From the Editors

What happens to the people putting on a Passion Play? Someday Mel Gibson may tell us, but Denys Arcand's <I>Jesus of Montreal</I> proposes an engaging possibility. In hip present-day Montreal, a group of actors stages the Passion in an outdoor, somewhat avant-garde style, led by the quietly charismatic and increasingly uncanny young man (Lothaire Bluteau, <I>Black Robe</I>) playing Christ. His identification with the role, and the way it bleeds into real life, gives director Denys Arcand plenty of opportunities for social comment--some of it spot-on, some of it a little facile. But the fragile Bluteau is such a fascinating lead presence (the other actors are familiar from Arcand's <I>Barbarian Invasions</I> and <I>Decline of the American Empire</I>) that the movie's spell lasts long after it's over. Turns out the French-Canadian approach to the Passion can be just as intriguing as the original Aramaic. <I>--Robert Horton</I>
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Customer Response

Favorite Jesus Film
Every year during Holy Week my family and I watch a "Jesus Movie" as part of our tradition. The theology in this movie speaks closet to my own theology as any I have seen. Worth seeing.

Smart, moving, and thought-provoking.
Denys Arcand's "Jesus of Montreal" may be one of the best movies ever made about Christian beliefs and ethics; it is certainly one of the best movies ever to come out of Canada. This French-language film tells the story of Daniel Coulombe (Lothaire Bluteau), an intense and ascetic young actor hired by the Archdiocese of Montreal to freshen up the basilica's fusty annual Passion Play. The resulting drama--which throws in bits of Roman-Judean history and "historical Jesus" research, with Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be" soliloquy for good measure--becomes a smash hit, particularly Daniel himself in the role of Jesus. But the play also arouses the ire of the archdiocese for veering too far from traditional Catholic dogma.

Meanwhile, the lives of Daniel and his troupe of actors begin to mirror the story of the Gospel in clever ways; wait till you see the film's updated take on Jesus in the Temple with the money-lenders.

Some viewers find this movie too clunkily allegorical for their tastes; others--who vastly prefer Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ"--object to it for the same reasons the archdiocese objected to Daniel's play. Personally, I was totally charmed, pleased and moved by it. I found the allegory both witty and appropriate, and the performances--particularly Bluteau as Daniel/Jesus--absolutely first-rate. The film moves almost imperceptibly from witty satire at its beginning to tear-jerking tragedy at its end, with a fragile but real message of hope. Above all, it asks discomfiting questions about what it truly means to be a Christian, and not just someone who accepts Christian doctrine out of laziness or self-interest. "Jesus of Montreal" is a smart, moving and thought-provoking film. Whatever your spiritual orientation, it will get you thinking about what you believe, and why.

excellent
excellent movie for spiritually minded folk with wonderful ending that really touched my heart and made me think. subtitles were not a problem. highly reccomended. enjoy!

Beautiful, but perpetuates dissociated ideas about enlightenment
I loved certain parts of this movie, such as the characters' bonding and rising up from their lost lives and finding a purpose and cause with deeper meaning - one beyond money, shallow fame, and conventional success. I also found many of the parallels between the life of Jesus (as written in the Bible) and lives of the characters in the movie to be extremely clever. Sometimes, however, these were intellectually a bit too clever, and didn't deliver enough of an emotional punch. Other times, though, the cleverness overlapped with emotional content fantastically (such as when the main character symbolically overturned the moneychangers' table at the temple) and the movie just sang.

A few other criticisms:

1) The movie was slow to get started. It took about 45 minutes to come up to speed, though once it did it really took off, and the last half-hour just flew.

2) The portrayal of Jesus was of a dissociated, magically-human Jesus that tires me out. I didn't care to see the miracles of him walking on water and healing the blind. To me that's just silly, dated mythology. I want to see a new Jesus!

3) I didn't like how they sexualized the relationship between the actor who played Jesus and his pretty co-actor. I don't believe an enlightened Jesus would have been in a sexual relationship. Also, there was a scene where the Jesus character was nude in a bathtub and someone brings a little girl in and she kisses him on the lips. Um, at best unnecessary, at worst perverse.

4) But my main criticism: The actor who played Jesus, who slowly melded his real life with that of Jesus's life as told in the Bible, was presented as having become, by the end of the film, a sort of enlightened guru. I found this portrayal of enlightenment false - more as emotionally splitting off and becoming dissociated, less as becoming truly enlightened and aware. I see enlightenment as the result of working through one's traumas, grieving, and connecting fully with the best of one's inner spirit. I felt the actor who played Jesus did not become connected with his true self much at all, nor did he manifest true greatness - and instead just lost himself in a dissociated role and ultimately died for little emotional purpose.

A thoughtful, witty, deeply moving Passion Play
Why is it that the most truly moving spiritual films tend to be either those made by non-believers, or else brash, untraditional, even avant-garde reinterpretations of the basic story? Yet that's the case once more in this lovely version of the life & death of Jesus, as presented by a somewhat motley troupe of French-Canadian actors.

What begins as an attempt by a cynical local cleric to essentially jazz up the annual Passion Play, in order to get more people in attendance, turns into an actual living out of the story by the lead actors. It's indeed a literal imitation of Christ, one that transforms the actors & invites them to become more than what they are, drawing out "the better angels of their nature" in a very real way.

Soon the actors find their roles merging with their everyday lives, particularly on the part of Jesus. It's both amusingly satiric & painfully pointed, asking the audience to consider just how honestly they live out their most firmly-held beliefs in their own everyday lives. And it demonstrates how troubling & even threatening an actual return of Jesus would be to those who claim to follow his teachings, but tend to talk the talk rather than walk the walk.

Of course the story has a tragic ending ... or does it? It makes the viewer reflect on every idealistic movement & belief that's captured an instance of glowing goodness, only to be snuffed out by the powers that be as a danger to the status quo. Even so, the film ends on a note of hope, a reminder that we don't have to settle for the lowest common denominator, that we don't have to compromise everything -- if we're willing to make the necessary sacrifices & live the lives we could be living.

For believer, agnostic, and atheist alike, most highly recommended!

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