Film as an Expression of Spirituality: The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films

Film as an Expression of Spirituality:
The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films
Edited by Kenneth R. Morefield

Cambridge Scholars Publishing
242 pages - Hardback
ISBN 978-1527550841
Publication Date: 02/10/2023

I've just had a chapter published in this new book which brings together a series of essay on some of the films in the Arts and Faith top 100 lists."Film as an Expression of Spirituality: The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films" features essays by 12 authors some of whom I met on the A&F site over 20 years ago. I was a regular contributor to the forum for a number of years and it was there I met a number of inspiring writers on film including Jeffrey Overstreet and Steven D. Greydanus. Both have been very generous to me over the years and I have learned an enormous amount from them both. So I'm really pleased they both have essays in here. And it's nice for something so permanent to have emerged eventually from all that went into that site.

My essay is on Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Matthew, 1964) and despite studying it and discussing it for all these years I don't think I've ever struggled with writing something as much as I did here. I'm grateful to editor Ken Morefield (whom I also met at A&F) whose support and flexibility got me through.

It's currently available online via the Cambridge Scholars website where there's a healthy sample available to download as well as a little more information. I've posted a list of the contributions below which hopefully gives you a sense of the films covered. It's priced with libraries in mind, so if you'd like to read it, then perhaps you could encourage yours to get a copy. 

If you want to find out more about the various iterations of the The Arts and Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films then Ken has put together a great website that brings things together nicely.

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1. Carl Theodor Dreyer and the Problem of Christian Realism – Kenneth R. Morefield
2. Loving Someone in Darkness: The Silence and Voice of God in the Arts & Faith Top 100 Films –Brian Duignan
3. Love, Lust, and L’Avventura – Domenic Cregan
4. Il Vangelo secondo Matteo – Matthew Page
5. Beyond the Infinite: The Transcendent Vision and Religious Forms of 2001: A Space Odyssey – Aren Bergstrom
6. Empire and Incarnation in The Mission and Of Gods and Men – Benjamin Sammons
7. Reverse Rumspringa: Peter Weir’s Witness as “Cultural Kamikaze – Will Underland and Jency Wilson
8. A Sacrifice of Praise – Evan Cogswell
9. Right and Wrong?: Binary Opposition in Do The Right Thing – Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.
10. To Love and Be Loved in Return: Thirty Years of Discovering Kieślowski’s Blue – Jeffrey Overstreet
11. Faith, Reason, and Interpretation: Belief and Doubt in The Song of Bernadette and Lourdes –Steven D. Greydanus
12. Put on the Full Armor of God: Faith and Radicalism in First Reformed – Matthew Spencer

Giudetta e Oloferne [Head of a Tyrant], (Fernando Cerchio, 1959)

Not sure why it's taken me so long to watch and review this one before. I've written quite a lot about Judith films and this is, I think, the longest cinematic adaptation of the deuterocanonical book. And while it's known as Head of A Tyrant in the English speaking world, it's an Italian peplum film shot just after the genre exploded with the release of Le Fatiche di Ercole (Hercules, Pietro Francisci, 1958).

Judith is played by French actor Isabelle Corey who had starred in both Bob le Flambleur and ...And God Created Woman within a few months of one another in 1956. Opposite her Oloferne is played by Massimo Girotti who was still almost a decade away from his most famous performance as the dad in Pasolini's Teorema (Theorem, 1968) screaming into the deserted landscapes of Mount Etna. 

It's unusual for a peplum film to rest quite so heavily on its performances, and Corey and Girotto do a good enough job of portraying the tensions both of them feel. On the one hand they feel inextricably pulled towards the other, but she is torn between her love of him and the love of her people, he on the other hand knows she might be trouble but chooses to let her into his heart regardless. 

The plot deviates a little from the story in the Book of Judith. The Assyrians come seeking to make the Israelites surrender. I like the way the town elders aren't really sure why they're being attacked. That seems to fit with the over-the-topness of Nebuchadnezzar's reaction in the text. Despite the reasonableness of the appeal for surrender,some refuse to accept their gods and there are a few who fire a few arrows towards Holophernes which creates conflict.The Bethulians are ordered to give up the would-be assassins or else they will be destroyed. But rather than besieging the town the Assyrians seem to move in. There's no camping at any rate. One other deviation is that Judith's servant, while an active character in the film, does not accompany Judith there.

The portrayal of Judith is interesting. In the book she's a beautiful widow and both elements seem to have some bearing on the story. I don't recall if anyone mentions that she is a widow. Instead there's much more emphasis on her being a daughter and sister than on being a widow. Her youthful attractiveness is only emphasised when she ingratiates herself into Holophernes' inner court by performing a sexy Salomé-esque dance. 

 

Of course the most famous film version of this story is the 1914 one by D.W. Griffith and this is a very different beast. obviously this adaptation is in colour and with sound, not to mention that for modern audiences the quality of the available print is is far greater here. Yet something else feels very different aside from all that. It's campier, for sure. The shortness of the soldiers skirts confirm that. But perhaps it's because director Fernando Cerchio trusts his material a little more, as if knowing that the possibility of violence creates a more engaging experience than the before and after battle scenes in Griffith's film.

Cerchio puts that colour to good use, particularly the greens and reds in the interiors which complements the costumes. It reflects both the opposition between Judith and Holophernes, but also their similarities, and that a little of each is found in the other. Yet the gaudiness of these tones, particularly in combination, are also unsettling, putting us ill at ease. There's a slight In a Lonely Place vibe here: the chemistry, the tension between conflicting passions, or between head and heart. 

Here, though, things are different. Holophernes decides time is up for Judith's people. His costume changes to predominantly black as he hopes to force the citizens to surrender the guilty men. Hers is pure red with both the connotations of sexiness and blood. The physical gap between the two widens. Holophernes starts to feel justified in his decision and then he says "Sometimes we have to do things in spite of ourselves that we wish we didn't have to do" and his spell over Judith is broken.

The beheading scene is particularly good. The sword almost calling out to her like Macbeth's dagger via a quick zoom. Her pose (above) as she hesitates just for a moment before striking, almost as if wishing he would wake-up and stop her. One more notable moment remains as Judith emerges from the building, shot from behind, and holds aloft Holophernes' head, motionless. A lesser director might have strung out the final battle scene here, but her it's rather half-hearted. The decisive blow has already been struck.

Is The Book of Clarence Movie Based on the Bible?

(Edit: my review for this film is now live).
The trailer for the film The Book of Clarence landed this week and given the publicity for the movie talks about Jesus, a lot of people will be wondering, is the Book of Clarence in the Bible? Is there a Clarence in the Bible and if so where in the Bible is Clarence?

The answer to all these questions is fairly simple. There isn't a Book of Clarence in the Bible. There isn't even a character called Clarence in the Bible, even if many of the other characters in the film, are mentioned in the Bible or are known from other historical evidence. As far as we know, the movie is not even based on a true story, rather it's an original idea from British writer and director Jeymes Samuel. 

Yet, based on what we know so far, it's fair to say that the film will be loosely based on the Bible. Jesus and the disciples are characters in the story doing broadly similar things to the stories about them in the gospels. Characters also recognised in Roman history, such as Pontius Pilate (who looks like he is being played by James McAvoy) will feature as well.

In this sense, then, it looks like the film will follow a roughly similar path to Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979). Clarence is a fictional character around the fringes of the Jesus story who has some similar  experiences to Jesus and becomes some kind of figurehead. Plus, of course, both films are comedies.  

So while The Book of Clarence will draw on the stories from the gospels, Clarence himself is a fictional character who is not even mentioned in the Bible.

