Mohammad, Messenger of God (1977)

          Also known as The Message, this historical epic about the creation of Islam is handsomely mounted but of little interest to anyone except true believers—while it’s not a bad film, per se, it’s so reverent that it provides far more detail than casual viewers might want, and far less insight than serious viewers would need to justify the investment of three hours. Mohammad, Messenger of Godalso has one of the most unusual storytelling problems in the history of religious cinema: Out of respect for a Muslim custom, Mohammad is never shown onscreen. As a result, Mohammad, Messenger of God is a biopic about a person we neither hear nor see. Thanks to producer-director Moustapha Akkad’s resourceful approach, this isn’t a fatal storytelling flaw—Akkad uses narration and scenes of characters addressing the unseen Mohammad to suggest the prophet’s presence. Yet the inability to depict the character around whom the story revolves raises legitimate questions about why Mohammad, Messenger of God is so long.

          In any event, this is a good-looking movie with impressive production values, and composer Maurice Jarre contributes a stirring score in the vein of the music he composed for another desert epic, Laurence of Arabia (1962). Set six centuries after Christ’s death, the movie begins with the illiterate Mohammad emerging from a spiritual retreat in the mountains outside Mecca. He returns to town having received a message from God, who has imbued Mohammad with the ability to read and write. Because Mecca is a major trading hub in which the worship of hundreds of gods is practiced, Mohammad’s message threatens powerful people including tribal leader Abu-Sofyan (Michael Ansara). Meanwhile, Mohammad gains charismatic supporters, including his uncle, Hamza (Anthony Quinn). For the first hour of the picture, Mohammad’s following increases even as the powers-that-be escalate their violent opposition to his teachings. Eventually, Mohammad leads his people on a 250-mile pilgrimage to find religious sanctuary until another message from God compels the group to reclaim Mecca.

          Although Mohammad, Messenger of God was clearly a labor of love for Akkad, the picture suffers from problems that often plague sincere religious movies. Actors don’t so much inhabit roles as pose in ornate period dress while reciting stilted dialogue that’s written in a faux-classical style. So, while some scenes are powerful, notably the willing conversion of a black slave to Islam despite great personal risk, the film is more educational in nature than entertaining. It’s also awkward that Quinn has top billing, even though he only appears (fleetingly) during the middle hour of the picture. Most of the heavy lifting is done by Ansara, whose sonorous speaking voice suits the role of a regal leader, and by Damien Thomas, who tries to imbue his characterization of Mohammad’s adopted son Zayd with sensitivity.

          Questions of whether Mohammad, Messenger of Godaccurately depicts events or fairly characterizes the nature of the Islamic faith are for others to explore, though it’s perhaps unsurprising that the U.S. release of the film sparked controversy. The fact that Lybian dictator Muammar Gaddafi bankrolled the film did not curry much favor in America, and a bloody siege on three buildings in Washington, D.C., by radicals who, among other things, demanded the destruction of Akkad’s movie further tainted the picture’s debut. The movie enjoyed a much warmer reception internationally, both in this English-language version and in an Arabic-language version that Akkad shot simultaneously.

Mohammad, Messenger of God: FUNKY

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

          Bold, majestic, and provocative, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera about the final days of Jesus Christ’s life first appeared on the marketplace as a 1970 concept album, the success of which led to stage productions in London and New York, and finally to this film. Offering a challenging psychological interpretation of Christ’s journey from man to messiah, the Rice/Webber narrative focuses largely on the relationship between Jesus, who is portrayed as a good man struggling with extraordinary obligations, and Judas, who wrestles with the question of whether his friend is divine or vainglorious. Furthermore, the Rice/Webber narrative delves into the complex politics of Christ’s time, with Jews and Romans battling for power in Jerusalem while trying to keep Christ and his apostles from upsetting the status quo. This is heavy stuff for a rock opera, but Rice (lyrics) and Webber (music) were up to the task, creating a muscular song cycle filled with distinctive melodies, emotional moments, and with-it phraseology—Scripture for the Woodstock generation.

