{"id":8598,"date":"2014-07-12T14:45:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T18:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=8598"},"modified":"2014-07-12T18:12:11","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T22:12:11","slug":"pelagius-of-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2014\/07\/pelagius-of-montreal.html","title":{"rendered":"Pelagius of Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

1989\u2019s does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Jesus of Montreal<\/em> is two hours long, and for the first hour and a half I loathed the movie and everyone in it. By the end, though, I was totally compelled and moved, and I think the movie has real insight into the Procrustean drive to recreate God in our own image<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The basic story is that a fairly faithless priest gathers a bunch of non-Christian actors to revamp his annual passion play. They get super intense about it, of course, led by the guy who plays Jesus, of course (Lothaire Bluteau). There\u2019s temptation by a corporate devil, overturning the tables of the sleazy advertising directors, etc. The newly-controversial play gets shut down and the players enact their own Way of the Cross in a series of hospitals and subway stations.<\/p>\n

The new passion play insists that Jesus is just a man like any other. They\u2019re sort of coy about it\u2013they come closest to suggesting that the Gospels might actually be true in the depiction of the Resurrection, but even there, you get a definite flavor of, \u201cWe see the face of Jesus when we meet other people and recognize their worth!\u201d But there\u2019s a lot of \u201cJesus ben Panthera,\u201d new archeological discoveries in the Holy Land prove etc etc, \u201cI am the son of man\u201d but not, for example, \u201cUnless you eat the flesh<\/a> of the Son of Man and drink his blood you will have no life in you.\u201d Shockingly<\/em>, a Catholic church doesn\u2019t super want to pay for this diet caffeine-free Jesus, which is why it gets shut down.<\/p>\n

But much of the story of Jesus of Montreal<\/em> makes it really hard to believe that Jesus\u2019 story makes sense if he was just a man like any other. The players\u2019 actions, the way their personalities change under the influence of the passion play, undermine that part of their message.<\/p>\n

The players become intensely self-righteous. The bizarre thing about the Gospels is that Jesus says stuff which could easily come across as self-aggrandizing, but he himself never seems that way. The players in Jesus of Montreal<\/em>, by contrast, can\u2019t prevent themselves from turning righteousness into self-righteousness. They\u2019re self-impressed and noticeably less pacifist than Jesus Christ: Montreal-Jesus doesn\u2019t just damage the ad sleazebags\u2019 property, he slaps an adwoman (nice touch to make it a woman btw) across the face. He makes no effort to stop the riot which takes place at the play\u2019s shutdown\u2013there\u2019s no parallel to Jesus telling Peter to put up his sword<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[ETA: The movie itself is also\u2026 sometimes lacking in self-awareness. I meant to mention that Montreal-Jesus overturns the tables at the ad audition because the people running it want his ex-girlfriend to take her clothes off, and they humiliate and pressure her when she resists. That\u2019s what starts him table-tipping and woman-smacking. All well and good. But in the movie<\/em> we totally do get to see the actress\u2019s breasts, because the mayhem doesn\u2019t start until she\u2019s already taking her top off. Classy!]<\/p>\n

I\u2019m making it sound like these people are just insufferable, but what they really are is trapped. They\u2019re in a closed system, without the inbreaking of the divine to free them from themselves. They\u2019re the apostles without Christ: searching, battered by events, striving for humility and always sinking back into self-image and confusion. As things begin to turn dramatically against them I realized that I genuinely cared about them\u2013the movie had been working for me on some subterranean level, even as I rolled my eyes and snapped snotty one-liners at the screen (shoring up my own self-image, tbh).<\/p>\n

Not sure how the filmmakers themselves viewed this movie. The \u201cresurrection\u201d parallel is so unambiguously positive that I do wonder if they genuinely thought mere human actions are enough to save us. But most of the movie, for me, was an exploration of our inability to save ourselves. And whatever you think of the movie\u2019s theology, the subway sequence, including the gorgeous ending, is deeply poignant on a human scale. I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t give up on this thing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1989\u2019s does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Jesus of Montreal is two hours long, and for the first hour and a half I loathed the movie and everyone in it. By the end, though, I was totally compelled and moved, and I think the movie has real insight into the Procrustean drive to recreate God in our own image. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[11,131,30,208],"class_list":["post-8598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-mackerel-snapping","tag-his-banner-over-me-was-love","tag-it-is-very-dark-you-are-likely-to-be-wrestled-by-an-angel","tag-mackerel-snapping-2","tag-weapons-of-the-spirit"],"yoast_head":"\nPelagius of Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"1989's does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Jesus of Montreal is two hours long, and for the first hour and a half I loathed the movie and everyone in it. 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