If you liked this post you might enjoy:
> my review of The Book of Clarence (2024)
> my book "100 Bible Films" (BFI/Bloomsbury, 2022)

Data Visualization: How Does Pasolini Abridge Matthew's Gospel?

Click here for larger/better resolution version of the image.

Earlier in the year I was writing a chapter on Pier Paolo Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Matthew, 1964) for a book due out next year hopefully about some of the films from the Arts and Faith Top 100. 

The words spoken in the film are almost entirely directly taken from Matthew's Gospel, but not all of the Gospel is included. Many sections are omitted or abbreviated. Moreover, Pasolini rearranges the text so some incidents/ speeches occur in a different place in the film. 

I made a list of which parts of the Gospels appear in various film many years ago (free download) and Jeffrey Staley and Richard Walsh produced similar but more detailed versions of this information for their 2007 book "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination" (my review) a completely reworked version of which was published last year. 

However, I wanted to get a better feel for how Pasolini edits, abridges and rearranges the material and while those resources are useful I wanted to get something more immediate. Given my day job is creating data visualisations, I decided to have a quick go with the data about Pasolini's movie. Jeffrey and Richard were kind enough to allow me to use their research and to provide it in an electronic format. 

Preparation

My intention was to plot where the cited/dramatised incidents from the text occur in the film. In order to do this I began by tidying and making a number of amendments to their data. There was the odd error and there was one passage where the wording is used twice in the text and I felt the other verse seemed to be where Pasolini would more naturally be drawing from. I also gave a more detailed breakdown of the Sermon on The Mount and where there was only a time stamp for a section of teaching, I added in specific times. This was a challenge as Staley and Walsh had used a different release of the film than any of mine own.

Visual elements

One of the things I wanted to examine was how Pasolini handled the five main teaching blocks we find in the text. Scholars have noted how Matthew concentrates Jesus' teaching into five main blocks and for over a century it has been suggested that this is to associate Jesus and the gospel with Moses and the five books of the Torah. So I shaded these areas in grey. I probably should've mentioned that on the diagram itself, but I couldn't quite work out where to do that and, at least at the time, I was hoping to do an improved version.

From a data visualisation point of view there is one thing that is particularly unusual about this chart which is that "time" is on the y-axis, whereas nearly always time goes on the x-axis. I decided to do it this way for two reasons. Firstly, because in a sense both axes are a variation on time. The y-axis is time through the film, but really the x-axis represents time to. Perhaps we could call it time spent reading through the gospel. It's not linear or regular time, but it's not totally out of keeping with the convention.

The second reason, however, was that having plotted it both ways this felt like the more natural choice. While the time through the movie might be more regular, the text is more original. It represents a reality that exists before the film comes and rearranges it. The sense of progress is progress through the text. Similarly, I think the various attempts to plot the time sequence in Pulp Fiction (1994) fail because the people producing them don't want to break the rule that time in minutes/should be on the y-axis. But this is a case of "it depends" albeit in a situation where the convention is dominant.

Notes on style

Many of the most popular data visualisations use quite lively colours and style. When that works, it really works and it's no surprise that the ones that are able to leverage colour effectively go on to become the most popular. 

The downside of this, however, is that people think effective / good data visualization has to have lots of colour. That's not true. Indeed many dataviz experts like Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic advise us to "resist the urge to use color for the sake of being colorful" ("Storytelling with Data", p.117). 

Here, it felt like colour didn't really have a key role to play. I could perhaps emphasise one particular section, or assign different colours to the type of material, and perhaps that's a job for a future iteration of the visual, perhaps one that is being presented. 

Instead, I decided to lean in to the lack of colour. The film is of course magnificently and proudly black and white (if you have the colourised abomination you should destroy it before it burns out your eyes and shrivels your soul). Moreover regardless of the excesses appearing on screen, Pasolini kept his titles sparse and plain. 

So I stuck with black and white, or rather black and light grey. The off-white background is the same hue featured in Pasolini's opening credits, and I used the Galatia SIL font as this seemed like the closest approximation to Pasolini's original font that I could find for free. I'm weighing up doing a couple of other version of these and I'm thinking of doing those using colour and a more modern font. But here, I've essentially tried to reproduce the film's simple aesthetic. It's part of what makes the film so powerful.

Limitations

As I've mentioned above I'm still wondering about doing a more advanced version of the above. Ideally I would have liked it to be possible to hover over the dots and see the name and reference to each incident. In terms of tools I tend to use Power BI, but here I used Excel, partly because I didn't think anyone would look at it unless they already had a Power BI account and also because Power Bi doesn't let you use custom fonts. There are a couple of ways round the latter, but the former is a real deal breaker. 

Annoyingly, though, while the Excel file version of this document does allow you to see some info as a tool-tip, you can't customise it, the way you can in PowerBi. So maybe I'll return to this data if I ever get around to picking up Tableau or Deneb or R or something where I can make the interactivity show online.

The other limitation is that the quality is not as high as I'd hope. The higher quality version of this image is just over 800 by 900 pixels, but even then the dots look a little pixely in places. I also need to find somewhere to put that note about the darker grey strips being the author's five teaching blocks.

Did it work?

The main point I make about all this in the essay is that whereas Jesus has five chunks of teaching, Pasolini essentially reduces this down to two, the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) and the Olivet discourse (Matt 23-25). However this visualisation doesn't really bear this out. While both sections feel like they take a long time, in reality they only take 5½ and 6½ minutes respectively, only 10% of the film combined. Plus while Pasolini's second discourse includes almost every word from chapter 23, he omits most of 24-25.

This move from five to two seems really clear from viewing the film, so it's arguably a bit of a failure of the graph that it doesn't really bring that out. In a future version I'd want to itemise the seven woes a bit more. That would create more presence on the chart, but I don't think it will solve the problem. I need to think a bit more about that  – it's why this visualisation won't be appearing in my chapter on it. 

That said, though, the point of the visual wasn't to reinforce a point I already felt comes through strongly in the film, it was to give me much more of a feel of how Pasolini jumps about in and abridges his source. And in that sense I think it really helps. For example, even with the briefest glance it's clear that Pasolini does not adopt a linear-but-abridged approach to the text. He moves material around. Much easier to see here than by sifting through a list of chapters and verses. I'm considering doing another one of these for The Jesus Film (1979) which takes a similar approach to Luke's gospel. I have no idea whether it jumps around or not.

There are other benefits. One point I found particularly interesting, is to see what happened to Matthew's second discourse. Pasolini essentially merges it into part of his calling of the disciples sequence. It's a clever move because he manages to not only preserve the "revolutionary" way Matthew has Jesus make a single clear proposition, but also maintain a plausible dramatic narrative in terms of Jesus' growing support. He calls his men, and teaches them, before turning up after just his baptism to a huge crowd on the top of a mountain.

It also demonstrates that Pasolini jumps back four times in the film, but for decreasing amount of time and material on each subsequent occasion. Also noticeable that the birth and Passion narratives take place in completely straight-forward fashion. It's only the ministry where some things change. But it's also arguable that what Pasolini is doing is jumping forward, rather than backwards. I might need to think a bit more about that.

Over to you

Having not only gone to the effort of producing this, I've now spent quite a while creating this blog post about it as well. So needless to say I'd love it not to be all in vain. So feel free to like and share and use if you're using it in classes. Please just keep the attribution to Staley and Walsh as well as mentioning me as its originator.

More importantly do you have any observations that come from the chart? If so, I'd love to hear them. Please put something in the comments below.

