“Risen”

My wife is still in Hawaii — I’ve been seamlessly replaced there by a neighbor and by her sister — and I’ve spent the whole day back here in the real world creating two midterm examinations with which to torment and afflict my students.  So I decided that I needed to go out for a burger at Five Guys and then to step across the way for a movie.

I’ve just returned from seeing the new film Risen.

Those familiar with the story of Christ’s death and resurrection (just about everybody here, I expect) will instantly recognize that Risen has changed things around a bit — notably the introduction of a wholly fictional Roman tribune, the movie’s jaded and troubled protagonist — and there are undoubtedly reasons to criticize it.

Some will find Joseph Fiennes’s Clavius too grimly expressionless — especially toward the end, where his failure to join the witnessing of the Eleven (he would have been fully qualified to replace Judas!) was more than a bit puzzling, in my judgment.  I myself thought the apostles (Bartholomew, in particular) a bit too giddy; but then, they’ve just been given the best news that any human could ever have received, so perhaps they should be pardoned.  Moreover, I wish the scriptwriters hadn’t chosen to reinforce the image of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute — apparently still practicing that trade right up until almost the time of Christ’s crucifixion, no less — an image that is based on legends that apparently go back no earlier than the Middle Ages.

However, candidly, everybody will find something jarring, not how they pictured it, in a movie’s retelling of so important and famous a narrative.  That’s probably unavoidable.

I thought the film offered a very fresh take on this very old, very well-known story, and plenty of things to discuss.  I liked the portrayal of the apostles as astonished by the Resurrection and not yet even remotely sure of what it was they were supposed to do.  I liked Cliff Curtis’s Mediterranean-looking — non-blond, non-Swedish! — Yeshua.  I also liked the way the film avoided glamorizing first-century Palestine:  Things looked small, on the whole, and rocky and dirty and fairly simple, and the Romans came across as a relatively human occupation force, not (as they often do) as either ancient Mediterranean Nazis or as regimented and robotic imperial storm troopers.  (I’m not claiming that the geography was portrayed altogether accurately.  Those who know Israel at all well will see the inaccuracies:  The filming was apparently done in Spain and Malta, and it was quite clearly not done on the real Sea of Galilee.  And Caesarea Maritima?  Well, I go there at least once a year, and the Caesarea where the movie’s Pontius Pilate nervously awaits the historically fictional visit of Tiberius Caesar shortly after the Resurrection looks absolutely nothing like the gorgeous beach-resort-quality real place.)

That said, I liked the film, and I recommend it to others.  When my wife returns from Hawaii, I plan to take her.  It will be fun to talk it over with her.

Here’s a fairly mixed review:

http://www.avclub.com/review/risen-imagines-gospel-roman-cop-movie-232372

Here’s a quite positive one.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/02/18/its-miracle-hollywood-finally-tells-great-bible-story.html

I probably come down somewhere between the two reviews, perhaps a bit closer to the second than the first.

I’m happy to see a real Hollywood film that takes a religious/biblical story seriously.  May those execrable 2014 abominations, Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings, never be repeated.