Time for another handful of items.
1. The New York Times had a bizarre item yesterday on how the surprise hit documentary March of the Penguins has been drafted into the culture wars, with conservative religious pundits pushing the film’s already problematic anthropomorphism far beyond what its makers intended, and cheering its depiction of monogamy and whatnot (and never mind the penguins practise only serial monogamy). Today, Jeff Sharlet at The Revealer responds:
. . . the conservative, religious reading of March of the Penguins strikes me as good media work — a recognition, after all, of a kind of relativism by which all stories can be interpreted to echo or augment our own. Religious conservatives such as Michael Medved, who proclaims the movie “The Passion of the Penguins,” are playing pretty loosey-goosey with parable and allegory, but by our lights, that’s just fine. Beliefs are built from stories, which make for a wonderfully unstable foundation.
For instance, when I saw the film, I was sure that it would destroy the faith of some religious conservatives who hinge their beliefs on gender. How does one reconcile a commitment to “male headship” of the family with this story in which female penguins are clearly in charge? Perhaps the intelligent designer, in whose image we are made, is a lady penguin?
2. Last week, the Salt Lake Tribune had an interesting item on how Mormon filmmakers are planning to go mainstream, now that Napoleon Dynamite turned out to be such a runaway hit.
3. Variety reviews The Passion Of Joshua, The Jew at the Venice and Toronto film festivals:
Bland direction is the least of the sins perpetrated by “The Passion of Joshua, the Jew,” a historical pic billing itself as the anti-Gibson “Passion” but in reality little more than recruiting propaganda for Jews for Jesus. Conceived by helmer Pasquale Scimeca as a salvo against anti-Semitism, pic doesn’t know how to handle its theme, and ends up championing the concept of the Christianized Jew rather than the universality of a Jewish Jesus-like figure during the Spanish Inquisition. Attempts to cast “Joshua” as an artfilm may win a few uncritical kudos at home, but pic has little chance of crossover markets. . . .
Scimeca, a former seminarian, discovered his own ancestors were Marranos — Jews forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition — and “Joshua” plays like an attempt to explain their actions. Joshua’s initial (historically impossible) naivete regarding Jesus is followed by an intense desire to learn ever more about this Messiah.
Notwithstanding a final quotation from Pope John XXIII on the need to make amends for the Church’s anti-Semitism, “Joshua” becomes a parable on the mistreatment of a Jew who’s become Christianized: He’s seen the light, emulated Jesus, but is still crucified. This certainly won’t be playing at Jewish fests.
To give Scimeca the benefit of the doubt, he knows not what he does, but the pedestrian nature of his screenplay, coscripted with Nennella Buonaiuto, also works against any well-meaning aims. Heavy-handed parallels between the Inquisition and present-day, with Jews and Muslims pointedly shown as brothers-in-exile, pushes the bounds of preachiness. Scene set-ups lack spontaneity.
Be all that as it may, I have to say I’m kind of interested.
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