Jesus Christ! What’s Going On Here?
Review and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)
Here’s the trailer:
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activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: A.D. 33 Jerusalem: Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) is tired of being a “nobody,” just wants (as Tracy Chapman says in “Fast Car”) to "be someone, be someone" so he takes a chariot race challenge from Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor), accompanied by his friend Elijah (RJ Cyler), which he loses due to not wanting to run over Benjamin (Benedict Cumberbatch), a dirty beggar in the street, along with sidelines harassment from Cabbage (Chase Dillon) and his gypsy thugs, so Clarence also loses the chariot and the horses, putting him in dire debt to Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) with only 30 days to repay or be crucified (he’s also in love with Jedediah’s sister, Varinia [Anna Diop], which doesn’t help in relations with her older brother). Clarence generally tries to relieve his troubles (including harassment from occupying Roman soldiers led by Antoninus [Tom Vaughan-Lawlor], clear contemporary commentary as they’re White while the Hebrews are Black [accepting an argument often made about these people of this time, that they were of African descent rather than Semites as they’re now sometimes depicted—at least when they’re not presented as looking like Europeans]) with marijuana, although when he joins a group of opium smokers, so high they’re actually floating, he gets the inspiration to mimic the emerging Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth (Nicholas Pinnock), to raise funds from some newly-impressed (duped) believers.
Clarence, an atheist, starts upon his road to manufactured-acceptance by coming to John the Baptist (David Oyelowo) for inclusion into the Hebrew religious community, but John sees him as a hypocrite, slaps him, sends him away. Next, Clarence visits the dwelling of Jesus’ 12 Apostles, offering to become the 13th; they laugh as a group at the idea, but a personal rejection comes from Clarence’s twin brother, Thomas (also Stanfield)—later known as “Doubting Thomas” for initially refusing to believe Jesus had risen from the dead—one of the anointed 12. Clarence replies with his own anger at his brother for leaving home to follow Jesus while their mother is dying. Before Clarence is fully gone, though, Judas Iscariot (Michael Ward) proposes he’ll be accepted into the group if he can free a group of gladiator slaves. When Clarence proposes freedom (with no financial means to buy the men’s release) to their owner (sorry, didn’t catch his name), he’s met with a counterproposal which is that he’ll free them if Clarence can defeat all of them in battle, then changes the challenge to just a 1-on-1 fight to the death with the hulking Barabbas the Immortal (Omar Sy)—at least that’s what he claims about himself (with no disproval so far in any combat he’s had; says he can only die if wounded in 1 of his heels, as with that legendary Greek hero, Achilles).
Through some quick moves, Clarence manages to get Barabbas in a losing situation with a sword to his throat so he surrenders (not clear why if he’s immortal, but let’s not clog up the flow of this summary with logic) so he’s freed to join up with Clarence and Elijah. Clarence returns to his Messiah strategy, visiting Mary (Alfre Woodard) and Joseph (Brian Bovell), Jesus’ parents, to find out how he pulls off his famed tricks; however, they reject this characterization, convinced their son is truly performing miracles. So, Clarence and his little band (joined by Zeke [Caleb McLaughlin]; I forget how he got recruited) go forward with fake “miracles,” as one or the other of his few followers claims blindness or death so they can be “healed” by this new divine messenger, which does result in an outpouring of coins from the impressed crowds, even though Clarence tells them to trust “knowledge over belief.” However, Clarence decides to use his new-found-wealth to free the slaves rather than paying back Jedediah. At this point we see more of Jesus than in an earlier quick scene when he comes upon Mary Magdalene being stoned by a crowd in response to her trysts with some of the Romans; Jesus stops their rocks in mid-air, notes they’re all sinners also which causes them to disperse as he heals Mary’s wounds, bringing about a conversation in the formerly-cynical Elijah.
