MetaCatholic

Comedy superhero films just don’t seem to work. But will this be an exception? The signs look good.

written by doug

Matt Page on the Bible Films Blog has provided a really helpful scene guide to the series, referencing where a particular scene occurs in one or other gospel narrative, and where they are freshly scripted (informed, in my view by an interesting mix of psychology, narrative force, and historical reconstruction). I include the timings for those who may see it later with different combinations of episodes.

See here for

• Part 1 (first hour)
• Part 2 (half-hour)
• Part 3 (full hour)
• Part 4 (half-hour)

There is a note on his citation style here.

NB: Matt’s blog is well worth book-marking.

written by doug

Comments can be found here on Episodes One, Two and Three.

Following Mark Goodacre’s comment, please note that this post contains cinematographic spoilers. (I hesitated to add a spoiler alert originally — it seemed a bit strange to say spoiler alert - Jesus is risen)

Perhaps the bravest decision taken in the BBC Passion was to give over one sixth of its broadcast time to the events following the crucifixion. At one level, this is setting oneself up for failure, so it was surprising that the production team and cast did as well as they managed to do.

The first notable feature was to give some considerable time to the events of the Sabbath, with tensions running high around and among the disciples. Interestingly Thomas disappeared somewhat. At least I think he did – most of the apostles were rather hard to distinguish one from another. In his place as the leading dissenter came James – though I confess I’d need to watch it again to work out which James, or indeed, whether more than one James was conflated. This drama of the disciples’ reactions was interspersed with the different ways in which Pilate and Caiaphas likewise dealt with the aftermath, including a standoff between those child-hood friends Joseph of Arimathea and Caiaphas. This was one of the many ways in which the day of rest became a day of brooding tension: not at all implausible, and often quite fresh.

The second notable feature was not just that the team decided to handle the resurrection, but the low-key way in which they set out to film the un-filmable. Supernatural accompaniment was stripped away. The guards at the tomb had popped off for a bite to eat. There were no angels, and at the end no parting clouds of glory. Instead a stranger with hair and beard far tidier than Jesus starts a conversation with Mary Magdalene in the harshly lit desert surrounds of the tomb. (There’s no misty dawn in a garden either.) It is a different actor. Mary begins to see that he looks a bit like Jesus. She feels it is him, despite as much as because of what her eyes see. This also effectively creates an interesting tension for the viewer: will the resurrection be portrayed as wishful thinking or something more?

In the (upper?) room, Mary’s news is received to mixed reviews. James storms off, presumably with Cleopas, getting out of Jerusalem for Emmaus. Another different actor, different hairstyle and beard, draws near to them on the road and starts a conversation pointing to Isaiah’s prophecies. As he breaks bread and shares wine with them he almost repeats the words of the Last Supper. (This is clearly eucharistic as Luke intended, but more explicit). They look up, and the strange actor has been replaced with Joseph Mawle. Then the production cuts to their returning excitement back in Jerusalem and Jesus among them again. Many of the shots are reaction shots of the disciples, building up to a smiling Jesus leaning against a pillar. So not just the event but something of its impact and significance are conveyed.

This is perhaps the most interesting dramatic portrayal of the resurrection for a secular age that could have been managed. In some respects it has more power for being so naturalistic. It certainly beats the almost risible ending of Mel Gibson’s Passion, shot from behind the rising Jesus, seeing the world through a hole in his hand. Its weakness perhaps is in its ending. Jesus is talking to Peter, alone, beside the pool of Bethesda (I presume). Peter is now doing what Jesus had done earlier in the week, bathing the sick and treating them with compassion. Jesus both charges Peter to look after the others, and spread the news of forgiveness, and also promises to be with him to the end of time. Then he just wanders off into the crowds of a narrow Jerusalem street, until he’s lost from sight. It very nearly works, but feels a little too much like a petering out instead of a conclusion.

Otherwise this episode showed the same strengths and weaknesses as the previous parts. Overall, I think a balanced judgement must be more favourable than unfavourable. In many respects it makes brave and dramatically effective decisions about how to show something that is over-familiar to many viewers, and almost completely unknown to another potential audience. The modernising of the language is a key component of this, even it sometimes leads to overly creedal statements about Jesus being God’s only Son, and at least once to nonsense: “the gospel of good news” is a quite bizarre formulation. Visually it is always competent, and excelled itself both with the crucifixion and some of the panoramas. I disagree with their decision to effectively stage the crucifixion and burial in a desert panorama. It may have had metaphorical and iconic power, but it sat oddly with the otherwise detailed attention to history.