Wilde Salomé (2013)

I've wanted to see Al Pacino's Salomé production for many years despite not being entirely sure what it was. There were seeming two entries on IMDb that seemed relevant and while things are a little clearer there now, originally it was confusing. Was this a filmed play, or a (more standard movie); or was it a documentary. It briefly popped up on Amazon Prime so I bookmarked it to come back to. And then it disappeared. 

Fortunately, after an absence of 2 or so years (in the UK at least) it's back on Prime again to rent or buy on Amazon. So, ever trying to learn from past mistakes, I snapped it up, watched it and decided I should probably get some initial thoughts down before it disappears again.

It turns out that what you are buying is in two distinct entities run into one. Firstly there is a documentary called Wilde Salomé from 2011. This is then immediately followed by a filmed version of the play which sits part way between a filmed play and a film. I'll offer a few thoughts on the latter in a future post as it's more the typical focus of this blog, but for now here are a few thoughts on the documentary

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Wilde Salomé is a 90 minute documentary which tracks Pacino's journey in adapting Oscar Wilde's famous play Salomé. Apparently the project has been a long term passion project for Pacino and he tells his story as he tours round various key locations in Wilde's lifetime, in Ireland, the US and in the UK. We also hear from a number of other people Pacino talks to, ranging from one of Wilde's descendants and people like Bono, through to a literal man on the street outside one of Wilde's British homes who, despite being a local resident, had no idea of the location's significance prior to bumping into Al Pacino blocking the pavement there. There's also some footage from Israel/Palestine.

The travelogue footage is interspersed with extensive excerpts from the filmed version of the play, as well as lots of behind the scenes footage. Pacino trying to bring the production together, rehearsals, passionate discussions about the way a certain aspect should be handled. It emerges that there are three levels to the project which are all being produced in the same five days period: the stage play, which is being performed in from of a paying audience; a separate filmed version of the play which is being shot in the same few days, but entirely separately from the theatrical version; and the documentary itself. 

There are certainly some interesting details, particularly for those, who like me, can recall only a little about Wilde and are never sure how much of it is true and how much is fiction from productions ranging from comedies such as Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) to more serious biopics like Wilde (1997) starring Blackadder alumnus Stephen Fry.

The details of Wilde's final years, particularly those of his incarceration in a hard labour prison are pretty horrifying and the more editorial take on "Bosie", is welcome. I picture him as Jude Law, forget his father's codifying of the rules of boxing and can never recall a great deal else.

Richard Strauss's famous operatic adaptation also gets a mention here -- For some strange reason I struggle to think of Strauss's work as coming after Wilde's. He, or at least his opera, somehow seems like a much more established / accepted work in terms of the British establishment. 

While there are I'd really have liked a decent discussion of other filmed versions of the play or story. Pacino mentioned first seeing the Steven Berkhoff version in the late 1990s, and there's a little footage from that, but only regarding how it inspired him. And then there's footage from an early silent version and another adaptation shot in the Mojave desert. Fine if you want to skip the 1953 Rita Heyworth version (which not only steers clear of Wilde's play and drops the accent on the "e", but also changes Salome into a heroine who thinks she's dancing to save John the Baptist), but it would be nice to hear his thoughts on the 1922 Nazimova version or Ken Russell's The Last Dance (1988).  Actually I should get round to reviewing that one myself...

All in all, there are certainly some points of interest, and it does flesh out Pacino's filmed version of the play which follows, but it's not as interesting as might be hoped, partly because, for all Pacino's charisma and enthusiasm, there's very little discipline. Pet passions like this need reigning in and this is hard to do when the obsessive fan making the project is one of Hollywood's biggest ever stars. It's not hard to imagine -- not least seeing the direct way with which Pacino talks to his colleagues -- that no-one really stood up to him to reign him in a bit. 

But hey, I'm hardly one to talk. And just as I've enjoyed carving out a bit of space on the internet to let my pet passion ramble on untethered, then why shouldn't he? And for a making-of style documentary for a film about strong, irresistible, irrational passions, perhaps that's rather appropriate.  

Jesus' Humour in Bible Movies

I got a question from a friend asking if I knew of any clips of "Jesus laughing or being funny in any Jesus films" and if seemed like it might be an interesting subject for a blog post. They mentioned The Chosen and I agree it's an obvious starting place, because Jesus' sense of humour is so much more fully developed in that series than any other production that I'm aware of. So maybe we can take that as read, or maybe we'll just return to Jesus' sense of humour in The Chosen because it's quite a topic in itself. Feel free to post any good examples in the comments.

The Comedy Jesus Films

An obvious place to start is comedies which feature Jesus as a character. However, in most of the obvious examples, Jesus is played straight, it's the antics around him where characters might be said to joke; or it's the fact that a non-joking Jesus is in an unusual context that provides the humour.

Take for example Luis Buñuel's The Milky Way (1969). Jesus appears a few times. The first time he is thinking of shaving his beard off. It's a funny scene, but the joke is about quirky juxtaposition. Moments later Jesus is running late – again, a normal element of being human that somehow feels at odds with how Jesus is traditionally portrayed

I covered 9 films that could be classed as comedic in my book, but most of them were based on the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless only one of them was written in that style of humour where one of the characters provides humour by saying intentionally funny things (e.g. Jerry in Seinfeld or Chandler in Friends), Hal Hartley's The Book of Life (1998). Here the 'funny' character is Satan even though Jesus (who has come to judge the living and the dead) remains the 'hero', though much of the humour comes from the quirky and surreal world to which Jesus returns.

Indeed the existing comedy Bible movies are mostly written in that style where the characters themselves play things straight despite the fact they exist in a funny / absurd world / situation or they are the absurd ones. None of these films play Jesus as absurd, though I've not seen much of Black Jesus (2014-19) yet.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the absurd universe model is the most famous comedic Bible Film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979). Here Jesus only appears briefly at the start delivering the Sermon on the Mount in traditional fashion. The humour comes from the absurd conversations that happen at the edges of the crowd and then as the film pans out further we discover Jesus may very well be the only sane character in the entire character.

The other film that might qualify as a comedy Jesus film is Get Some Money (2017) directed by Biko Nyongesa. The original short film of the same name was billed as a comedy about Judas' suicide. As someone not really familiar with a Kenyan sense of humour I found it difficult to relate to the humour – suicide tends not to be played for laughs in Anglo-American culture. Some bits were still amusing though again Jesus himself was not making jokes or wry observations.

Lastly there's Jesus of Montreal (1989) which, as it is often observed, is not really a Jesus film at all as much as a film about Jesus which leans heavily on allegory. Interestingly Daniel, the character in the film who is portraying Jesus in a play, does have a sense of humour, but that's no something that carries over to his performance of Jesus. So the Christ-figure is funny, but not the Jesus figure. Indeed many of the classic Christ-figure films give their hero a sense of humour, but I'm going to resist going off on that tangent.

In short, while several films are funny about Jesus, none of those really portray Jesus as having a sense of humour. However, there are several of the more traditional-style Jesus films which do give Jesus a sense of humour, so lets turn to them now.