          At its most powerful, the music in Superstar is transporting. Fitting the audacious nature of the source material, director Norman Jewison—whose immediately preceding film was another successful stage-to-screen adaptation, Fiddler on the Roof (1971)—uses a daring visual style for the movie version of Superstar. The film begins with the main cast arriving in a remote desert via bus, wearing modern-day clothing and unloading props including a giant crucifix; this contrivance gives Jewison license to mix artifice and realism throughout the movie, and it humanizes the performers as vessels for delivering their characters’ feelings, rather than pretenders to divinity.

          Once the story proper begins with Judas’ anguished number “Heaven on Their Minds,” sung with scalding intensity by Carl Anderson, the tone for the piece is set: Jewison films the number simply, juxtaposing Anderson’s dramatic posturing with the merciless contours of the film’s stark Middle Eastern locations. Rising to Anderson’s level, the whole cast performs Superstar with superhuman energy, resulting in kinetic dance numbers and searing vocal turns; from Yvonne Elliman’s lilting “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” (Mary Magdalene) to Ted Neely’s wailing “Gethsemane” (Jesus), one sequence after another radiates passion. In fact, the singing gets a bit too enthusiastic sometimes, with Neely pushing himself so hard it sometimes seems like the veins in his neck are about to explode. Similarly, scenes including Anderson’s rendition of the signature Judas song “Blood Money” veer into melodrama.

          But with Jewison’s good taste providing just the right framework—simple sets, sly anachronisms—the best elements of the show dominate, and weaker ones are discreetly obscured. So, while true believers have spent decades arguing about whether Superstar is respectful or sacrilegious, the film’s entertainment value is beyond reproach, and the way the picture examines the charged sociopolitical time in which it was made through the prism of Christ’s life is remarkably imaginative.

Jesus Christ Superstar: GROOVY

A Thief in the Night (1972) & A Distant Thunder (1978)

          A generation before the Left Behind book/film series popularized the Rapture as an evangelical Christian scare tactic, producer-director Donald W. Thompson and his team of true believers created A Thief in the Night, an independent feature illustrating the horrors of the end times, according to the filmmakers’ interpretation of the Bible. The film revolves around Patty Myers (Patty Dunning), a young Everywoman who wakes one morning to discover that millions of Christians have disappeared from the face of the Earth, which religious scholars within the film label the beginning of the end times. In conversations with survivors (and flashbacks to exchanges with her Christian friends and relatives), Patty learns she wasn’t living a sufficiently Christian lifestyle prior to the Rapture, because even though she followed the Commandments and went to church, she didn’t take the Big Guy into her heart.

          As if the prospect of being held back from Heaven wasn’t sufficiently grim, the filmmakers introduce another conundrum when agents of the Antichrist seize control over the un-Raptured. The UN forms a group called U.N.I.T.E. (United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency), requiring every citizen to get a U.N.I.T.E. tattoo—which is, of course, a coded version of the 6-6-6 “mark of the beast.” Even though she doesn’t immediately realize the nefarious nature of U.N.I.T.E., Patty resists the group’s authority with deadly results. She also ends up seeming like the bimbo heroine of some grade-Z slasher flick, since her entire characterization is predicated on doubting the obvious—her journey is not so much a cautionary tale about religion as it is a cautionary tale about stupidity.

          A Thief in the Night’s first sequel, A Distant Thunder, is highly repetitive, with Patty once again trying to understand the breadth of the Rapture while remembering lectures from friends who warned her about not being sufficiently Christian. A Distant Thunder is a bit slicker than its predecessor—love the new long, straight hair, Patty!—and it’s so grim it ends with a woman being led to a guillotine by agents of the Antichrist. However, neither film is made particularly well, since the style Thompson uses for both movies exists somewhere between that of a clumsy educational film and that of a low-budget horror movie. Additionally, the acting in both movies is across-the-board-terrible. Plus, since the pictures are designed to communicate religious messages, the drama stops at regular intervals so a preacher or some similar character can pontificate about the obligations of faith.

          Still, A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder have a weird sort of intensity simply because of the apocalyptic subject matter. The Christians in these movies spend all their time frightening non-Christians with threats of eternal damnation, and during the beginning of A Thief in the Night, several Christians actually sing a gloomy tune called “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” Sample lyrics: “A man and wife asleep in bed, she hears a noise and turns her head, he’s gone—I wish we’d all been ready.” Bummer, man! Anyway, Thompson wasn’t done exploring the end times after making A Distant Thunder, so he wrapped up Patty’s story in Image of the Beast (1981) and then concluded the series with The Prodigal Planet (1983).

