The director Tony Childress completed the filming his Jesus Christ movie “This is My Blood”, but his actress playing Mary Magdalene, Marie Palesi, suddenly refuses to go back to New York and instead decides to go to Jerusalem to explore her faith. In New York, Ted is a host of a TV show focusing on topics about Jesus. Ted cheats on his pregnant wife Elizabeth, but regrets it when she undergoes an early labor, leaving both her and her child in critical condition in a hospital. Ted prays to God for their healing, even though he is an atheist. Ted also hosts Tony to talk about his film, but the screening is interrupted when religious fanatics attack the cinema theater.
Abel Ferrara directed this strange, skewed drama about religion which never connects as a whole to reach some specific point. It goes from subplot to subplot, yet cannot settle on what it wants to say. In the first story, the actress playing Mary Magdalene, Maria (Juliette Binoche), quits her New York high class lifestyle and decides to live in Jerusalem to explore her faith. What exactly is she searching? What is her goal? What is she doing there, save for two sequences where she is shown praying in a church or having a dinner with a family before a terrorist attack outside interrupts them? It is unclear, and thus the viewers cannot engage with Maria, who just “disappears” from the film. The second story follows the boastful director Tony who promotes his Jesus film “This is My Blood”, which attracts protests and anger. Why is the movie controversial? It is unclear. There are references to the similar hate campaign aimed against Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”, and are combined with images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to contemplate about the dark side of religions, fundamentalism. In the third story, atheist Ted appeals to God in his prayers to save his sick wife and child, giving a meditation on his psychological crucifiction in the modern era, presenting the parallel of Jesus as an archetype of plight and suffering in the world through generations. Does Ted change? It is unclear. Ultimately, these unclear contemplations do not amount to a conclusion or a better articulated film, equipped with a vague open ending, and thus these underdeveloped subplots feel more confused than enlightened.
Grade:+
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