Son of Man (1969) 

Dennis Potter's play, Son of Man was groundbreaking in so many ways, but it was when Gareth Davies adapted it for the BBC that elements of Jesus' humour began to emerge. The actor Davies picked as his lead – Colin Blakely – gives an electric performance as Jesus and his version of the Sermon on the Mount is a particular highlight. There are a few changes to the script. I'm not sure whether Potter rewrote it for the television, or if that was down to Davies, or just the way Blakely delivered the scene. Perhaps a combination of the three, but it's there that a couple of little humorous interjections emerge. The potential is there in Potter's words, but Blakely injects the scene with the impression that not only does his Jesus realise humour is a useful tool, but that he is clearly revelling in using it. "It's easy to love those who love you" says Blakely with perfect comic timing "Why even the tax collector can do that". Later, he admits it would hurt were someone to strike you on the cheek and when Brian Blessed's Peter adds "Yes, especially if I were to do it Master!", Jesus roars with laughter along with everyone else. The signs of Jesus' sense of humour are brief, but very much there.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Scorsese's interpretation of the story was different in so many ways from its predecessors that it's hardly a surprise that humour is one of the elements of Jesus' humanity (though perhaps it's a divine characteristic too) which it draws out. In some ways this is surprising as Jesus tends to be very intense and serious in this movie. The first flicker of a sense of humour here occurs in the stoning scene. Jesus is challenging the crowd about their own sin. When Zebedee steps forward claiming he's not done anything wrong, Jesus asks him his mistresses' name. It's meant rhetorically, but when another member of the crowd shouts out "Judith", Jesus raises his eyebrow wryly. At a recent screening, which I introduced, the audience laughed at that moment. 

Shortly afterwards the disciples arrive at the Wedding at Cana, which Nathaniel (whose cousin is getting married) is helping out with. When the wine runs out Jesus asks what is in the nearby jars. Nathaniel informs him that they're only water – he filled them himself. Jesus suggests he check anyway. Nathaniel is insistent, but eventually gives way, only to discover they are now filled with wine. Nathaniel stares back at Jesus open mouthed. Jesus – in what has become a much used meme, raises his glass with an told-you-so smile.

There's not much more to it than that, but certainly this was a development, and moreover it's perhaps the only moment in any Jesus production prior to The Chosen where I smile at Jesus' sense of humour. 

The Visual Bible: Matthew (1994)

If Scorsese's introduction of a Jesus with a sense of humour was a bit of an innovation then Regardt van den Bergh's Matthew was a revolution. Bruce Marchiano received instruction from his director to play Jesus as a "Man of Joy" (p.72) and inspiration from an 8 year old friend who remarked "Well I sure hope he smiles a lot because Jesus in the other Jesus movies never smiled, and I know that Jesus smiles all the time". Marchiano certainly delivered on that guidance, giving the most joyful, smiley portrayal of Jesus imaginable. Even the passages where it's hard to image Jesus smiling, Marchiano keeps going, for example the 7 woes of Matt 23. He later reflected that "Jesus smiled bigger and laughed heartier than any human being who's ever walked the planet". While it occasionally rankles with an old curmudgeon like me, many have found it life-changing.

But smiling and laughing are not the same as "being funny" and here van den Bergh and Marchiano were limited by the former's decision to stick to a word for word adaptation of Matthew's text. Yet while Matthew is not the kind of witty text that will instantly have you in stitches, it's important to remember even the deliberate examples of wit we do have from that period do not seem particularly funny to us today. 

In that context there are one or two moments of humour in Matthew that feel not out of place in that context and the film certainly tries to stress the point that this is meant to be humorous. The most memorable is when it comes to Matt 7:3-5 ("How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?"). This bit of comic exaggeration often cited as an example of humour in the Bible and, as if to underline the point, Marchiano picks up a big piece of wood and holds it against his eye as he delivers the line. It's not the greatest piece of comic delivery, but it does, at least, make the point. 

Jesus (1999)

Roger Young's miniseries tries, as much as any previous Jesus film, so show Jesus having a laugh. There's the moment when he and his disciples rush to a water point, desperate for a drink and he playfully splashes them with the water and another similar moment later on. 

Perhaps the most memorable scene in this respect is when some street performers seek to get the crowd – which Jesus is part of – to dance. Jesus (played by a youthful Jeremy Sisto) is very keen and jumps right up. Thomas (of course!) is less entranced and so Jesus seeks to coax him out of his shell a bit. It plays as funny, but in real life I would hate it if someone tried this. Jesus! You don't need my compliance to validate your own joy at dancing.

Elsewhere Jesus' style of preaching is more open than in many films. When he preaches he doesn't just get the kind of questions we find in the Bible, also gets heckled, and his reaction is to laugh along. Jesus himself doesn't tell jokes in this film, but he certainly is shown to have a good sense of humour.

More recent productions

All of these examples are from the twentieth century. Are there any, more-recent examples? Casting my mind back, I remember Jesus being generally cheery and good natured in films such as The Miracle Maker (2000) and Risen (2016) and perhaps even a little self-depricating in such a way as to suggest he doesn't take himself too seriously. But neither contain laughter, humour or jokes. Meanwhile 2006's Color of the Cross, Son of God (2014), Killing Jesus (2015) and Last Days in the Desert (2016) probably reversed the general trend of getting Jesus to lighten up a bit from his earlier silver screen outings, and presented him as a more serious figure. Likewise other non-English language efforts such as Shanti Sandesham (2004),  Jezile (Son of Man, 2006), Su re (2012) and The Savior (2014) also have a more serious-minded approach. There is are a couple of exceptions and like Son of Man (1969) above, both are from British television...

The Second Coming (2003)

In 2003 Christopher Ecclestone, the (then) future Doctor Who, starred as the son of God come back to earth as a working class Mancunian. Northern humour was very much part of the mix. In one scene as he speaks to a vast crown he reminds them of scientific breakthroughs with potentially apocalyptic consequences and asks  "Do you think you're reading for that much power?...You lot?....You cheeky bastards!" 

The line that most stays with me comes from the end of the first episode. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it (it's currently on the Internet Archive), but even twenty years after watching it I could remember the episode's final line. "Well, maybe two".

Second Coming is far from a conventional Jesus film, and it's notable that this was an ITV production rather than something from the BBC. This is very much a Jesus who jokes, even if he's arguably more intense than many of the others. Moreover this is a Jesus who jokes and uses humour, but doesn't really smile and laugh that much (and when he does it's slightly unnerving).

The Passion (2008)

The Passion first broadcast by the BBC in 2008 contains a few humorous notes in its very first scene. Jesus and the disciples are attempting to buy a donkey and its colt and when their business is done the seller realises who Jesus is. Jesus asks him what he's heard and when the seller mentions overthrowing the Romans Jesus replies "Does this look like an army...apart from John and James". Later Jesus uses sleight of hand to inject a bit of humour into "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar" and also to turn some of his questioners cynicism back onto them. 

This is also a Jesus who smiles and laughs as well. But the series is also keen to show those around Jesus laughing at the things he says, or more to the point how he says it. When Jesus is told "the elders instruct us" he counters "and you must listen to what they say...just don't do what they do". As Jesus, Joseph Mawle's delivery is good hear, his relaxed delivery and timing make many lines that read straight in the Gospels become funny. That is also due to Frank Deasy's script which rephrases the words from the Gospels making them more lively and immediate.

Over to you

That's all of the best examples I can think of, having mulled over this for a week or so. Did I miss any? If so, let me know in the comments below.

My Film Commentary for Pasolini's Gospel According to Matthew

For most of this year I've been writing a chapter on Pier Paolo Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964). The chapter is due to go in a book celebrating the Arts and Faith Top 100 “Spiritually Significant” films lists due out sometime 2024-25. I'll post details on that in due course but keep an eye out for it. It's current title is "The Soul of Cinema: Essays on Arts & Faith’s Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films".

In honesty, that project may have finished me as a writer. There has been just so much written about Pasolini, and the concepts he wrestles with and introduces as an artist are not easy to get one's head around that it was hugely challenging marshalling all the sources and doing them justice, and then trying to cram it down to a semi-reasonable word count (I think mine might be the longest chapter in the book. I'm grateful to the book's editor and brains behind the project, Ken Morefield, for his flexibility & support on that. 

