JESUS OF MONTREAL
Canada, 1989, directed by Denys Arcand
SHORT REVIEW
Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal (1989) examines the complex issue of representing Jesus in film. The film proceeds on two parallel and then converging levels. On the first level, Arcand represents the efforts of Daniel, a bright, courageous young actor to produce a Passion play on the grounds of a Catholic shrine in Montreal. On a second level, he represents a number of scenes from the Passion, in which the actor-director plays the role of Jesus. When the play runs into problems with the authorities of the shrine and then with the law, the experience of Daniel converges with that of Jesus, making him a classical Christ-figure.
LONG REVIEW, INCLUDING CRITERIA FOR FILM REVIEWING
Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal (1989), probably the most-popular Canadian film ever made, not only provides a great entertainment experience but more importantly, it investigates in new, original and challenging ways, many of the complex issues involved in the representation of Jesus in film.
This makes it a valuable film text to use in the context of the Christian community and the Christian experience: in religion, spirituality and theology courses, in seminars and discussion groups, and for retreats and prayer experiences.
Arcand structures his film in two parallel narratives that he then has converge and cross. In one, he represents the efforts of Daniel, a talented young actor, to produce a Passion play at a Catholic shrine in Montreal. Then at several points within that story, Arcand represents scenes of the Passion play that Daniel and his friends write and perform; Daniel himself plays the role of Jesus.
A demythologizing text, very popular with audiences, the play gets Daniel in serious trouble with the authorities of the shrine and with the law. From the beginning of the film, Arcand develops parallels between the experience of Daniel and that of Jesus, but as the clouds gather around the young actor-director, his suffering converges with the Passion of the Jesus he is representing, making Daniel a classical Christ-figure.
Arcand’s film is particularly important in the Jesus-film tradition because it is the only film that represents the Gospel narrative both directly and metaphorically, and has the same actor represent both Jesus and the Christ-figure. This unique characteristic offers some strong challenges to viewers—believers and non-believers—regarding the relevance of the Gospel to life in the world today.
Arcand’s film also develops a multifaceted sociopolitical critique of post-modern, post-Christian French- Canadian society, that also clearly extends far beyond that culture. The institutional Church is subjected to strong criticism—the priest-director of the shrine is the saddest, most tragic character in the film—but at the same time, Arcand decries the loss of faith and religious culture that for centuries had characterized Quebec society.
Then beyond the religious dimension of contemporary culture, the film levels its most bitter attacks on the mass media and the legal profession: media people are compared to the money-changers in the Temple violently rejected by Jesus, and a sleazy lawyer becomes a powerful metaphor of Satan.
If, in his previous and bleak film, The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Arcand’s strong social and moral criticism of Quebec society offers no way out, no hope, in Jesus of Montreal, and his professed agnosticism notwithstanding, he proposes much hope in the courage and integrity of Daniel and his friends, and in the Christian model of experience they live out.
To establish the context for this reflection on how I write film reviews, I will begin by saying that I am an academic and have worked in university settings for many years. In my early academic formation, I did degrees in English literature that have determined several dimensions of my approach to cinema: the treatment of a film as a text, with structure, plot, characters and settings; the analysis of symbols as expressive; the focus not only on what a film means but on how it communicates that meaning.
My later formation as a Jesuit added two elements to my academic baggage: theological categories and themes and formal studies in film esthetics and history. These determined the theme of my doctoral dissertation, which developed an interdisciplinary film/theology approach to cinema that continues to mark my teaching and writing twenty years later. Further, the pastoral-sacramental ministry that is a significant dimension of my identity as a priest continually modulates my hermeneutic when I write about cinema.
The most fundamental aspect of my consideration of a film is that of knowing and respecting my audience: their age, cultural composition, education and the specific occasion of the writing. Writing comments on Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ for a parish Sunday bulletin and for a graduate theology seminar, call for different approaches.
Further, my experience is that most audiences look for the meaning of a film in its content, in what the film says, without giving serious consideration to its form, its style, to how it says what it says. In doing so, they miss a wide range of the film’s expressive strategies. A film is a film, not a novel, poem or painting, and its filmic nature must be understood and appreciated. When I write about a film, I focus on how its meaning is communicated by both its content and its style, in the rich dynamic between the story it tells and the stylistic and technical strategies adopted by the director that move the narrative in a given direction and shape its meaning. Pasolini’s Gospel According to St. Matthew is a classic example of the importance of this twofold approach.
