After reading the reviews - both good and bad - I've decided to take a pass on seeing The Passion of Christ. It wasn't just that too many reviewers noted the film's loving display of flying flesh, in slow motion no less. What really sealed it for me was my brother-in-law's description. He said its tenor reminded him of the flesh eating zombie movies he used to watch as a teenager. I like a heebie jeebie Jesus as much as the next Catholic, but this just sounds too heebie jeebie for me. So, for my Lenten movie watching, I turned to my favorite foreign language Passion play with subtitles - Jesus of Montreal.
It's a fitting time to revist the 1989 movie. Its director, Denys Arcand just won the Academy Award for best foreign language film for The Barbarian Invasions. And of course, with all the furor over the Mel Gibson's Passion, the topic is timely. We forget that the Passion play is still a popular form of entertainment, even right here in North America. In fact, a Canadian Passion play was, in a round about way, the inspiration for Arcand's movie. While conducting auditions for a television commercial, one actor apologized to Arcand for wearing a beard. He was spending his nights playing Jesus. Now that's acting breadth - partying beer drinker by day, Jesus by night.
And so, the double Passion play that is Jesus of Montreal was born. I say double Passion play because the movie is really two Passions in one. The first centers around the troupe of actors who are hired to give new life to a Catholic shrine's annual Passion play. Their production takes their lives on a trajectory paralleling the life of Christ and the Apostles. But instead of political and religious hierarchy, it's the entertainment and religious hierarchy they run up against, and mostly the former. There's the temptation of Christ scene, but instead of standing on the top of the synagogue looking down at Jerusalem, it takes place in a skyscraper over-looking Montreal. And, in a particularly delectable touch, Lucifer is an entertainment lawyer. There's the Jesus in the Temple scene, but instead of a rampage in a church against the commercializion of worship, it's a rampage in a theater against the commercialization of art. There's the death and resurrection of the lead actor, who dies after a fall from his crucifix and lives on by giving his organs to others. And finally there are his followers, the other actors who go on to establish a theater company devoted to their leader's artistic principles.
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