and, of course, one of the other screen adaptations of the Moses story might also have exerted some kind on influence on the filmmakers.
6 - In the "making-of" DVD the filmmakers refer to the 600,000 men referred to in Exodus 12:37 (and they stress that this is not counting the women and children).
7 - This is how the credits to the 1956 film spell his name. The credits for this film use Ramsés, so I have anglicised this as Ramesses (as per Wikipedia and my own natural inclination towards Ramsees). Others uses Ramses. Exodus: Gods and Kings uses "Rhamses".
8 - Earlier we see him writing Genesis and the beginning of Exodus.

Brazilian Biblical Telenovelas

For some time now I’ve been meaning to write about the various biblical telenovelas that have emerged from Brazil in the last decade. As their description implies, telenovelas are extremely long running TV series – somewhere between a US TV series and a soap opera – which may run for between 30 and 200 episodes. Whilst the first, 1951’s Sua vida me pretence ("Your Life Belongs to Me") originated in Brazil, they have been popular across South America since the 1960s and more recently have gained growing audiences in various other parts of the world, notably Asia and the Iberian peninsula. Indeed while Wikipedia’s claim that telenovelas are the "most popular non-English-speaking scripted forms of entertainment in the world" is both unsourced and unlikely (given books, music and video games all fall into that category), it nevertheless gives you a suggestion of the form’s popularity across the world despite most of the English speaking world being entirely unfamiliar with the term.

The development of biblical telenovelas is interesting not least because it represents a seventh type of format for biblical screen drama¹. The sheer running length means that the vast majority of the material is invented. Huge casts play fictional roles in made-up sub-plots supporting an overall narrative which combines the silver thread of a biblical episode with other archetypal plots such as the love-triangle, rags to riches etc.

What's remarkable about all of these biblical telenovelas so far is that they have all been made by the same company - Rede Record. Prior to beginning these series, Record TV was a significant way behind Brazil's leading production company, Globo. Indeed, not only did Globo specialise in telenovelas, they also had so much market dominance that the only programmes in the annual top ten ratings were those made by Globo a dominance that dates back to the 1960s.² Record had tried to compete with telenovelas set in contemporary times, it was only when they struck on the idea of producing biblical telenovelas that they started to get places in the top ten.

So far Record have produced the following biblical series:

-A História de Ester (Esther, 10* 2010)
-Sansao e Dalila (Samson, 18, 2011)
-Rei Davi (David, pictured, 30, 2012)
-José do Egito (Joseph, 38, 2013)
-Os Milagres de Jesus (Jesus' Miracles, 35, 2012-14)
-Os Dez Mandamentos (Moses, 242, 2015-16)
-A Terra Prometida (Promised Land, 179, 2016-17)
-O Rico e Lázaro (Daniel†, 181, 2017)
-Apocalipse (Revelation, 155, 2017-8)
-Lia (Leah [and Jacob], 10, 2018)
-Jesus (Jesus/Acts, 193, 2018-19)
-Jezabel (80, 2019)
*First number cited is the number of episodes for each story.
†The title translates as "The Rich (man) and Lazarus" - the parable which Jesus tells, but the story is set in the time of Daniel in exile in Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar on the scene.

That's a reasonably comprehensive list, though if you look at some of the popular stories that haven't been covered yet - Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Lot - are all in Genesis. I don't know if Rei Davi (2012), which I wrote about in 2014, goes so far as to include Solomon, but otherwise most of the stories that have been covered before to a significant level have now been done.
Moreover, adding up all those episodes gives a total of 1171 episodes, and each episode has at least a running time of about 30 minutes. Wikipedia says Os Dez Mandamentos (The Ten Commandments, 2015-16) lasts for 60 minutes. Given it featured an incredible 242 episodes that means it ran for around 242 hours - more than an hour of material for every minute of Cecil B. DeMille's famous epic of the same name. Perhaps it's not surprising that of all the stories these telenovelas have told, it was this one that was edited into a feature film. Os Dez Mandamentos - O Filme (2016) cut all that material down to just 2 hours (according to IMDb) and then again to 78 minutes for the DVD. Whilst some good samples of these shows are available from the Record TV website, US Netflix or on YouTube etc. this film is the only complete material with English subtitles that can be bought in permanent form, at least that I have found. I'm expecting my copy any time now.

What's also interesting is that Record TV is owned by the founder of Brazil's Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) an evangelical group that is part of a growing conservative movement in Brazil - jumping to around 22% of the population in the 2010 census vs 70% Roman Catholic. Officially the country is secular. This is a very different background to the UK and it's hard to think of, say, The God Channel finding itself in such a position.

This becomes more significant because telenovelas have a reputation for being used in the past to shape social attitudes. The most famous example of the former is the Mexican telenovela Acompañame (Accompany Me, 1977-78) which promoted family planning, saw a very significant rise in family planning-related activity in those years, and commissioning of further family-planning messaged productions.³ As a result another four series were made with similar aims.

It's the kind of thing that liberal/atheists hate and conservative/evangelicals love. It's either a great step in evangelism and making inroads into the culture, or it's a worrying trend aligning with a move to the right in many countries at the moment. It's hard not to see the rise of such telenovelas as part of a wider cultural movement that saw a right-wing, Catholic-turned-evangelical win Brazil's 2018 presidential election.

In any case I'm interested to find out more about the subject and hope to review Os Dez Mandamentos - O Filme once my copy arrives. There's an interesting chapter on these productions by Clarice Greco, Mariana Marques De Lima and Tissiana Nogueira Pereira in "The Bible Onscreen in the New Millennium" (ed. Wickham Clayton) for those seeking more information, and enough material to watch on Record TV's website to get a good feel for the phenomenon.⁴

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1 - In addition to feature films, short films, television series, mini-series, TV plays, live broadcast stage-productions. A further potential format is the soap-opera, but I know of no such venture based on the Bible.
2 - Greco, Clarice, Mariana Marques De Lima and Tissiana Nogueira Pereira (2020) “The Phenomenon of Biblical Telenovelas in Latin America” in Clayton, Wickham (ed.) The Bible Onscreen in the New Millennium: New Heart and New Spirit. Manchester: Manchester University Press p.71.
3 - Basten, Stuart (2009) "Mass media and reproductive behaviour: serial narratives, soap operas and telenovelas". The Future of Human Reproduction: Working Paper #7.St. John’s College, Oxford & Vienna Institute of Demography. p.4-6
Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20121119022224/ https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/PDF/Soaps_-_Number_7.pdf
4 - My tip would be to search for the individual titles listed above on the Record website and then watch the various video clips. Google translate is useful for getting the gist for those who, like me, don't speak any Portuguese.

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.