A Thief in the Night: LAME

Distant Thunder: LAME

Lies My Father Told Me (1975)

          Earnest and insightful, Lies My Father Told Me is a nostalgic drama inspired by screenwriter Ted Allan’s childhood in the Jewish ghettos of 1920s Montreal, a colorful setting few viewers are likely to have encountered elsewhere. Adding to the film’s novelty is its emotionally turbulent storyline, because the hero of the piece is a young boy, David Herman (Jeffrey Lynas), who grows up torn between the loving companionship of his deeply religious grandfather, Zaida (Yossi Yadin), and the chilly secularism of his irresponsible father, Harry (Len Birman). Although he’s old and tired, Zaida spends his days driving a horse-drawn cart through poor neighborhoods in Montreal, collecting junk that he resells for a meager but steady living.

          Young David’s favorite times are the Sundays when he can ride alongside Zaida, because Zaida nurtures his grandson with idealistic lessons and wonderful fantasies. Harry, meanwhile, is an irritable ne’er-do-well constantly pestering Zaida for money with which to pursue get-rich-quick schemes. However, Zaida has little tolerance for Harry’s nonsense or for Harry’s borderline-abusive treatment of Annie (Marilyn Lightstone), Harry’s wife and Zaida’s daughter. Seen through young David’s eyes, the Hermans’ neighborhood is an almost mythical place filled with larger-than-life characters—the town whore, the town witch—and Zaida serves as the neighborhood’s unifying force, a steadfast voice of morality and reason.

          Director Ján Kadár, a Czech émigré, does a fine job of capturing the textures of life within an impoverished, insular community, so details like the manure-drenched hay in Zaida’s stable and the rickety stairs leading to the Herman apartment are vivid. Yet Allan and Kadár err by including too much evocative detail. The simple story could have been told in 80 minutes, but Lies My Father Told Me drags out across 102 minutes thanks to repetitive scenes and unnecessary tangents. (Do we really need to see David learn about vaginas while sitting with a neighbor child whose dog is about to give birth?)

          The film’s syrupy score doesn’t help matters, amplifying the contours of a story that’s already quite sentimental, and inconsistent performances are another problem. Yadin exudes wry gravitas in every scene, but Lynas is awkward and unappealing—he comes across more whiny than fragile. Birman fails to invest his boorish character with redeeming values (it’s hard to sympathize with an obnoxious putz), and Lightsone is a non-entity because her role is underdeveloped. Still, many viewers reacted strongly to the movie’s tender portrait of a lost era, and Allen scored an Oscar nomination for his script.

Lies My Father Told Me: FUNKY

Life of Brian (1979)

          Members of the famed British comedy troupe Monty Python were already drifting apart by the late ’70s, following the end of their BBC sketch series Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the success of their hilarious medieval spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Nonetheless, the public demand for new Python product proved irresistible. Coincidentally, troupe member Eric Idle used a running gag whenever anyone asked for the title of the collective’s next movie: He said it was Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory. Idle’s idea stuck, after a fashion, so when the six Pythons finally reunited, they made the Biblical satire Life of Brian, which was written by the entire group, designed by in-house animator Terry Gilliam, and directed by troupe member Terry Jones. Audiences expecting the sustained brilliance of Holy Grailwere disappointed, although in some respects Life of Brian is a better movie than its predecessor—the picture has a harder satirical edge and a stronger storyline. Unfortunately, those aren’t the qualities people want from Python, and Life of Brian underwhelms as a comedy.

          Set in Judea during the era of the Roman Empire, the film begins with the Three Wise Men arriving to bestow gifts on the baby Jesus. However, they accidentally enter the stable next door to Jesus’ birthplace and fleetingly anoint one Brian Cohen as the messiah. That humiliating mix-up foreshadows  a series of unpleasant events that befall Brian (Graham Chapman) once he reaches adulthood. Repeatedly mistaken for a messiah, Brian gets drawn into the world of Jewish radicals fighting Roman oppression; subsequently, he’s captured by Romans and sentenced to crucifixion.