I also had some reservations about Joseph Mawle as Jesus. Whether it was his interpretation, the script, the direction or a mixture of all three, I remain unconvinced that he was a charismatic enough figure. He’s a good actor, though, and it was a competent and sometimes moving portrayal. Generally, I think I would say something similar about the whole cast, competent and sometimes moving. There was no obviously weak character, and no obvious standout portrayal either. The more sympathetic portrayals of Caiaphas and Pilate fitted well into this.

In the end, this was a very human story, and even the resurrection was a very human event. That may give it some real power to make people consider the story again with fresh eyes. It will undoubtedly please some and annoy others. It is probably better television than any attempt to flag up the supernatural would have been, but it equally meant that the secular reasons for the crucifixion had to be heavily laboured, and the significance of the resurrection underplayed. It remains, for me, a bit of a mixed bag, but one in which the good and original certainly outweigh my criticisms, and a project well worth having undertaken. Those involved are to be congratulated.

written by doug

The third part of the BBC Passion aired tonight (most appropriately). See my comments on parts one and two here. Generally I continue to feel pretty much as I felt about the earlier episodes: this is a bit of a mixed bag, with the good clearly outweighing the  — well not so much bad as odd, or even confused.

There were a few particularly striking visual and dramatic notes. The temporary storage of Jesus in a dungeon = covered hole in the ground, between Sanhedrin trial and being taken before Pilate, was both the most interesting, historically plausible, and dramatically effective liberty the script took with the gospel narratives. The actual placing of the cross in its socket, shot from above as a bird’s eye view of the crucifixion was extremely well done, as was the visual composition of the moment of death, framed as the climax of an exchange of glances from Jesus to Mary, to the heavens.

One feature that any Jesus film brings home is the difficulty of narrating the terse stories of the gospels over anything like a sufficiently dramatic time span when portrayed on the screen. This was part of the effectiveness of the imprisoning of Jesus in a kind of well in Caiaphas’ courtyard. It gave a sense of time passing to the events, without seriously elongating the trial scenes with invented dialogue.

On the negative side were some jarring moments. There is a tendency throughout the script to assume that phrases like “Son of God” have the benefit of several centuries accrual of Christian meaning, and the attempt to put “terse Biblish” into more expansive and explanatory everyday English sometimes heightens this tendency to read Christian doctrine in. “”When I’m gone, do this to bring me back among you” is, shall we say, a rather controversial interpretation of “Do this in remembrance of me.”

I felt further disconnected by the way in which this Last Supper scene is fairly full of Johannine statements similarly translated, as Jesus tells the disciples: “If you have seen me, you have seen God”. Dramatically this Johannine Jesus segues extremely oddly into the very distressed and distraught Jesus of the Synoptics’ Gethsemane scene. It is one of the perils of harmonisation that elements belonging to one story do not sit comfortably in another. The anguished Jesus of Mark inhabits a very different world to the total control exerted by John’s Jesus.

Despite the attempts of the Telegraph and others to create a synthetic row over the crucifixion scenes, I have to say that in most respects this was extremely traditional, not to say conventional. I can’t make up my mind whether Mary kisses the cross as a surrogate for being unable to reach her son’s feet, or whether it felt like the shadow of later devotion. Most of the traditional words are (albeit reworded) included. The oddest exception for anyone who knows the story is that “Father, forgive them …”, rather than the promise of paradise, comes as the response to the “penitent thief”. The supposedly controversial portrayal of the means of crucifixion seemed both plausible and convincing, and I really liked the matter-of-fact, detached but not unsympathetic, professionalism of the Roman soldiers going about their tasks. (The non-leg-breaking scene and dialogue was particularly well done, and the mild liberty with John’s narrative was fresh and original — as far as I know.)

I’m not quite so certain why they chose to make such a fuss about “historical reconstructions” here, however. If I were being nit-picky, I would want to point out the way in which a loincloth still preserves Jesus’ modesty in this production, to say nothing of the extraordinary distance from the city we seem to have gone for the place of execution. There’s not much point crucifying someone that far off the beaten track. And what was that titulus doing in Latin only? Latin that the taunting brigand and fellow crucifyee appeared to be able to read.

