If you're going to play Jesus, please be careful!—Denys Arcand

rr he late actress Colleen Moore tells the following anecdote in her auto-

biography, Silent Star. In 1922 Charlie Chaplin invited her and the four owners of First National Pictures to his home.

We were all sitting there chatting, waiting for lunch to be served, when Charlie stood up and, turning to Robert Leiber, the president of First National, said, "I hear you've bought Papini's Life of Christ."

Mr. Leiber nodded. Charlie nodded too. "I want to play

the role of Jesus." If Charlie had bopped Mr. Leiber

over the head with a baseball bat, he couldn't have received a more stunned reaction. Not just from Mr. Leiber. From all four of them. They sat there like figures in a waxworks. Even their faces had turned sort of waxy yellow.

"I'm a logical choice," Charlie went on. "I look the part. I'm a Jew. And I'm a comedian."

The bosses looked more stunned, if possible, than before.

Charlie explained to them that good comedy was only a hairline away from good tragedy, which we all knew to be true. "And I'm an atheist," he added, "so I'd be able to look at the character objectively. Who else could do that?"

They had no answer for him... . There was silence in the car going

back until Richard Rowland said, "He's the greatest actor alive, and he'd give an historical performance, but who of you would have the nerve to put in lights on a theater marquee: Charlie Chaplin in The Life of Christ?

Mr. Leiber said wistfully, "It would be the greatest religious picture ever made, but I'd be run out of Indianapolis."

While Chaplin never got the chance to tackle that particular role, many film buffs would rank the 1964 movie The

Gospel According to Saint Matthew as the greatest religious picture ever made, or at least the most powerful portrayal of the life of Christ. And this film was written and directed by an atheist, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Perhaps Chaplin was right about atheists being able to look at the character of Christ objectively.

Denys Arcand is a Canadian film-maker who has recently released

a remarkable motion picture, Jesus of Montreal. Not a depiction of the life of Christ along the lines of Pasolini's film—or such other epics as Jesus of Nazareth, The Greatest Story Ever Told, or The King of Kings (which, due to Jeffrey Hunter's performance, was also known as I Was A Teenage Jesus)—Arcand's movie attempts to look at the relevance of the historic Jesus to an increasingly secular world. Jesus of Montreal, while respectful of the subject matter, is not the reverent sort of treatment one might expect. This is no surprise, given the fact that Arcand is himself an atheist. In the July 1990 issue of Interview magazine, he said:

I think we can be touched by the voice of Jesus without being religious. That's the way it touches me. In fact, it's not even a voice. It's so thin it's more like an echo of a voice, like the echo of the big bang picked up by radio telescopes. There was someone at a point in history who said, "Love one another. The prostitutes are the ones who are going to heaven." Our knowledge of him is no more than twenty sentences, but these sentences are so weird that they're very powerful. And to me they are the most powerful things that have ever been said. But from there, to say, "Ah, this was obviously the Son of God"—this is a leap I will not make.

Jesus of Montreal, which was nom-inated last year for an Academy award

as Best Foreign Film, is the story of a troupe of actors in modern-day Mont-real, who put on a version of the Passion Play at an outdoor pageant sponsored by a Catholic church. The pastor of the church invites an intense young actor, Daniel Coulombe, to "freshen up" the rather stodgy version of the play which has been performed annually for the past forty years. He is given carte blanche to rewrite the script, pick the actors, and direct. Coulombe chooses four cohorts: a jolly fellow who dubs voices for porno-graphic films; a beautiful young fashion model; a narrator of scientific documen-taries; and a woman who appeared in the previous year's play—and who happens to be the priest's mistress.

Charlie Chaplin as Jesus?

Together, the five research the known facts about the life of Jesus, the history of ancient Judea and Rome, the reli-gious practices of the time, and the recent findings of archaeologists and exegetes. They fashion a play that is basically an exploration of the Jesus phenomenon, complete with references to other messiah claimants and the possibility that Jesus was an ancient magician (readers of Morton Smith's work Jesus the Magician will be delight-ed). Coulombe takes on the central role, while the rest of the cast portray several parts each. The pageant becomes a great hit, but the pastor is worried. He hadn't expected Coulombe to rewrite the script that much. His superiors order him to squelch the show and "Go back to the old script." The actors refuse, and tragedy ensues.

esus of Montreal is a witty and a trenchant look at contemporary society. It takes several gleeful swipes at advertising (the fashion model auditions for a commercial in which energetic young people joyfully sing out:

Reviews: Film 'Who Do People Say that I Am?'

