Year: 2014
Filming: Color
Length: 138 minutes
Genre: Christian/Drama/Inspirational
Maturity: PG-13 (for intense thematic elements)
Cast: Diogo Morgado (Jesus), Roma Downey (Mary),
Amber Rose Revah (Mary Magdalene) Darwin Shaw (Peter), Sebastian Knapp (John),
Greg Hicks (Pontius Pilate), Louise Delamere (Claudia), Adrian Schiller
(Caiaphas), Matthew Gravelle (Thomas), Joe Wredden (Judas)
Director: Christopher Spencer
Personal Rating: 3 Stars
***
I had my reservations when I first saw the cover picture for
Son of God. The guy playing Jesus
looked much too hip, and too, well…some goo-goo-eyed girls would say “sexy.” I
am not among that group, but the queer smirk, greasy hair, and furrowed brow is
quite stereotypical of the type said to be so. Anyway, I figured it was only a
matter of time before I would have to watch it and give my review of it, so I finally
did. While I certainly endorse the spirit of the production and applaud some of
its efforts to bring an original portrayal of The Greatest Story Ever Told to
modern audiences, the feel is sometimes down-right cartoonish and incongruent with
the image of Jesus and his ministry as portrayed in the Gospels.
The story opens
with St. John the Evangelist reflecting on the story of Salvation and his own
time spent with Jesus Christ. We get to see some flash-backs of memorable
moments in the Old Testament, including Adam being formed out of the earth
(he’s plastered in dirt, as a matter of fact…kind of icky…), Eve taking a bite
out of the forbidden plum (yes, plum…or date…or something!), Noah in the ark
weathering the storm (CGI to the max), Moses parting the Red Sea (looks like
the compu-water from Noah’s flood), and Samson swinging around a donkey jaw
(gosh…wouldn’t want to mess with him in a contract squabble!).
Then we finally
get to the heart of the story: the Birth of Christ. After a brief stop with the
Wise Men at the stable-cave (I though they showed up two years later, when they
were in a house?), we take a major leap forward in time, and meet a certain
fisherman named Simon…who happens to be Cockney. A now fully-grown Jesus,
played by Diogo Morgado, wades out to meet him in his fishing boat, and
performs the miracle of filling his fishing nets. Inspired by this stranger’s
charisma and ability to control nature, he agrees to answer his call to “change
the world”.
Picking up more
followers along the way, including John and Mary Magdalene, Christ travels
across Judea, preaching about the Kingdom of God, healing the sick, performing
various other miracles, and angering the Jewish Sanhedrin by calling them out
on their hypocrisies. At the same time, he disappoints those zealots who want
to rise up and cast out the Romans from Israel, preaching that they should
instead “turn the other cheek.” Among those disillusioned is one of the twelve
apostles, Judas Iscariot, who finds himself trapped in an inner battle about
how best to proceed.
Ultimately, the
Jewish authorities convince Judas that he would be doing everyone a service if
Christ was brought before them, ostensibly “just to talk.” It’s supposed to be
a quiet, undercover affair. As it turns out, things don’t quite work out that
way, and when the guards come to arrest Christ after Judas identifies him with
a traitorous kiss, a melee breaks out (no seriously…St. Peter becomes the
Avenger, with super-powers to knock out five guards and hack off that guys ear
with super-sword…yes, over-the-top…). Then he is dragged away to be tried in
the dead of night by the Sanhedrin for blasphemy. The next day, he is brought
before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and the most vital events in World
History unfold.
First, I will say
on a positive note that Son of God,
which is a portion of The Bible TV
Series, has reached an amazing spectrum of viewers who previously knew next to
nothing about The Bible and the Story of Christ. It ran of British Public TV,
moreover, which a veritable anomaly in a country that is becoming more and more
hostile to public displays of Christian belief. The results have been quite
extraordinary, and have shown that these stories have not lost any of their
power over the generations, but continue to resonate strongly as a
quintessential synthesis of the human experience. It is a story that even the
hardest skeptics once or twice in their lives wished were true.
As the producer
pointed out, there is something about his retelling that has struck a chord
with modern audiences. By updating the retelling to focus on a charismatic
teacher who set out to change the world, it took many by surprise and helped
them approach the story in a new way. But unfortunately, as I assumed, trying
to modernize the story also sapped it of much of its historical realism. The
attitude of the characters are far too 21st century, and their
accents were just a tad too British! Now, I have loads of respect for some
British actors, especially old-time ones like Richard Burton, Jean Simmons,
Laurence Oliver, James Mason, etc. But they used a traditional Shakespearian
approach that lent itself to period pieces without seeming awkward or
out-of-place.
I could never
completely reconcile myself with the portrayal of Jesus. Diogo Morgado seemed
to be too much of a hipster, too full of himself, and occasionally struck me as
an out-and-out punk. The scene where he meets Simon Peter and wades out to his
boat, basically forcing him to take him on board, just seemed sort of annoying.
Also, Scriptural dialogue is altered and modernized at will, so when Simon asks
what Christ’s mission is, He says (in a rather cheesy manner), “To change the
world!” Of course, Christ did change the world, but it just seemed so generic,
like something you’d see on one of those Dollar General inspirational posters.