Those are, to be fair, minor quibbles, but it would have been nice to see this kind of background historical reconstruction being more consistent, even if narrative harmonisation is almost inevitable. Generally, I remain impressed by a production that manages to inject some real notes of freshness into such a well known story, while, I think, making it accessible to those who might hardly know it at all.

written by doug

Tonight’s episode of The Passion was a short half-hour. (I fear that its start and end points seemed more dictated by the TV schedules than by any strong dramatic framing of the narrative.) Overall I don’t think I’ve significantly changed my views from yesterday’s opening reaction. I am beginning to appreciate some of the benefits of the way the script avoids traditional language: it does serve to really clarify things and make you think. It does have its drawbacks, however, and I think for me they became more obvious around comments on sacrifice, the Law and the sins of the world. The latter is not only hallowed by centuries of Christian tradition, but in the way in which it was used seemed to me to be historically implausible, and rather detached from any of the ways sacrifice, Law and sin might make sense in Second Temple Judaism.

One detail that I’d only half-noted yesterday, but seemed more obvious today, was the preference for referring to Judaeans rather than Jews. It’s particularly noticeable on Caiaphas’ lips. A number of social-scientific critics can be heard punching the air in glee.

What becomes far more obvious in this episode is Jesus’ determination and planning. Some will doubt that historically he saw things in this way. What comes over very strongly is not simply his embrace of the coming execution, but his careful orchestration in planning for it. Yesterday, his determination to fulfil prophecy by entering the city on a colt was very clear and rational. This clearly upset at least one blogger (HT Dave Walker) who seems to think it is unscriptural to suggest that Jesus intentionally fulfilled prophecy. Apparently it only counts if you don’t know you’re doing it.

For me, however, this is a considerable strength. It was further developed today by the way in which the story clearly hinted that Jesus had both planned the Upper Room as a secret venue well in advance, and was busy making sure Judas didn’t find out about it in time to abort it by an early betrayal. The very human characterisation of Jesus, and the very blatant political manoeuvrings of and constraints on Caiaphas and Pilate, might seem to lead one towards a sense of inevitability about the crucifixion. Jesus’ determined planning, and his apparent orchestration of events, prevents any sense of inescapable tragedy. The drama seems to be quite clear that crucifixion is not an inevitable accident of historical forces impacting on a naive man, but a very deliberate thing indeed. If at times Jesus’ teaching sounds naive (and the non-biblical language makes it seem perhaps more so than it should), this event planning is far from naive.

This is a fascinating balancing act in the script and action, and introduces a very satisfying, and I think broadly accurate three-dimensional portrayal of what has too often been interpreted as a one-dimensional drama (whether that dimension is social or theological). In that respect it is certainly growing on me.

written by doug

It’s difficult to review something when you’ve only seen a third of it, so these can be no more than a few preliminary comments on The Passion, whose first episode aired tonight. (Well, technically, last night now). I must confess to finding it something of a mixed bag.

Things I liked included

• the sense of bustle, dirt and crowding around Jerusalem
• the actual portrayal of slaughter and blood being cleaned up (admittedly on a small scale) bringing home something of the reality of temple sacrifices
• the grounding in the political relationships of Roman Judaea
• the way in which Jesus was often lost in the crowd: plenty of things went on that disregarded his presence
• the confusion and mixed attitudes of the disciples
• the adherence to Mark’s account for the “cleansing of the temple” on the day following the entry to Jerusalem, resisting the dramatic temptation to which Matthew and Luke, together, I think, with every previous Jesus film, succumbed
• the grounding of Pilate and Caiaphas in relationships other than their dramatic one with Jesus
• the visual portent of the crosses / gibbets Jesus and the disciples pas on their way between Jerusalem and Bethany makes the cross loom less as prophecy and more as grim reality

What I wasn’t particularly impressed by

• the opposition of Law and compassion, which seemed to be Lutheran Paulinism filtered by late Romanticism
• the almost gnostic repeated emphasis on the kingdom of God being within sat oddly with the very human and political portrayals
• the very human (almost “mere man”) portrayal of Jesus jarred when set alongside statements such as “I’m his (God’s) only son” (the story was over-heavy on Jeremias’ omnipresent Father language), or the Virgin Mary’s seemingly overt confession of the virginal conception
• the rewriting of Jesus’ teaching which lost poetic resonances and rendered it rather anodyne (however commendable the attempt to avoid Bible English)

One or two things jarred: why, for example, was Joseph of Arimathea black? More importantly, I couldn’t help wondering how much of this would make sense to someone who didn’t know the story. While a lot of the backdrop was filled in in brief allusions to the Galilean ministry, other things remained without explanation. Someone who didn’t know the story would be very hard-pressed to understand anything at all of the conversation between Mary (BVM variety) and Jesus, or the dramatic tension in the closing moments of this episode’s dialogue, where Jesus asks Judas what is in his heart.

