BEFORE: So this year, as everyone knows, Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day are taking place on the same day, and I for one can't think of anything more appropriate. (So, yeah, today some of my personal views about religion might creep into this space, just a fair warning.). But the two holidays are really quite different, one is all about telling lies and half-truths, getting people to believe that something that didn't happen might possibly have happened. And the other one takes place every year on the first day of April.
I was raised Catholic, so for the first 12-15 years of my life I was indoctrinated to believe that the Bible was non-fiction, that things went down in the time period of 1,000-B.C.E to 33 A.D. according to that book, but I later came to learn that this is a ridiculous fiction, because nobody who wrote down these tales of certain events that Judeo-Christian people rely on was present for said events - even the people who wrote the Gospels did so 50 to 100 years after the fact, and by that time the stories had grown to have a life of their own. I believe in the fallibility of humans, so that between re-tellings, mis-translations and exaggerations, I firmly believe that we can never know for sure what took place that inspired the Bible. And so I treat it as a work of fiction written by unreliable sources. It's a very important piece of fiction with very relevant messages, but come on. What's easier to believe, that miracles occurred that have not occurred since, or people told stories that grew and grew, until they overshadowed reality itself? I vote for the latter.
Last year at this time, I watched "The Robe", "The Passion of the Christ" and "Risen". This one must have come into my possession some time after last Easter. I used Jesus as a connecting fictional character last year, because it was impossible otherwise to link to "The Passion of the Christ", but there you go, a simple rule change allowed it. This time I'm going to do better, though, even though this film is nearly as unlinkable as last year's Easter films were. Christian McKay carries over from "Florence Foster Jenkins", where he played a reviewer for the New York Post.
THE PLOT: Tells the story of Jesus Christ at age seven, as his family departs Egypt to return home to Nazareth.
AFTER: This film is based on Anne Rice's novel "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt", and I understand where the author is coming from, in that one can't help but try to understand some of the things that the Bible tells us about Jesus, maybe attempt to reconcile what we've been told with what reason tells us is and isn't possible. I know I've been doing that for a long time. "What really happened," I might wonder, "that got so twisted out of shape that we now have the fantastical story that we have, where Jesus basically has super-powers that we don't understand?"
There's also a big gap in Jesus' timeline - the Bible doesn't really cover the years between age 7 and his late 20's. There's rampant speculation about where he went and what he did, but isn't the easiest answer that there was nothing really special about him at this time? Maybe he was just a regular guy, and anything that was "special" was written later to explain what happened to him and what it all supposedly meant. I take the mental track that he suddenly became relevant in his 20's, fomenting rebellion and leading a group of disciples who were theologically subversive, and therefore dangerous. And an origin story of supernatural or godlike nature is a really easy thing to write after the fact, therefore reverse-engineering the righteousness of his cause.
Remember, this was a different time - unlike today, "prophet" was a valid career choice then, and the Old Testament was full of them. I believe Jesus was a prophet - and a charismatic one at that, even if he only really said half of the things the Bible says he said. The miracle of the loaves and the fishes is not that he was able to magically transform a small amount of food into a larger amount of food, it's that his words of kindness were so eloquent that he got enough people to donate the food they had on them, enough to fill baskets and feed a crowd. But let's put aside my explanations for "miracles" like this one, and the turning of water into wine (hint: this magic trick involved porous clay jars...) and focus on the time period covered by this film.
This was also a time where common people didn't understand what dreams were - Sigmund Freud et al weren't there to explain that dreams are just our brains working overtime while our bodies rest, and working through the meanings behind our daily experiences. So when people back then dreamed things, they thought they were messages from God. Joseph dreamed that he should leave Israel and bring Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and that turned out to be a lucky thing (again, if you believe the story...). What about all the parents who dreamed about moving away from Israel who didn't act on their dreams? We never hear about them, but then I guess their babies were killed by King Herod, so maybe we should always listen to our dreams. Then Joseph had another dream seven years later that they should move back home, so he got lucky twice (or he wasn't telling the truth about his dreams, we'll never know...)
When we first see young Jesus here, he gets in trouble because he's trying to protect a girl (his cousin, Salome) from being bullied (or worse) by an older boy. Jesus, however, sees a man drop an apple on the ground, and the bully trips on the apple, hits his head and dies. Since no one but Jesus can see this mysterious man, Jesus is blamed for his death. An angry mob demands that Jesus should be punished (get used to this, Jesus...) but Jesus has a way to fix things, he just finds the dead boy's body and resurrects him, easy-peasy. Apparently he'd been practicing on dead birds. As you might imagine, this doesn't calm the angry mob, because now they believe he's performed some kind of witchcraft. The resurrected boy doesn't seem too happy either, because he starts beating up Jesus - I guess he preferred being dead?
