[REVIEW] Jesus of Montréal
Mar. 30th, 2004 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI watched Jesus of Montréal this evening, from 7 o'clock to almost 9 o'clock, as part of my medieval devotional literature class. There were pizza, and drinks, and pears, all thoughtfully provided by Dr. Pappano. Only two people--one other English graduate student, and his girlfriend--appeared; unfortunate, this, since the Ellis Hall auditorium is quite large.
As I've come to expect from Arcand, it's a fantastic film. Ebert's review touches on only some of the reasons that the class watched the film. Dr. Pappano saw in the film, with its close integration into the Montréal city landscape and Québécois post-Catholic culture, interesting parallels with the passion plays held in many English towns in the late Middle Ages, with their close links to local cultures and folkways. You definitely saw that in the whole adaptation of the Passion, as the actors managed to successfully assimilate the latest discoveries to the Passion story to create a very topical updating of Christ's message.
(Interestingly, Gilles Pelletier, the actor playing Father Leclerc, also features in another Arcand film, 2003's The Barbarian Invasions. He also plays a priest in this film, one showing off a church basement full of Catholic sacred art to a French auctioneer, only to be told that outside of its cultural heritage the stockpile is valueless. They could well be the same characters--certainly they're both priests beaten down by their hierarchies and by popular disinterest. It'd be interesting if Jesus of Montréal could be assimilated to that filmic universe.)
I'm still thinking about my reactions to Jesus of Montréal, in part because we'll be discussing it (along with The Passion and a Middle English text) tomorrow in class. It was definitely a powerful film, and it did manage to achieve its goal of an intelligent renovation of Christ's mission and death. I can't help but feel that if Christianity is ever revived in the First World outside of the United States, it will have to be through like means. Traditional faith just might not work any more; a faith acknowledging the profound need for belief, and the doubt always present in the minds of believers, might have to do. It's certainly the only sort of faith I can see myself embracing.
As I've come to expect from Arcand, it's a fantastic film. Ebert's review touches on only some of the reasons that the class watched the film. Dr. Pappano saw in the film, with its close integration into the Montréal city landscape and Québécois post-Catholic culture, interesting parallels with the passion plays held in many English towns in the late Middle Ages, with their close links to local cultures and folkways. You definitely saw that in the whole adaptation of the Passion, as the actors managed to successfully assimilate the latest discoveries to the Passion story to create a very topical updating of Christ's message.
(Interestingly, Gilles Pelletier, the actor playing Father Leclerc, also features in another Arcand film, 2003's The Barbarian Invasions. He also plays a priest in this film, one showing off a church basement full of Catholic sacred art to a French auctioneer, only to be told that outside of its cultural heritage the stockpile is valueless. They could well be the same characters--certainly they're both priests beaten down by their hierarchies and by popular disinterest. It'd be interesting if Jesus of Montréal could be assimilated to that filmic universe.)
I'm still thinking about my reactions to Jesus of Montréal, in part because we'll be discussing it (along with The Passion and a Middle English text) tomorrow in class. It was definitely a powerful film, and it did manage to achieve its goal of an intelligent renovation of Christ's mission and death. I can't help but feel that if Christianity is ever revived in the First World outside of the United States, it will have to be through like means. Traditional faith just might not work any more; a faith acknowledging the profound need for belief, and the doubt always present in the minds of believers, might have to do. It's certainly the only sort of faith I can see myself embracing.