But one the whole, the positives, so far, seriously outweigh the negatives, and it looks set to shape up as one of the better renditions of the story on screen, especially with the moody and often claustrophobic lighting giving a sense of gathering peril and clouds of confusion. I look forward to catching the remainder.

written by doug

Michael has an interesting reflection on movies and the gospels. I think he’s got a good point when he compares Mark to The Bourne Identity, and John to ET. However, I can’t agree with his Matthew and Luke movies.

Matthew, I think, is one of those many genre films where the new or supply (that’s BrE for substitute) teacher arrives, and introduces an inspiring new approach which reaches the kids and shows just how stuffy the rest of the staff room (BrE for faculty) really are. So, to pick one among many, Matthew is Dead Poets’ Society.

I confess Luke-Acts has me a bit puzzled. I can’t really go along with Michael’s suggestion of Ben Hur. (It was set in the first century and is kind of long – honestly!). It’s about an inspiring and inclusive example to follow, and yes, I agree it needs to be a bit epic. Ghandi?

written by doug

The teaser trailer for Star Trek XI is up at the official site (I hear some people actually bought tickets for Cloverfield just to see this trailer). Among clips of famous sayings associated with space flight, they have Spock’s voice doing the “Space, the final frontier …” bit. I find myself wondering how much this will be revisionist, and how much play into the ST universe.

In some ways the trailer looks revisionist: what’s all this blow-torching and welding the Enterprise’s hull together and seemingly on Earth, or at least in an atmosphere? I always thought the Enterprise was built in a space dock. And surely after Scotty gave the secret of transparent aluminium away in the 20th century, things have moved beyond welding. If you can diagnose and cure almost any ailment with an upside-down salt-shaker medical tricorder, a blow-torch is a tad primitive. Then again, I give them this, it looks gritty and interesting in a way that promises something a bit different.

written by doug

E. E “Doc” Smith’s Lensman saga was early space opera at its purest. All except the sort-of-seventh and last book of the series (an add-on outside the main story arc) were tremendous pulp-fiction fun. So I’m very excited by the possibility that there might just be a project to develop a film. I assume the starting point will be Galactic Patrol, the third book of the series narrative arc, but the first and in some ways the most complete, book to be written, for which its predecessors provided a backdrop.

written by doug

On Wednesday Kevin P Edgecomb posted on both Harry Potter and The Golden Compass. This post was nicely categorised as an “unhinged rant” – a classification I will say no more about. He then, at Justin’s instigation in the comments, left this comment on an earlier post of mine about the Golden Compass.

Readers of this blog will be in no doubt that I completely disagree about the Harry Potter series. Kevin says this:

The appropriation of Christian themes of sacrifice and redemption, very, very real things to a Christian, are appropriated by an author as devices to be utilized in a plot narrative in an entirely fictional world. This in itself is a cheapening, a gutter-slumming of the great work of God for the world, which appropriates rather blatantly those themes. Yet there is a greater wretchedness at work in this.

What happens when your children no longer are able to recognize that sacrifice, redemption, and selfless love belong outside the pages of fiction? When they open their Bibles, and read of the work of God throughout the ages in history, real work in the lives of many real people of real nations, will they not be subconsciously reading fiction?

I think this seriously mistakes the nature both of fiction and the Harry Potter series. First, I have no idea why developing a fictional world in which the narrative slowly builds up to themes of self-sacrifice as the means of defeating evil, courage in the face of death as something not to be feared and conquered, but embraced in the hope of life, and the struggle to be selfless and self-denying in the use of gifts of power, in any way is a cheapening of these themes.