But it's that mysterious man, the one that only Jesus could see, who is important - the IMDB credits call him "Demon", but Wikipedia just calls him "Satan". I suppose this tracks with Jesus' other adult super-powers, because he's later tempted by Satan in the desert, and no one else ever claims to have seen Satan. So, resurrections, being able to see invisible demons, and being super-smart about religious history - that's a lot for a 7-year old to deal with. Plus, you have to remember, it wasn't easy being Jesus because there weren't a lot of kids his age for him to play with, at least not in Judea. Remember, Herod killed them all.
Speaking of Herod, there are multiple King Herods, which I guess I sort of knew already, but failed to realize. The King Herod who ordered the death of children born around the time of Jesus, because of that prophecy from the Wise Men, was replaced by another King Herod, who's the one who sentenced Jesus to crucifixion. (Herod the Great vs. Herod Antipas, apparently. There, I've learned something today.). When Herod the Great died, Joseph supposedly moved the family back to Judea.
Along for the ride is Jesus' uncle, Cleopas (I've not heard of this character before, but my guess is that he's added here to explain why James is Jesus' cousin, and not his brother. That seems a bit convenient.) and the story dictates that he's not right in the head, because when Jesus heals his mental illness while swimming in a river, news of this reaches the new King Herod, and Herod sends his soldiers out to track down this boy with magical healing powers. This leads to a sort of "CSI: Judea" plot line, where again there are many contrivances and conveniences that are nearly as hard to swallow as the original Bible stories themselves.
All these contrivances made this story feel a little like a TV sitcom, where we can all see where the plot lines are going, so certain things just have to happen to get the characters to where they need to be. Or maybe a little like "Gotham", where the backstories of Bruce Wayne and many of his future super-enemies are explored, and the plot inches forward every week, but never really gets to the point where Bruce becomes Batman, even though we all know this is where it's inevitably headed. We the audience know where Jesus' story will take him, so he's definitely on this path, only it's exactly the one that a writer would write for him that would direct him there.
In the end, Jesus asks a rabbi about that story from seven years ago, the one that most people have forgotten, about the three Magi and the prophecy about the special baby being born - and it's really no different here than Superman finding out about the rocket-ship that brought him from Krypton. But once Jesus knows his origin story, he talks to Mary, and she confirms that she learned that she would give birth from an angel, who brought her the good news. Ah, but this is subversive in itself, I think - because how many times have you heard a proud mother describe her baby as "an angel, straight from heaven", or words to that effect? It's usually a metaphor, sure, but what if Mary, speaking metaphorically, was what started the story in the first place? What if, instead of telling young Jesus about "the birds and the bees", she mentioned an angel, as some kind of stork-like baby delivery service - and this was her way of telling Jesus that she thought he was special? Every mother wants to believe her baby is special, right?
And then maybe Jesus grew up believing this story, in the way that kids today believe in Santa Claus, or Jesus? That might have colored the way that he acted as an adult, who therefore believed he was the son of God? (And like most people, he probably didn't want to think about his parents "doing it", so the angel story was therefore easier.). Now, me, I like to think that when Jesus said he was "son of God", he meant in a way that suggested that everyone was a "son of God", but hey, I wasn't there. But that's my point, everything Jesus-related, including the Bible, is just idle speculation because of unreliable or non-existent narrators. We all have to pick and choose which parts of this story we choose to believe and also dis-believe.
My posting tonight was delayed by watching "Jesus Christ Superstar: the Live Concert" on NBC. It's not really my thing, but I have seen the original film and one or two other re-interpretations of this musical, so I gave it a whirl. Alice Cooper definitely stole the show as Herod. (Herod Antipas, that is, not Herod the Great. Now I know the difference.) I'm not going to count this as part of my chain, because even though it was over two hours long, it's not technically a movie, not even a TV movie. It was a "concert event", and besides, it doesn't link to my chain, not at all.
Also starring Adam Greaves-Neal, Sara Lazzaro, Vincent Walsh (last seen in "300: Rise of an Empire"), Sean Bean (last seen in "Pixels"), Jonathan Bailey (last seen in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Rory Keenan (last seen in "The Brother's Grimsby"), Agni Scott (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Jane Lapotaire, Finn McLeod Ireland, David Bradley (last seen in "The World's End"), David Burke, Isabelle Adriani, Paul Ireland, Lee Boardman (last seen in "Emma"), Clive Russell (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Jarreth J. Merz (last seen in "The Passion of the Christ"), Dorotea Mercuri, Lois Ellington, Douglas Dean
RATING: 4 out of 10 sweet cakes
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