Tim Madigan

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Mol'JIiI;s

"We worship beer!" ); the prevalence of psychology; the horrendous state of the medical system; and the fading-but-still powerful influence of the Catholic church in human affairs. The pastor, who says that "a bad priest is still a priest," defends his superiors' orders out of fear of being transferred to a diocese somewhere in the frozen North. When Coulombe protests that his play is attempting to tell the real story of Jesus Christ, the priest wearily tells him, "The Bible can be made to say anything. I know, from personal experience."

The best part of the film is the presentation of the Passion Play itself, especially the confrontation with Pon-tius Pilate, who is none too eager to meet yet another religious fanatic. The troupe offers a running narration, with such lines as "Here's another mysterious tale from the Orient"; "Disciples lie—they embellish"; and "Executions have always been popular with crowds."

Ultimately, the troupe strips away all of Jesus' supernatural attributes while focusing on the simple but profound message: "Love one another." Several members of the audience break down in tears, and a few attempt to become part of the show.

While some of the comparisons between the Jesus story and Coulombe's own life seem too forced or heavy-handed (both are prophets without honor in their own hometown, and Coulombe begins to take on more and more characteristics of the Man from Galilee), for the most part Jesus of Montreal is quite well done. It is interesting to watch the camaraderie that develops between the troupe members. The movie is like a cynical version of Godspell, where strangers come together and are altered by their participation in a common project. Indeed, this may be the central point of the film. To quote again from Arcand: "I'm redeemed by working with my friends on projects like these. When a community of people does a valid scientific or artistic project together, to me that's salvation." This is a version of salvation most humanists would probably concur with.

I highly recommend this moving film. It is not very often that one can see the gospel according to reason. •

Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality, by Steve Allen (Buffalo: Pro-metheus Books, 1990), 428 pp., $21.95.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo its use.

—Galileo

Steve Allen doesn't use the above quote, but he says much the same

thing: "... I have no personal knowledge that God authorized every verse of the Bible. We do however, know that, if he exists, then it was he who implanted in my brain the capacity to reason, and I would be foolish indeed were I not to scrutinize any and all evidence that comes before me."

That's what Allen is asking us to do on this fault-finding tour of the Holy Writ. Trying to make us realize how little we know about what's really in the Good Book, he's inviting us to think harder, more clearly, more deeply, and for ourselves.

That's asking a lot of people used to intellectual laziness, intellectual dishon-esty, intellectual cowardice, and intellec-tual dependence on authorities to move the heavy furniture. Has Allen bitten off more than we can chew?

Unquestionably the Bible is rich in wisdom and advice that people of good will and intelligence find comforting, instructive, and inspiring. Then there are the parts that don't get quoted so often because they're difficult and embarrass-ing. Allen insists he's not an enemy of faith. He thinks religion would be better off facing the tough questions head-on instead of backtracking in defense of indefensible claims.

Authorship of the Bible is as unsure

Don Addis is with the St. Petersburg Times.

as its many possible interpretations. How can it be inerrant throughout if it con-tains inconsistencies, historical errors, and scientific impossibilities? How can it be divinely inspired if it's riddled with deity-sanctioned and assisted cruelty, aimless violence, and irrational, confus-ing behaviors that clearly conflict with the book's own stated standards of morality?

Consider Psalm 137, which opens with warm, placid lyrics: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion," and ends up snarling, "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Just a taste of the unwholesome attitudes and antisocial behavior that Allen finds filling chapter after verse.

There's Abram, who comes across as a scheming liar. Samson, everybody's hero, was mean, loutish, and capriciously vicious, if you really get down and read Judges. And there's the sordid tale of Lot and his two daughters—a story that, Allen is certain, would be pounced upon by True Believers if it were presented today in modern dress, maybe as a television drama, with names and setting changed to disguise its origin.

Arranged alphabetically, Allen's essays range from Abel—through Adam and Eve, Capital Punishment, The Ten Commandments, Evolution, The Flood,

Books Steve Allen on the Scriptures

Don Addis

Spring 1991

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