          While the Pythons present a handful of inspired gags in the course of telling this brazen story, Life of Brian has significant handicaps. The narrative is inherently depressing, and presenting a linear storyline mostly precludes the sort of irreverent nonsense that distinguishes the best Python work. (The brief appearance of space aliens halfway through the movie is a welcome reprieve.) Plus, for every clever line—“We enter the Caesar Augustus Memorial Sewer”—there’s a cheap bit like the scene in which a lisping Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin) scandalizes his subjects by talking about his pal “Biggus Dickus.”

          As in Grail, the Pythons each play multiple characters, but Chapman dominates since the Brian character appears in nearly every scene. And while Chapman’s exasperation is droll (when forced to proclaim his Jewishness, Brian shouts, “I’m a Red Sea pedestrian, and I’m proud of it!”), it’s no fun to watch the downward spiral of a condemned coward. Placing such a character at the center of a Biblical epic is a clever joke, but the narrative contrivance makes Life of Brian feel more cerebral than comedic.

          Still, even though Life of Brianis the least consistently funny of Python’s features, mediocre Python is better than the best efforts from most comedy troupes. Who else could come up with genius vignettes like the scene in which Brian paints anti-Roman graffiti on the side of a palace, only to be interrupted by an uptight centurion (John Cleese), who points out the grammatical errors in Brian’s writing and makes Brian paint his slogan 100 times on the wall as a lesson? That’s Python satire at its most sublime, and exactly the sort of thing Life of Brian does not have in sufficient abundance—although it must be said that the movie concludes with the most fabulously inappropriate musical number in cinematic history, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Life of Brian: GROOVY

Godspell (1973)

          One of the more peculiar outgrowths of the flower-power movement was a string of movies and stage shows drawing parallels between hippie idealism and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Arguably the most culturally significant of these projects was the 1971 Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical Jesus Christ Superstar, which became a 1973 film. Yet Godspell, featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, arrived almost simultaneously: The stage version debuted off-Broadway in 1971, and the film adaptation was released in 1973. Unlike Superstar, which is bold and nervy, Godspell is a gentle story about Christ preaching to his apostles. Adapted directly from the Gospel of Matthew (with a few snippets from Luke’s version of events), Godspell unspools like a piece of theological performance art.

          The only actors appearing onscreen are those playing Christ and the apostles (except during a brief prologue and epilogue), so even though the cast dances and sings throughout modern-day New York City, the locations seen abandoned—Manhattan becomes an elaborate metaphorical backdrop instead of a real city. When the picture begins, John the Baptist (David Haskell) summons a group of energetic young people to Central Park, where he bathes them in water from a public fountain and transforms their everyday clothes into multicolored Woodstock Nation costumes. During this ritual, Christ (Victor Garber) appears. Soon, the Messiah leads the whole gang on a far-flung walking tour of New York City, delivering sermons that the apostles act out in comedy-musical sketches.

          The movie works best when it’s in full-on musical mode, since many of Schwartz’s melodies are beautiful. In fact, the original off-Broadway cast’s recording of the main theme, “Day by Day,” became a pop hit. Along with writers David Greene (who also directed) and John-Michael Tebelak (who wrote the book for the stage show), Schwartz diligently dramatizes Christ’s greatest hits: stories about the Good Samaritan and Lazarus and the prodigal son and so forth. It’s peculiar, however, that the apostles regularly slip in and out of campy vocal inflections, speaking lines in the mode of Groucho Marx, Mae West and other iconic figures. Combined with the movie’s eye-popping color palette, frenetic choreography, and restless picture editing, the silly vocal flourishes help contribute to an overdose of good vibes.

          This musical is passionate and sincere, but for viewers without any religious background (myself included), Godspellis an empty spectacle. For instance, setting scenes at astonishing locations like the roof of the World Trade Center (which was still under construction during filming) pointlessly distracts from the straightforward nature of the homilies being related. Still, the music is good and sometimes great, with talented performers like Garber, Robin Lamont, Jerry Sroka, and Lynn Thigpen blasting notes up to the rafters.

Godspell: FUNKY