Secondly, far from coarsening people’s ability to respond to these themes when encountered elsewhere and in the real world, the imaginative portrayal of them should enlarge the mind, and sensitise it to these concepts. By imagining oneself in the heroic narrative world, one is challenged, child or adult, to respond to such themes and vocations in the real world. Having imagined oneself in identification with the hero, perhaps one is better equipped to imitate such behaviour in real life.

The case of Pullman and the His Dark Materials trilogy raises some of the same points, and because it increasingly overtly offers an atheist critique, also poses different questions. In fact, it is less successful as fiction the more overt it becomes in the promotion of Pullman’s world-view. But Pullman’s view is rather more nuanced than Christians like to see when critiquing “godless atheism”. Not least because aspects of Christian morality and mythos inform both what he expresses positively as well as what he attacks. See these two very interesting interviews, the first an email interview with Peter Chattaway, the second a transcript of a public conversation with Rowan Williams, for a sense of Pullman’s nuances. The following excerpt is interesting, precisely because it is about story (RB is the chair, PP is Pullman and RW is ++Rowan):

RB: Question from a fellow atheist who is appalled by the materialism of this society - how would PP recommend children develop spiritual life?

PP: I don’t use the word spiritual myself, because I don’t have a clear sense of what it means. But I think it depends on your view of education: whether you think that the true end and purpose of education is to help children grow up, compete and face the economic challenges of a global environment that we’re going to face in the 21st century, or whether you think it’s to do with helping them see that they are the true heirs and inheritors of the riches - the philosophical, the artistic, the scientific, the literary riches - of the whole world. If you believe in setting children’s minds alive and ablaze with excitement and passion or whether it’s a matter of filling them with facts and testing on them. It depends on your vision of education - and I know which one I’d go for.

RW: I think we’re entirely at one on that, I must say.

RB: The questioner is asking whether perhaps the relationship between Christianity and fiction is that Christianity itself is a story, and is about incarnation.

RW: Yes, I think there’s a lot of truth in that, that you can’t communicate Christianity simply as a set of ideas. At some point you’re going to have to sit down and tell a story. And tell a story which, because it’s a story, is bound to have some loose ends, some awkwardnesses. As it is we have four versions of the story of Jesus in the New Testament, because of that sense that a story can always be retold. And that introduces a bit of this irony in the narrative, which is very important in reinforcing the sense that this is something mysterious. I think there is something in that fundamental characteristic of Christianity which helps to enable a particular kind of storytelling.

PP: Story is fundamental. We began with Jesus. We might as well end by reminding ourselves that Jesus was one of the greatest storytellers there’s ever been. Whether or not he was the Son of God, he was a great storyteller.

About Pullman’s work Kevin, in the comment on my post says:

Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the sweetness of good art in the hands of those with evil intent leads children only to destruction.

I first note that actually this is not about the use to which people put art (which is a different matter), but the creation of it. And that should lead us to reflection on the relation between beauty and truth. Can something be good art if it does not is some sense help us perceive an aspect of reality more deeply? There can be a facade of beauty, but if that facade covers over reality, is it good art? And in the end, is it actually beautiful?

Art to some extent escapes and transcends its creator, not least because a huge amount of subconscious thought and feeling is also poured into the work, as well as those ideas which the artist is seeking to express. The “reader” too brings much hinterland to the experience. Thus, I do not think we can simply judge any work of art purely on the articulated views of the artist. So, for example, I have a fairly strong dislike for Paradise Lost as a whole: irrespective of Milton’s articulated faith, Jesus is appallingly dull and insipid, and Satan ruggedly heroic and poetic. In much the same vein I can appreciate not only Pullman’s often finely wrought prose, and narrative verve, but also a great deal of the book’s promotion of human love and virtue, and critique of a stultifying and aggressively totalitarian Church. And I can do so while profoundly disagreeing with Pullman’s philosophy. Paradise Lost contains a great deal of falsehood despite its author’s intentions, and similarly in spite of the author’s overt attack on Christianity, His Dark Materials contains a great deal that is beautiful and true. My biggest critique remains that the overt views Pullman expresses are in the end destructive of the narrative, and vitiate the books artistic merit.

Art is as complicated as life, and beauty and truth are only fully reconciled in the final vision of God, not the gazing on created artifacts, which like our world and life itself is often deeply ambiguous about the good. In the end, what I object to most in Kevin’s post is the Manichaean tendency to divide the world up into such stark categories, a tendency that sits at odds with his Orthodoxy.

written by doug