Having done all that I thought it might be fun to put that knowledge to good use in other contexts. So I was interviewed about the film by John Bleasdale for his "Cinema Italia" podcast which you can get from Acast | Apple | Spotify. 

So I've also recorded this feature length commentary track. Here you get to watch the whole film while I discuss various aspects about it's production, meaning, performers, music, etc. It's like a director's commentary, only I'm obviously not the director. The beauty of doing this is that I've added subtitles so you can still follow what's happening. And it's 720px so the visual quality should be pretty decent. Watch the video here.

It's difficult to know how this will land. I'm an avid consumer of YouTube, but have had quite mixed results even with my own limited content. My most watched video is 3 seconds of John Inman going "I'm free", followed by Harry Dean Stanton singing "Ain't No Grave" in Cool Hand Luke. But in terms of Bible Films material I don't really know why my most successful video comprising of clips from 6 Classic Era Jesus Films has currently got 26,000 views, while one showing clips from 5 Silent Jesus Films has only 345. Similarly I would never have predicted that around 7,000 people would watch my clip from obscure Sardinian Jesus film Su re (2012), but only 64 would watch the pivotal clip from the far better known Jesus of Montreal (1989).

I suspect this is the least appealing of all of them – after all not many people will have the time to sit and watch/listen to me for over two hours. But I do hope those that do find it an enriching and rewarding experience. I should add that I don't make a penny of these videos, so hopefully there won't be too many ads for household gadgets at crucial moments.

 

The Shack (2017)

Ideally, I probably should have watched The Shack (dir. Stuart Hazeldine, 2017) before I finished writing my book. The novel, originally a bedtime story that William Paul Young wrote for his kids and was encouraged to convert into a book, had sold 20 million copies even before the film came out,¹ and was certainly big at my old church. The summaries I heard didn't really appeal to me. Then it got a $20million adaptation, and while it made five times that back at the box office, it didn't get released near me. 

By the time I was writing with real purpose, it was available on DVD, but it seemed to be more of a Christian film than a Bible film. Yes it features Jesus played by an actor from Israel (Aviv Alush), only three years after Robert Savo's The Savior (2014) had first done the same, as well as portraying God as a Black woman (played by Octavia Spencer). Yet while both of these things made me consider it briefly, its story is fictional, not biblical, and even the appearance of the Trinity (rounded off by Sumire as "Sarayu", the Holy Spirit) is ultimately portrayed as something that happens in the protagonist's mind/heart.

So I decided to pass and I would probably have left it for a good while longer but for the fact someone asked me about it at an academic conference recently. I was presenting on authenticity in biblical films and then also had a hint of a chance of appearing again on BBC Radio 4 talking about Christian movies, so I decided I should really get on with it.

On reflection, I'm glad I delayed because I hated this film. Indeed I'm fairly stunned to find reviews by some of the Christian reviewers I know (and respect) were lukewarm about it. As a general rule I tend to try not to dwell too much on the negatives of a film. I'm sure The Shack will have profoundly touched, moved and even changed some people, perhaps even help them through their grief. I don't wish to trample on that, so I'll refrain from going into why I think it fails both as entertainment as as an apologetic.²

In any case, given my mind has a tendency to over-literalise things, perhaps I'm just missing the point. I guess it's trying to be more of a parable, though in terms of form, though, perhaps it closer to the Book of Job. The Shack's protagonist, Mack (played by Sam Worthington) is well and truly brought low. Already a survivor of domestic violence and then having his daughter abducted, raped and murdered, now his marriage is falling apart and he's losing (less literally) his remaining kids as he (understandably) struggles to process his emotional pain. Only then are we given a peek into God's inner circle and the chance to understand the bigger picture: Mack finds himself at a remote cottage talking with personifications of the three persons of the Trinity, and then with the personification of wisdom (Sophia) as well.

I get that the intention is to portray God-the-parent, God-the-son and God-the-Holy-Spirit as loving and approachable, but I'm not sure this really maps to the kind of Job-esque peek behind the scenes that the filmmakers seem to be attempting. Moreover is Job really a good apologetic in the first place? To me Job is at it's best when it's giving expression to human suffering – suffering we all feel at one time or another, not when it's trying to explain it away. Indeed even the court-scene framing – which many scholars consider later additions – doesn't really attempt to give acceptable justification for why God allowed Job to suffer. Theologically the problem is that The Shack wants to a) given a reasoned explanation for suffering; b) present God as being active, all-powerful, present and intervening in the world; and, c) loving and good and I think you really only get to choose two.

Octavia Spencer is a decent actress and she deserves better than this. Splitting the trinity into three persons (plus wisdom) really seems to weaken the potential appeal of each and while Spencer's homely, compassionate motherly persona might win over those who believe in God, but that he hates them, the character doesn't really have enough charisma and the homespun wisdom (not something I'm a huge fan of in general) falls a long way short of comparative biblical material (be it from Job or elsewhere). The problem is that personifying God then leaves little room for Jesus. He can show Mack how to walk on water and reinforce the point that both he and God-the-parent are loving, but while there's mention of his own suffering he doesn't even really seem to reflect on his and Mack's shared experience.

So while it's a most welcome change to see a Black Woman playing God, and an Jewish Israeli playing Jesus they are not really given any decent material to work with. It's not really a Bible film, it's an adaptation of Bible fan-fiction, and a poorly executed attempt at that.

=======================
1. Getlen, Larry, "This man wrote a small book for his family — and it became a bestseller", New York Post. December 27, 2016. https://nypost.com/2016/12/25/this-man-wrote-a-small-book-for-his-family-and-it-became-a-best-seller/

2. If you want to experience it being dismantled, then plenty of other reviews have done that already, including the podcast "God Awful Movies" (also available on audio only) which spends nearly two hours comprehensively dismantling it – though I find some of their views pretty deplorable.

The Chosen (2019) s1e08

In many ways, it felt like episode 7 of The Chosen's opening season was the climax to its various story arcs, so the decision not to end there seems like a curious one. It's true that one of those arcs – that of Nicodemus – moves on a step further in this episode. We leave him hiding round a street corner crying because he cannot follow Jesus to Jerusalem. Yet neither of the main two story lines in this episode are primarily about major characters. One revolves around the healing of Peter's Mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31) who has featured before, as has Peter's wife, but they've mainly functioned as filling in Peter's back-story as significant characters in their own right. Secondly, there's the woman of Samaria who, is an entirely new character as this is the first time we've really seen Jesus moving beyond Galilee.

And perhaps this last point is why this series ends where it does. It's not driven so much by story arcs and characters, as the breaks in the text, which, I suppose, say something about Jesus' story arc. His ministry is about to extend beyond it's initial Galilean base and begin a new phase. This is an interesting decision in terms of its use of the gospels. The three Synoptics only have Jesus go to Jerusalem once (as an adult); John has three visits. The writers are harmonising here and it makes me wonder how this structure will continue in future seasons. 

It's curious too that we see Quintus making a decree banning religious gatherings and saying Jesus is sought for questioning. Is this merely coincidental timing and Jesus is unaware he is wanted. Or is Jesus' move south supposed to be motivated by fear?

It's also noticeable how both of the major story lines in this episode revolve around women, and this has been one of the strengths of this series – though I don't know whether this derives from a theological conviction or the need to appeal to a wider base. In addition to the Samaritan and Peter's mother-in-law, we've already seen a lot of emphasis on Mary Magdalene and Jesus' mother Mary, which might be expected but in the former case is certainly sooner than might be expected. Plus we've also seen a fictional character, Tamar, framing and almost overshadowing the story of the man healed from being paralysed (ep.6), as well as the most prominent child in children-only episode (3) being female.

