| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Catholic Failure
Amusing critique of Roman Catholic dogma that attempts to get a hold on the origins of the religion - a Black Jesus Christ - in contradistinction to the alleged infallibility of the church he founded.
The religion is shown to have lost its way and to have succumbed to formalism as a coping mechanism for its endemic failure to have the very faith in itself enjoined upon others. Only God does not make mistakes, and in the church's view that this is also true of itself, lies the source of its many failings.
This movie is not going to convince anyone to embrace the faith, but the pot-shots at contemporary Christian hypocrisy, idolatry and the refusal to think for oneself are well-made. Particularly, the desire to rewrite biblical teaching (God is a woman, a 13th apostle, etc) to offer a deeper understanding of the faith, as in Kazantzakis Last Temptation of Christ.
Where it fails is in not seeing that religion must form deep relationships with political power in order to have any effect in the world of mammon. This combination of faith and force is the true reason for the existence of dogma, but this film is too embedded in its own acontextual religious discourse to pay enough attention to its own theme.
Analyzing rather than preaching the church’s support for the Holocaust and the Atlantic slave trade, for example, is no substitute for dramatic exegesis. (It was probably inevitable that a film about Catholicism would be preachy.) This is a film of abstract ideas, not flesh-and-blood characters, and often has difficulty rising above the level of an undergraduate essay.
The other problem with this film is the acting. Many of the performers are uncertain of how to play their parts - to the detriment of the movie, as a whole. Only the enjoyably-evil Jason LEE, the hilarious Jason MEWES & the ultra-feminine Salma HAYEK play their respective roles with anything approaching the genuine commitment (& relish) needed to help the audience get under the skin of the drama. Yet, when all is said and done, it is better than something like the execrable Da Vinci Code.
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