In their effort to
make Jesus more accessible, the producers also tended to water-down the
dramatic effect of his words and statements and mesh them with other sequences
that don’t fit right together. One particularly anti-climatic adjustment is
when Jesus makes the prophecy about the destruction of the Temple...while
playfully poking a little girl in the belly! We know “Jesus loves the little
children”, but instead of giving that reality its own scene, they tried to
blend with a totally different and deeply serious topic, which seemed totally
out of place. Also, when Christ turns over the tables in the temple, he seems
to be only mildly ticked off, not filled with the zeal for His Father’s House
that gives way to Righteous Anger.
There is a
concentrated effort to boost the roles of women in the story of Christ,
particularly Mary Magdalene, portrayed by Amber Rose Revah. Unfortunately, this
often comes off as a clumsy push of the feminist agenda, as she is ever-present
with the apostles, at every miracle, in every fishing boat, almost as
“one-of-the-guys”. I wouldn’t have minded a little bit of “extra presence” for
Mary…but she was popping up everywhere, and it was getting rather annoying! This
is only coupled by the excessive CGI employed to make the miracles seem more
miraculous…or in my opinion, more fake! I have always believed that an
encounter with the Divine, with the truly miraculous, would be “realer than
real”, not cheaply sensational. It’s just the same as saints being the most
realistic sort of people.
This Bible movie
feels the need to repeat the rather tired “evil Roman” mantra, using villain
music every time a red-cloaked soldier or imperial eagle comes into view. Now,
I’m sure being conquered by the Romans was no picnic, but they actually did a
lot of really beneficial things for the world, and their conquered provinces,
too! Furthermore, I will add that the Israelites themselves were no strangers
to conquering land by force of arms themselves…in fact, they had a history of
wiping people out as opposed to merely subjecting them! Whether or not God told
them to do so is still a major debate among theological scholars; but coming
from a Natural Law perspective, I personally believe otherwise.
Pontius Pilate is
depicted very darkly in this version, as opposed to the traditional, fairly
sympathetic portrayals of other films. Granted, he was a soldier’s soldier, and
could be quite brutal in the interests of maintaining Pax Romana, but he also
seemed to be a man of at least some degree of sincerity did not want to have
the blood of an innocent man on his hands. In this film, they seemed hesitant
to give the guy any slack at all. In fact, they put him into the literary
villain position several times.
For example, Pontius Pilate and his entourage
are shown traveling down the road, they come across an Israelite who’s blocking
the road with his broken cart. Some Roman soldiers come and push it out of the
way, but the owner of the cart protests that “it isn’t fixed yet”, and get into
a struggle with them. Evidently there’s this kid sitting in the back of the
cart that fails to get off, and when the soldiers thrust the cart into a ditch,
he gets crunched. My first thought was
did the guy with the broken cart literally think the Imperial Governor to wait
for him to get this thing fixed? Second, why didn’t the kid climb off the cart
when the soldiers and his father started struggling? The thing is that this
seemed to me to be a re-run of the sequence in A Tale of Two Cities when the aristocrat runs over the kid in the
streets of Paris to prove how rotten he is.
I will admit there are a few interesting
elaborations made, such as Christ picking up a stone and hovering it overhead
before offering it to the crowd when the woman was brought before him accused
on adultery. It was a dramatic expression of the fact that really only Christ
was the one without sin, who had the right to pick up the stone, but he
refrained from throwing it. There were also some unique cuts and overlays done
in this production. For example, at the same time Christ is shown praying at
Gethsemane, the scribes are shown offering up incense in a pre-Paschal ceremony
and Pilate and Claudia are shown praying to their ancestors. Just one slight
problem…isn’t praying to one’s ancestors a practice of the Shintoism of China,
not the polytheism of Rome?
The best section of the movie was definitely
between the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. For a little while, I managed to
forget the previous hour of pain and found myself engrossed by the Passion
narrative. Part of this was because the actor playing Christ spoke less and let
the story itself undergird his acting style. The other part is just that the
story itself is so powerful it stands alone as impactful. I find it interesting
how Christ is shown as embracing Peter when he said he would never deny him, temporarily
believing it, but then experienced the revelation into the future, and says
very painfully that he would indeed, three times.
The torturous
scourging and crucifixion are portrayed with a sense of brutal reality, but not
undue gore. I thought it was interesting how the Pharisees were shown to block
out the supporters of Jesus from intermingling with the crowd who called for
Barabbas. The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John all cry out in favor of
Christ, but behind locked gates. Roma Downey gives a very moving portrayal of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, who meets her Son as he falls beneath his cross, and
tries to help him lift it up. Later, she cradles his dead body in her arms. She
has such a deeply anguished expression, and she became for me the most
sympathetic figure in the film.
Son of God is certainly not on my
top-ten list of Biblical dramas (I’m a strident oldie fan-girl, as you all must
know by now!), but if it can reach a given audience and inspire them to delve
more deeply into the real story of Jesus Christ, more power to it. Let’s just
hope it doesn’t confuse a whole generation with regards to a
time-sensitive-perception of a hipster Rabbi as opposed to the Timeless Son of
God in the fusion of His Divinity and Humanity. There are doubtless mixed
responses and reactions from all quarters. Still, Christopher Spencer definitely deserves a capital E for Effort.
| Jesus (Diogo Morgado) takes part in the Last Supper before His Passioin |