Given Peter's mother-in-law is healed then I'm curious as to why the filmmakers decided not to have Peter's wife join them on their travels. There's no scriptural precedent for this of course. After all we only really know Peter even has a wife because we're told he has a mother-in-law. But it does show Magdalene making the trip, seemingly as the only woman. There's some precedent for Magdalene being present – in Luke 8:1-3, she is named as being on one of Jesus' preaching tours – but in The Chosen she seems to be the only woman, as opposed to the "many other women" (8:3) Luke mentions (on a separate occasion). Is the difference that Peter's wife is married and so the filmmakers consider her 'rightful' place to be at home? If so what about Joanna, whose husband Chuza still appears to be on the scene.

The main biblical incident in this episode, though, is Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well (here called Photina following Eastern Orthodox tradition). The fictionalised backstory to this one starts from the opening scene which heads back to (an oddly specific) 1152 BC and a conversation Jacob has with a local named Yassib. Yassib thinks he knows that it is impossible for Jacob (and his 12 sons) to dig a well as the water circumnavigates their land. He also thinks its strange that Jacob is relying on promises made to his ancestors (and, by implication that Jacob's ancestors relying on promises to him would be equally odd). Of course, in mere seconds Yassib is proved wrong. Water miraculously springs up through the ground seconds later.

This is a bit odd for a number of reasons. Firstly because the Hebrew Bible has no mention of Jacob's Well. This is something that is only found in the New Testament and subsequent traditions. There's no reason to assume that Jacob's well has any link to the patriarch of the latter part of Genesis, not least because the NT writers still seem broadly happy to operate under the cultural assumptions that Samaritans are bad and untrustworthy.

Furthermore, it's hard to tell what the point of this scene actually is. If it's that Jacob's god is different in that he expects you to wait generations for him to come through on his promises, then the (almost instantaneous) miraculous (?) provision of water, rather seems to undermine Jacob's argument. Perhaps it simply serves as a reminder that, like the Jews, Samaritans also owed at least part of their inheritance to Jacob (or Israel as he is also known in Genesis) and that Jesus' ministry is for all of Jacob's 'sons', not just the descendants of his son Judah. I also noticed that when we jump back to the incident in the Gospels, it's dated as 26AD, thirty years after the latest date usually given for the end of Herod the Great's reign (this was also the date given in s1e3).

There's further filling in the gaps later on as well, namely around Photina's current and previous relationships (which in John has Jesus summarise as "you have had five husbands and the man you are living with is not your husband). I've heard various takes on this over the years. It's often read that this is a woman of low morals, but even she is valued by Jesus - a fleshed out portrait of Jesus' reputation for consorting with sinners. Another view points out that marriage was not really something women were active partners in. Your first marriage was dictated to by your family, and if your first husband divorced you (which he could do relatively easily according to some traditions) then society gave you no way of supporting yourself other than by finding another husband. This view casts the woman as a tragic figure, forced to move from one dead/fickle husband to another by patriarchal society.

The fleshing out of Photina here chooses neither approach, but incorporates a hint of both. An early conversation with her fifth (still living, still not divorced) husband. She is trying to divorce him, as she now lives with another, but he won't because she is his "property" and he doesn't "part lightly with his possessions". He wants her to return, but also recognises that some of his predecessors have mistreated her in divorcing her when each "gets bored" and that she married him for "stability". In other words this is a more complex and nuanced scenario than either of those presented above, and while it's not necessarily logical, I kind of like it, because life, and marriage, is rarely logical either. Later Photina is shunned by a street vendor, though even in that conversation there's a suggestion that while he can't be seen to associate with her, he's not entirely unsympathetic to her plight.

We also get a bit of further exposition of the relationship between Jews and Samaritans and the fact that Jesus seems to go out of his way to talk to this woman. There's mention of some of the reasons for the animosity between the two peoples. Initially, the conversation itself holds fairly closely to the text of John 4, but then Jesus goes beyond knowing about the five husbands and the one to giving a detailed breakdown of her first relationships. He also explains that he "came to Samaria just to meet you" and tells her that he has not revealed to the public that he is the messiah. 

Finally the disciples return, there's the conversation about his food being doing God's will before the series ends on a more general note with Jesus saying "it's been a long time of sowing but the fields are ripe for harvest".

I haven't decided yet whether to post a few reflections on season 1 as a whole next, or move onto season 2. Watch this space I guess.

Movies from the MountaintopThe other book I was published in from 2022

Movies from the Mountaintop: 100+ Films that Express God, Explore Faith and Enlighten Church

Edited by Cody Benjamin

Published: 22 May 2022
Language : ‎ English
Paperback: ‎ 445 pages
ISBN: ‎ 979-8808551541

I've been so busy promoting my own book ("100 Bible Films") over the last 12-15 months that I've not had time to mention that another book I worked on also got published last year. "Movies from the Mountaintop: 100+ Films that Express God, Explore Faith and Enlighten Church" is a collection of essays and reviews from a range of authors, but principally editor Cody Benjamin.

I sensed when Cody asked me to contribute that all the other writers were Christian, but I was pleased to be involved. There is some material that I often discuss which is perhaps most relevant to believers which therefore didn't really seem to fit with"100 Bible Films". So this book gave me a chance to get that published as well. Essentially it's about how watching a range of different Jesus films gives us the chance to view Jesus from perspectives other than our own, which can challenge our perceptions and biases.

I would estimate that Cody has written roughly half of the book, but there are contributions from another 20-25 authors as well as a 40+ pages of Q&A with other figures including movie stars Mark Wahlberg and Rob Lowe, and writers Brett McCracken and Robert K. Johnston. The final section adds "22 other films to consider". [Given there are 43 named in the contents page then I infer from the title that another 35 get passing mentions].

I've not yet had time to read the rest of the book, but if you're interested you can order a copy on Kindle or paperback from Amazon UK | Amazon US.

Is Another Scorsese Jesus Film on the Way?

Over the weekend the Vatican's been holding a conference in Italy called "L’estetica Globale dell’Immaginazione Cattolica" (The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination) and among the more famous attendees were Pope Francis and Martin Scorsese. According to the Twitter feed of organiser Antonio Spadaro the Pope said:

"This is your work as poets, storytellers, filmmakers, artists: to give life, to give body, to give word to everything that human beings live, feel, dream, suffer, creating harmony and beauty.... Will they criticize you? All right, carry the burden of criticism, also trying to learn from criticism. But still, don't stop being original, creative. Do not lose the wonder of being alive."

Scorsese was apparently moved by the Pope's appeal and as a result later announced “I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus".

I'm a bit pushed for time at the moment, but you can read more on this story at Variety and cinematographe.it.

Should be interesting to see how this film turns out given the general Catholic disapproval of Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ particularly given the Pope's comments above about criticism.

The Chosen (2019) s1e07

In many ways the seventh episode of The Chosen feels like a season finale. A number of the longer running story arcs, particularly those of Nicodemus and Matthew, seem to reach their conclusion in this instalment. 