Next, Varinia’s at a party with Clarence but betrays him by letting her brother know where his debtor can be found. When Jedediah (with Roman support) confronts Clarence for his money, Barabbas attempts to intervene, but Clarence just tells him to run away which he does although he’s hit with 3 spears in the process yet just pulls them out, doesn’t die, then kills Antoninus with no retaliation. Jedediah’s impressed by all this, yet the Romans take Clarence away as they have orders to arrest any seeming-Messiahs. When brought before Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy), Clarence admits he’s just a fake miracle-worker, but now he can be killed for fraud unless he walks across a pool of water, which he does—amazed, uncomprehending about how it happens—but then is scheduled for crucifixion anyway due to the Roman edict. Both Varinia and Thomas visit Clarence in prison, make amends with him. ⇒Then we’re back to Jesus who gives long-ago-in-this-story-Benjamin the power to create coins out of thin air so he buys a “makeover” for himself, revealing his presence as a White guy who looks like the long-held-imagery of Jesus in our Western world; he goes around throwing money to strangers, so he’s also arrested as another Messiah, crucified next to Clarence while oddly becoming cynical about any sense of divine mercy even as his portrait’s being painted, an allusion to the image of Jesus so popularized in the West. After Clarence is dead, Jesus tells the Apostles he’ll also soon be crucified, then he destroys the stone covering of Clarence’s tomb, brings him back to life, heals his nail wounds from the cross, leading to Clarence finally believing in Jesus’ divinity.⇐
So What? It’s difficult to watch The Book of Clarence without thinking of another irreverent take on the Jesus story, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979),* which is considerably sillier—and ultimately much funnier—than … Clarence (with Brian often simply being mistaken for Jesus, going back to the coincidence of him being born in the next-door-manger to the true Messiah), which is promoted as a comedy and is in some places. (Like appropriating well-known-Biblical-names for some of these characters: Elijah, Barabbas, Goliath—as well as borrowing the names Varinia [Jean Simmons] and Antoninus [Tony Curtis] from Spartacus [Stanley Kubrick, 1960]—just as elements of older big-budget-Biblically-inspired-movies serve as inspirations for what we see here, especially that opening chariot race reminiscent of a considerably-grander-spectacle in Ben-Hur [William Wyler, 1959] made more restricted—and a bit absurd—here through the narrow streets of Jerusalem [actually shot in Matera, Italy, which easily looks like it could be a Middle Eastern city of 2,000 years ago, also used in a very serious {bloody} manner for The Passion of the Christ {Mel Gibson, 2004}]).
*Back when I was teaching at SMU in Dallas, TX I was also, for a couple of years, a film critic on adult-contemporary-radio station KTXQ FM (“Q 102”); September 1979 I attended (and contributed to the judging of) an international media festival at Universal Studios’ Universal City in Los Angeles where I took a bus from LAX to the hotel, passing the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theater on the way where I saw … Life of Brian on the marquee (produced by George Harrison’s HandMade Films, banned in various European countries, but a financial hit). When I got to the hotel I borrowed a car from someone, found my way back to the theater to see the movie because whenever I left town during that radio gig I had to phone in my reviews and comments live from wherever I was (well, after all, they were paying me $10 for each report, so I guess I had to comply) and was a review short of the 4 call-ins I needed to do that coming Saturday morning, so I saw … Brian (found it be standard-Python-absurd, quite clever in many of its elements [not nearly as riotously-funny as Monty Python and the Holy Grail {Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones; 1975}, however], added a review to my call-ins (once an hour for 4 hours on a Saturday morning, which meant an early alarm given the first one had to be at 6:15 AM due to the Dallas-L.A.-time-difference, then muddled through the rest of the day [and night] at the media festival [got up early the next morning also because you could jog around the Universal Studios property if you went in before they officially starting taking entry fees]).
The satire is even sharper in Clarence's mean-spirited-“miracles," evoking connections to the same hokum practiced by so-called “evangelists” in the rural U.S., conning naïve crowds in order to bring in undeserved donations. However, there’s also a serious aspect in this film which even devout-Christians might be able to embrace—assuming they can tolerate other aspects of what they’d see on screen—when nothing undermining is shown about Jesus, especially in the believer-turnarounds of Clarence and Elijah (although the invulnerability of Barabbas, the water-walking of Clarence might be hard to accept as a total package in this story for the most-orthodox of monotheists). Overall, I found The Book of Clarence to be an odd, although generally-unique, experience with some intriguing comic aspects, but, ultimately, a more serious look at the time of Jesus than I’d expected; it’s not financially-cheap to watch (more on that in just a bit), so you probably need to think carefully about how intriguing it may sound; nevertheless, given that the last 2023 release I’m somehow determined to see, before posting in the next couple of weeks regarding last year’s Top 10 and this year’s Oscar predictions, is Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)—not yet on streaming, not that near me in a theater—I did find … Clarence to be my most-intriguing-choice last week, agree that it's worth the price, and encourage you to consider it, although if you mostly need to "Look on the Bright Side of Life" while being marginally-sacrilegious, maybe you just need … The Life of Brian instead.