My interest in a film usually involves identifying and evaluating its theological or religious significance. Sometimes this is a straightforward procedure, e.g., when dealing with a Jesus-film, where the theological themes are clear and explicit. It is more challenging when the film makes no reference to God or religion, or indeed seems to negate God and the spiritual dimension of human experience. My position is that such a film text, if it is created with moral and artistic integrity, e.g., Kieslowski’s Decalogue Nine, has theological meaning, albeit implicit, discernible in the anthropology of the director, in the dynamic of the relationships among the characters, in their moral choices, and in the director’s critique of society and even of religion and the Church.
Typically, Christian audiences presume that the only valid approach to a Jesus film or a film about some issue of Christian belief, is by using the Gospel text and theology as a hermeneutic to decipher and critique the film text. The Gospel and Christian teaching are the standard, they control and judge the film, sometimes imposing themselves harshly and often merely pointing out where the narrative of the film diverges from the gospels. Though this can be valid exercise, I also operate another approach, by changing the movement of the interpretative dynamic. Reversing the hermeneutical flow has the advantage of respecting the film text, allowing it to comment on the Gospel and to suggest new and fruitful dimensions, meanings and applications of the biblical and Christian tradition.
Following the lead of the French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, I usually insist on two interrelated points when it comes to interpreting and evaluating a film. First, viewers are not to be passive in front of the film text and its meaning, but rather are to participate actively in the construction of that meaning, bringing to the film their own experiences, ideas and feelings. Second, viewers are not to accept uncritically or to focus exclusively on the declarations of directors regarding their own films, as if these were the only basis for valid understanding.
Further regarding film directors, and in particular when their films ostensibly have significance for the Christian faith—films about Jesus, the saints, church history—I avoid referring to the faith or non-faith of the director as a criterion for determining the orthodoxy of the content and themes of the film. The declarations of orthodox Catholic belief of Scorsese and Gibson do not guarantee the orthodoxy of their film portraits of Jesus, while the declarations of non-faith of Pasolini do not prevent his Jesus from being the most faithful film representation of the Jesus of the Gospel. Experience teaches that often, films praised by the Church for their orthodox Christian vision are made by directors who openly declare their agnosticism or atheism, e.g.: Romero, Thérèse, The Seventh Room. In short, the focus should be on the film text and on what it, and not the director, says.
However, when considering a film made by an auteur, a director with a extensive filmography—Arcand, Scorsese, Gibson—I find it fruitful to measure the film in question, its themes, its anthropology, its style, over against other films by the same director. Often one film, used as a foil, will reinforce another by the same director, either positively or negatively, and make its themes more clear.
As a corollary to this idea, I also find it useful when considering one film, to interpret and evaluate it in a comparison-contrast dynamic with films by other directors which examine the same subjects and themes, but inevitably in different styles and with different moral, spiritual and theological perspectives, e.g. the Jesus films of Pasolini, Jewison, Zeffirelli. I have found the “dialogue” between or among contrasting films and their often contrasting points of view, to be proficuous for clarifying the merits or demerits of the film under examination.
Awareness of the audience, respect for the film qua film, sensitivity to its implicit theological themes, familiarity with other films by the same director and with the same subject, and an active approach to the construction of the meaning of the text: all are important considerations in the way I write about film.
BIOGRAPHY
Lloyd Baugh, a Canadian Jesuit priest, is Professor of theology and film studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. His doctoral thesis in Fundamental Theology at the Gregorian was a study of the Christian anthropology of Ermanno Olmi (The Tree of the Wooden Clogs, The Legend of the Holy Drinker ) in his first eight films. He has taught also in Canada, the USA, England, Spain, the Philippines and Madagascar. Author of Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ- Figures in Cinema, his other areas of research and publication include the cinema of sub-Saharan Africa, the Decalogue films of Kieslowski, spiritual and moral themes in film and the use of film texts for prayer, retreat experiences and interreligious dialogue. He is also active in the campus ministry program at the Gregorian. At the present time, he is engaged in a major research project on the theme of “the African face of Jesus in film.”