Unusually however, this penultimate episode of season 1, starts back in the 13th century BC. Poisonous snakes are sweeping the Israelite camp and Moses and Joshua are debating the acceptability of fashioning a bronze snake to heal all the snake-bitten Israelites who gaze upon it. Num 21:4-9 is not a passage that has been dramatised very often and it's always nice to see a relatively obscure passage getting covered. Here it's either a metaphor for how breaking the rules/doing the wrong thing can be the right thing to do in exceptional circumstances; or its a metaphor for how unclean things can be used for Gods glory; or its both. The latter seems like it might be a nod to Matthew's pending appointment to join Jesus' disciples; the former might be more of a nod to the difficulties Nicodemus is having in what he's discovering about Jesus. And, of course, amidst Jesus' discussion with Nicodemus in John 3 that Jesus refers to this incident

This episode is also fairly short and the scenes are fairly long, particularly Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus which lasts for 10 minutes straight – getting on for a third of the episode's run time. After the flashback above and the opening credits a handful of minor scenes slip by. The cosy relationship between Matthew and his supervisor Gaius, as the rather genteel Roman soldier picks up his charge for work; Nicodemus hears news of a new grandchild just as his Roman minder, Praetor Quintus, pops in for a status update; Jesus and his disciples set up a new camp on the outskirts of town.

While there are other Romans depicted, I'm starting to be bothered about the leading soldiers lack of power and menace. Gaius carries all the threat of a supply teacher; Quintus – channelling elements of Jay Robinson's Caligula in The Robe – implies some sort of threat, but by the end of their scene, it's clear Nicodemus is more scared of his wife than his imperialist superior. And this is a problem. I can't help but recall Suzy/Eddie Izzard's routine about how the Romans didn't just wander in new territories and say "Hello, we are the Romans" in a James Mason voice. There's little to suggest the power dynamic that should be a key element in these scenes. I wouldn't even talk to my manager in the slightly brusque way that Nicodemus does to Quintus and, unless I missed something in my contract, they don't have the power to have me stabbed for being too snippy.

All this matters because the Romans and the Jews were not on level footing. The Romans were the invading force, backed up by the most feared army in the world. Some will have collaborated more willingly than others, but it's hard to imagine they were this snippy, and the problem is that this implies that Jews were much more heavily implicated in the opposition to, and demise of, Jesus than is likely to have been the case.

Prior to the meet-up between Nicodemus and Jesus we witness things being orchestrated behind the scenes to make the meeting happen, as if it's an episode of The West Wing where Leo is trying to make a crucial breakthrough in Israeli-Palestian diplomacy. John 3:1 just says Nicodemus "came to him by night". This might suggest secrecy, it could just suggest a busy diary, but here it's not really clear why Nicodemus is being quite so cautious.

When it finally comes, the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus is pretty good. I'm sure there is analysis online somewhere that go through, line-by-line, which bits are direct from John, which bits are  paraphrased and which bits are made up, so I've no wish to do that. That said the dialogue broadly follows the order and arguments of the original text, only paraphrased an expanded for clarity and flow for a modern audience. 

However, it does import this element of the religious leaders being in opposition / a threat to Jesus. Nicodemus explains that his "mind is consumed with what a stir these words would cause among the teachers of the law" and Jesus says "Yes, and I do not expect otherwise... and it has not been received by the religious leaders". Then Nicodemus expands "I just fear you may not have a chance to speak many more of them before you are silenced".

The Gospels record Jesus debating the interpretation of the Jewish law with other religious groups, including the "teachers of the law" (though that phrase is from the synoptics rather than John which is being used here), and it's clear that he does not always make them see his point of view. Nevertheless in the early pars of the Gospels this is mainly in the form of in-house discussion and debate. It is mainly when the action moves to Jerusalem that we get some of these scribes specifically aligned with the Chief Priests (i.e. the political as much as religious establishment) that trying to silence Jesus becomes an issue.

Eventually we get the discussion about Moses and the bronze serpent. Jesus uses this as a metaphor for his crucifixion and we get a paraphrase of the famous "For God so loved the world" from John 3:16; but this part of the discussion also imports the idea of sin, right before Jesus speaks those famous words. Nicodemus' reaction then is not so much to be moved by the words that have adorned countless banners, posters, and sandwich boards, but to clarify the bit just before it. "So this has nothing to do with Rome, it's all... about... sin?"

While up to this point in the conversation the script has tended to expand and elaborate on the original text, now it can't quite see it through to the end of the passage. Jesus paraphrases v17, refers back to the snake and then starts of on v18, but the camera cuts away so the only negative bit on the passage "but those who does not believe, stands condemned already",  the camera cuts away to the nearby disciples, so the last part is muffled. Once the camera returns to Nicodemus and Jesus the biblical part of the discussion is over and the conversation takes a fresh turn, almost as if time has passed in the edit.

What moves Nicodemus to faith and even tears is not Jesus' words, but his recollection of having seen Jesus acts of healing (specifically his exorcism of Mary Magdalene). Indeed as the conclusion reaches its apex is not Jesus' words, but his actions days before and finally being in his presence.. Jesus asks Nicodemus to join him and gives him a few days. Nicodemus kneels and begins citing Psalm 2:12, only for Jesus to respond with its final line, "Blessed are all who take refuge in him". The scene ends.

In many ways, the, this scene is a microcosm of the series' whole approach. The words of Jesus are taken, tweaked a little to make dramatic sense, but then those elements are left behind for a more emotional yet fictional encounter. As if words are not enough. In the Bible you sense Nicodemus is drawn in by Jesus' mysteries. Jesus offers him no deadline, no ultimatum and he appears to disappear from view. When he pops up briefly in John 7:50 he's with the chief priests again, though still sympathetic. And then nothing, until John 19:39 when he pops up at Jesus' burial, one of the few that have stuck with him. 

Here though that's not enough. Nicodemus is drawn in not so much because of Jesus' words – which only seem to confuse him – but because he witnessed a miracle he could only assign to God. And similarly, the overall production seems to recognise that the text itself needs something more emotional and drama-tic, something that comes from encounter.

If Nicodemus' response to the challenge from Jesus still remains a little ambiguous (with Nicodemus thinking over Jesus' altar call) then the same cannot be said for Matthew and the challenge Jesus offers him in the final scene. Having been similarly fascinated of, but cautious about Jesus for much of the season, Jesus finally shows up at his tax collection booth. 

The first shot of Matthew is of him in his booth (above), but this is designed in such a way that Matthew is behind bars, as if he is imprisoned. This is highlighted again with the first shot of Jesus in this scene, taken from Matthew's point of view with the bars in shot, to emphasise further this sense of him being imprisoned. The two make eye contact, Jesus walks on knowing Matthew's eyes are following him and simply asks "follow me".

Peter tries to dissuade him and for once he and his sworn enemy Gaius agree, but Matthew and Jesus are certain. "I don't get it" says Peter. "You didn't get it when I chose you either". "But this is different" retorts Peter, "I'm not a tax collector". "Get used to different" says Jesus with a wry smile. It's a line that has become one of the show's taglines, with a range of t-shirts, hoodies and reusable coffee cups proudly bearing the slogan. 

Being a Matthew myself I always notice the little details that Christian tradition has ascribed to Matthew and its interesting to see some of these played out. Firstly I always recall the line William Barclay's Daily Study Bible commentary, "Matthew rose up and followed him and left everything behind him except one thing – his pen" (p.6 in the 2001 version). Here he brings a tablet instead but the ideas the same. "Keep it, you may yet find use for it" says Jesus verbally winking at the camera. When Jesus tells Matthew "We have a celebration to prepare for", Matthew says  "I'm not welcome at dinner parties". "That's not going to be a problem tonight" counters Jesus "you're the host". 

It's a real zinger of a last line, delivered in pitch perfect fashion by Jonathan Roumie as Jesus. Just compare it, for example, with the same basic set-up in Jesus of Nazareth (1977), which tries a similar thing but falls flat (though, to be fair it leaves its emotional wallop for the conclusion of the whole sequence). I guess I will see, when I move onto the final episode of the season how the obvious tension between Peter and Matthew will play out here, but, with over an hour's running time, I'm kind of curious to see what else gets thrown into the mix.

