"Risen" Satisfies but Raises Vexing Questions

I gave up Christianity in my early teens, but I've never lost my capacity to enjoy a good Bible story on the big or small screen. My favorite small or any screen version is Franco Zefirelli's groundbreaking miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.

I don't know what my favorite big screen version is, but it's definitely not Mel Gibson's interminable gore fest The Passion of the Christ, even if its sadomasochistic artfulness can't be denied.

Actually, I can't think of any big screen version that has done all that much for me, at least not since I was a kid, but I've enjoyed some more than others. The Ten Commandments is one, although, come to think of it, I haven't watched all of it since I was a kid. Martin Scorsese's heterodox The Last Temptation of Christ is another.

Upon further reflection, there don't seem to be that many Bible films, and I've seen fewer still. But that's not because I haven't wanted to see more that are worth seeing.

So, when Risen came out earlier this year, it appeared to be promising enough that I hankered to venture to the local cineplex to see it, even though I seldom visit the theater to see any movies these days. But I still waited till it came to Redbox and I received a discount offer the other day I couldn't refuse.

I've read two antithetical reviews in major publications that speak to differing aspects of my own perspective on the film. One, by NYT critic Jeannette Catsoulis, derides the film for the "stiffly skeptical countenance" of its leading character, its "exhausted" cinematography, its "smiling cipher" portrayal of Jesus, and more shortcomings that render the film into more of an inadvertent sequel to Monty Python's Life of Brian than into a commandingly serious treatment of the biblical gospels.

On the other hand, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle compliments the film's "brand new strategy" of focusing its point of view not on bigger-than-life religious figures and their experiences but on a secular Roman character's experience of the extraordinary events he witnesses. And LaSalle opines that if the biblical events the film portrays really happened, they probably happened a lot more like the film represents, with its unique mixing of the mundane with the sublime, than typical Bible films depict with their excessively etherealized religious figures and scenes.

So, what's the film about? In a proverbial nutshell, it's about a high Roman military official called a Tribune and named Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) who's ordered by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth) to seal Yeshua's tomb after the crucifixion, to investigate the disappearance of the body after it goes missing, and who subsequently experiences supernatural events he struggles heroically to "reconcile" with his secular Roman worldview and worldly ambitions.

That's the skeletal outline of the story. And I agree with the derisive NYT critic Catsoulis that the scripting and acting of most of the characters, especially including the Mary Magdalene and Yeshua ones, aren't particularly compelling. For while the casting of Cliff Curtis as Yeshua can be and has been praised for being more in keeping with the probable actual physical features of a real Yeshua, Curtis is no Robert Powell, not only in physiognomy but also in acting ability.

But I disagree with Catsoulis' criticism of the casting and performance of Joseph Fiennes' non-biblical Roman Tribune Clavius. I think he does a very credible job of portraying Clavius' conflicted but stoically controlled response to his unsettling experiences.

Unlike the Chronicle reviewer LaSalle, I'd like to have seen the film tip the balance a little further away from the mundane and toward the sublime than it did. The apostles seemed a little too commonplace and matter-of-fact in their demeanor to be the credibly appointed representatives of the one and only Son, and a freshly resurrected one at that, of the one, true creator and Lord of the Universe. And Yeshua was even more uninspiringly unimpressive in demeanor and conduct.

Yet, I'm sympathetic to LaSalle's notion that if Yeshua and his words and miraculous deeds shone in too glorious a light reminiscent of this, it would have been even harder to explain how anyone could resist being instantly, profoundly, and completely transfigured by him and how he could have ended up dying a gruesome death nailed to a wooden cross. The film appears to have largely succeeded in walking the fine line between overpowering hagiography and dusty, ho-hum realism and makes you think, in LaSalle's words, "if all this did actually happen, it probably happened something like this."

Yet, "Risen" raises a key question I've asked many times and to which I've never seen or heard an answer that I find even remotely satisfying. In one scene, Yeshua heals a leper, and Clavius asks his disciples if they've ever had doubts about him. They admit that they have at times. Clavius then astutely asks how they've sustained their faith and purpose, and they reply that miracles like the healing they've just witnessed are the reason.

But I've often asked how reasonable it is to expect people who haven't personally witnessed any such miracles much less many of them to believe in and to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all they strength, and with all thy mind" or to even deeply desire to. And, interestingly, Yeshua himself admits in the film that if it's been so difficult at times for his own disciples, of all people, to follow him faithfully despite all they've experienced, how vastly more so it must be for those who haven't shared in their extraordinary experiences. Yet, isn't this what the Christian God allegedly demands of us upon possible if not certain pain of everlasting torment if we don't comply?

I think "Risen" is a pretty good Bible film, but if it was made to, besides earn money, inspire and strengthen Christian faith, a genuinely reflective viewing of it could end up producing the opposite effect.