Bottom Line Final Comments: The Book of Clarence began its run in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters, 2,010 of them, on January 12, 2024, is now down to just 190, with a gross so far of a mere $6.1 million (no international box-office), so, as it often the case with anything I’ve been reviewing in these COVID-19 times, your easiest-access is likely streaming where you’ll find it available at Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Vudu, etc. for a $19.99 rental, not much of a savings over theatrical tickets unless there's a bargain-early-afternoon-matinee. While I’m encouraging you to consider either option (if for no other reason than to see such a large almost-all-Black-cast; although, if that appeals to you, I think you’ll find slightly better results with Oscar-nominated American Fiction [Cord Jefferson, 2023; review in our February 13, 2024 posting]), the CCAL just barely agrees with me as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are 68% and the Metacritic average score is 60%, so I’ll let a couple of better-known-voices-than-mine give you some insights. Alissa Wilkinson Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times says: “ 'The Book of Clarence' is a highly ambitious attempt at relatability, with an added reverence for the old-school ‘Ben-Hur’-era Hollywood biblical epics. […] Does it work? Sometimes! And it’s also sort of a mess. […] But what’s good about 'The Book of Clarence' is what so many movies lack: taking really, really big swings. There are fights with gladiators and a chariot race. But there’s flashy camerawork that quotes both music videos and old movies, with a lot of zooms and cuts and wipes and iris effects. [… If it] doesn’t totally work, its combination of the sacred and the irreverent is enchanting. It gets bogged down in its own mud, but it’s certainly shooting for the stars.” So she's easily paralleled with the CCAL majority.
Conversely, James Verniere of the Boston Herald snidely counters: “[…] all that I can say is, Did anybody read this before throwing money at it? […] ‘The Book of Clarence’ […] is a postmodern mess. Unfortunately, it is also going to become the rite of passage for a generation of children. But what it is? At times, it feels very strongly like a ‘Life of Brian’ spoof/alternate story of Jesus Christ, using a previous unknown as a Christ stand in. […] ‘The Book of Clarence’ is like a two-hour plus 'SNL' skit with a dance sequence that nobody bothered to edit (or just delete). […] By the time we get around to the Crucifixion, I was reminded that I had already seen ‘The Passion.’ ‘How long before we get a Broadway musical version of ‘The Book of Clarence?’ Not long enough.” While you’re deciding what to do about viewing … Clarence, though, you can indulge in my standard-wrapup-tactic of a Musical Metaphor, “The Last Supper” from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar (another non-standard-Biblical-interpretation of those long-ago-times of the only argued-about-Messiah today in the record album [1970], Broadway play [1971; I saw it NYC with Jeff Fenholt as Jesus, Carl Anderson as Judas, Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene], film [Norma Jewison, 1973; Ted Neely as Jesus in this version]) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJxKtOwgLdw, a song I’ve chosen because it addresses the satirical aspects of … Clarence—“Look at all my trials and tribulations / Sinking in a gentle pool of win / Don’t disturb me now; I can see the answers / Till ‘this evening’ is ‘this morning,’ life is fine / Always hoped that I’d be an apostle / Knew that I would make it if I tried / Then when we retire we can write the gospels / So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died”—while also incorporating serious aspects of this current film in the clash between Jesus and Judas about what’s going to happen and why on Good Friday. If nothing else, maybe some exposure to any of this content will serve as points of interest if you celebrate aspects of Holy Week (Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday) on March 24-31 during this coming spring—or not, as you'll see fit.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for your studied consideration: (1) The 50 Greatest Romantic Movies of all time (to help you keep celebrating Valentine's Day or just generate a receptive mood about it); (2) Black Hollywood icons (in continuing celebration of Black History Month); (3) 2023 theatrical releases you can stream at home; (4) 2024 Writers Guild award nominations (but winners will be announced after the Oscars); & (5) 2023 provided historic low of women in cinematic lead roles.
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