La ricotta (1963), revisited

Sixteen years ago now I reviewed Pier Paolo Pasolini's 30-minute short La ricotta (1963), which was released as part of the anthology/portmateau film RoGoPaG. I've changed a lot since then, not least becuase now I've seen all of Pasolini's films – some of them multiple times – and read a lot and spoken about his movies as well. So I thought it was time to revisit this one, as I sat down to watch it in its entirety for the first time in a while.

Multiple crucifixions
The first thing that struck me was the multiple crucifixions we find here, all stacked up against one another. Most obviously we have the gaudy technicolor reconstruction of the film within a film – a close reproduction of Rosso Fiorentino's Mannerist "Deposizione dalla croce" [aka "Deposition of Volterra"] (1521) – but this is not the only depiction of the crucifixion in the film with the film, because the scene in which Stracci features stars a Jesus who looks significantly different (there's no long red hair for one thing). In another sense though, Stracci's death is also a crucifixion of sorts. He dies on the cross, perhaps even, one could argue, for the sins of the world, and the final line of dialogue from Welles's director, recalls the centurion at the foot of the cross. Stracci's own final lines are significant too.

But there is another scene that functions as a crucifixion scene, that is not so widely talked about. as the crew set up one of the shoots for the crucifixion scene we witness Stracci and the actor playing Jesus. While they are lying, nailed to their crosses, on the ground, the camera looks "up" at them as if the shot is taken at from the foot of the cross. Like the rest of the cast and crew the Jesus-actor talks down to Stracci, and their dialogue could be easily construed as just that. However, on closer inspection there's more to it:

Stracci:
I'm hungry. I'm hungry.
Now I'm going to blaspheme.

"Jesus":
Just try it and see what i give you.

Straci:
A fine Christ you are. You think
I've got no right to grumble?

Jesus:
Suit yourself, but I won't take you
into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Stracci:
I could be okay in the
Kingdom of the Earth.

(The argument moves on to politics)

This dialogue works as an ironic take on the text from Luke's Gospel. Instead of the thief humbling himself to beg a receptive and willing Jesus for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, we have an already humbled Stracci talking up his suitability for the kingdom. Meanwhile the Jesus actor is anything but the figure we find in Luke 23. Rather than be gracious and receptive he acts like a petty and mean-spirited gatekeeper.

Sweary Mary
Sixteen years I didn't know any Italian, but I started learning around 2013-4 and have been making slow progress since. Enough, at least, to spot the odd thing that you don't get from the subtitles. Here, for example, there's a scene where the actors are trying to capture the deposition from the cross, reproducing the exact poses of another Mannerist, Jacopo da Pontormo's "Deposizione" (1528). Pasolini has studied the history of art, and knew his Mannerism, so he would have know that "its adherents generally favored compositional tension and instability rather than the balance and clarity of earlier Renaissance painting".(1) So Pasolini makes a visual art-joke, demonstrating the "instability" of the composition by having the actors – who have been ordered to hold their poses still, rather than move and act – collapse after a while. This is rather unsurprising given the general messing around that has been occurring on set and taken to be typical of the attitudes that Pasolini seeks to highlight. Most of the actors laugh and see the funny side.

One person, however, is not impressed. The film's major star, "Sonia, la 'Diva'" played by Laura Betti, is playing Mary, Jesus' mother. While her co-stars laugh-off the whole incident, she is incandescent with rage. Her voice though is not added to cacophony of sounds emanating from the cast at this point, which almost seems to add to her frustration. However, it's clear that one of the words she shouts several times is "basta", the Italian for "Enough!" only here it's probably a bit stronger in Italian than that literal translation. I can't lip read the rest, but I'd love to hear from anyone who can. I do wonder if this was the moment that was the tipping point for those who decided to press for Pasolini's prosecution (that said, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith says, in this piece, "that the real target of the prosecution was not La ricotta at all but the much talked about Gospel". In other words that this prosecution was a shot across Pasolini's bows.

Accattone and Stracci
This time around I was struck by the similarities between the title character (I won't say "hero") of Pasolini's debut feature Accattone (1961) and Stracci, the lead character here. Both characters have meaningful names. Accattone means "Beggar" or more colloquially ‘deadbeat’ or ‘grifter’. Stracci means "rags". The meanings of both resonate through their roles. While both are the lead characters, neither of them is a hero – not in any conventional sense at least – or even, really, an anti-hero.

More importantly for Pasolini was that they were both representatives of the bottom layer of Italian society that he treasured so greatly. For Pasolini it was this strata of society that most opposed neo-capitalism and refused to play by its rules, and was also where the last remaining vestiges of the sacred could be found.

Pasolini was hugely critical of bourgeois society, and the more I look into his work the more I am convinced he would have hated me and the majority of those who so value his films today. And this is perhaps why I find both Accattone and Stracci so difficult to sympathise with, certainly to understand their actions. Stracci is the more sympathetic. Selling a dog to buy food when you're starving is more understandable than grooming and then pimping out a young girl, but the way Stracci eats to such excess proudly refuses to make him a conventional tragic-hero and imbues the whole film with the sort of comic approach that Pasolini was going for.

The actor playing Stracci, Mario Cipriani had appeared, uncredited in Accattone and Mamma Roma (1962) and would do so twice more, firstly in "La terra vista dalla luna" his contribution to another composite film Le streghe (The Witches, 1967), then in "Che cosa sono le nuvole?" in another joint film Caprice Italian Style (1968). Franco Citti, who played Accattone, would go on to become one of Pasolini's biggest collaborators, fronting a number of his movies throughout Pasolini's 14-year career.

The cruelty
Not unrelated to the above is the cast and crew's treatment of Stracci. This time around I was struck by how unrelentingly cruel it is and how it seems to be generated largely by class hatred. Stracci is never shown as being part of the group or having any form of social acceptance. Sonia's dog is welcome on site, and even catered for, but Stracci's family have to remain at a distance. Even when his costars appear, they smile wave and pass by like the opening characters from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The scene where Stracci overeats to bursting point is particularly noticeable – everyone goads and bullies him into eating more and more, pitting the desperation of his hunger against his human dignity – but this behaviour occurs elsewhere. Once when Stracci is fixed to the cross, and mentions his hunger, a co-star offers him bites from his sandwich to taunt him before another man pours drink down his throat and he is mocked in every scene.

I suspect this behaviour is not so much a call to the middle classes to improve their behaviour to other classes as it is to say to the sub-altern/proletarians that "this is how they will treat you if unrestrained"

 

While it tends to be Il vangelo secondo Matteo, Teorema (Theorem, 1968) or Salò o le centoventi giornate di Sodoma (Salò or the 120 days of Sodom, 1975) that are Pasolini's most celebrated films, there's a very strong case for La ricotta being his best short film, and his greatest comedy. And while there were often strong objections to his work, and threats of prosecution, I believe it was the only time Pasolini was convicted for one of his films.

Given its release came at a similar time to the start of the Vatican II Council I can't help but wonder if the timing was deliberately provocative, even for such a mild film by today's standards. Pasolini considered himself an atheist, but one who nevertheless realised the important and varying role the church played in Italian society in general. So while Il vangelo remains the more insightful film about the Gospels, La ricotta speaks with more insight and passion about the role of the Roman Catholic church at just the same time that the institution itself was undergoing major self-examination; and about Italian society in general and its often hypocritical attitudes to religion.

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1- Finocchio, Ross (2003) "Mannerism: Bronzino (1503–1572) and his Contemporaries", Department of European Paintings The Metropolitan Museum of Art website. Available online -  https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zino/hd_zino.htm