I CAN ONLY IMAGINE

Stars: J. Michael Finley, Madeline Carroll, Trace Adkins, Priscilla Shirer, Cloris Leachman, Nicole DuPort and Dennis Quaid.
Writers: Jon Erwin, Brent McCorkle
Directors: Jon and Andrew Erwin

Rating: 3/5

I Can Only Imagine is the celebration of the creation of a song that celebrates The Creator. The backstory to how the debut single of faith-pop outfit Mercy Me became the biggest selling Christian chart topper in music history spins the same homespun country-music values and heartland religious earnestness as the anthemic ballad; in that regard, it preaches to the masses of wildly enthusiastic disciples, who cite the song’s soaring lyrics as spiritually enriching and life affirming.

Of its kind, I Can Only Imagine is a step-above recent faith-based films, partly due to slicker production values but also through the addition of some serious acting credibility in the form of Dennis Quaid. Opposite J Michael Finley, making his film debut as singer/songwriter Bart Millard, Quaid does some heavy lifting to give their scenes together the required depth. As Millard’s troubled father, the ageing heartthrob actor gets to run the gamut from abusive monster to bastion of Divine-led recovery, giving a performance that allows for glowering and yelling and door-slamming, before some A-talent tear-duct thesping. As has been the case for much of Quaid’s career, the charismatic star is immeasurably better than much of the material.

Leading man Finley is a prince in the world of musical theatre, having wowed in the Broadway productions of Les Miserables and Sweeney Todd but, tonal command aside, the actor feels frustratingly miscast as good ol’ boy Millard. Picture the high-low vocal register of a young Mandy Patinkin emanating from a flannel-clad dustbowl-bred Patton Oswalt, and you get some idea of the jarring aural and visual mismatch that the casting presents. The decision to also have the actor portray the character as far back as his high school years backfires badly (one support player yells at Millard to shave the beard, truthfully observing, “You look 35!”)

Directed assuredly by brothers Jon and Andrew Erwin, Millard’s resolutely vanilla-tinged journey from little-boy-with-dreams to anonymous-band-frontman to recording-industry-superstar is bathed in the warm glow of His guiding influence and touch of His loving hand (quite often literally, when moments of reflection or inspiration are shot in beams of descending light). The audience needs no reminding (but is afforded it nonetheless) that God constantly oversees Millard’s journey, whether in the form long-suffering Christian soul mate Shannon, played by grown-up child-star Madeline Carroll (Santa Clause 3; Swing Vote; Mr Popper’s Penguins), the world’s sweetest and most tolerant band manager Brickell (a fine Trace Adkins) or the Mercy Me band members, who seem pretty chill while waiting out Millard’s occasional petulance and tightly-focussed ambition.

It is all pure hagiography, as one must expect from a musical biopic overseen by the very musicians it depicts; co-scripted by Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle, the narrative rarely lets the actual chronology of events get in the way of bolstering its own mythology. That said, I Can Only Imagine certainly captures the exaltation shared by the song’s legion of followers, and knowing one’s audience is always a blessing. The casting of remarkable lookalike Nicole Du Port as faith-based C&W angel Amy Grant reaffirms the productions’ understanding of and appreciation for Mercy Me’s fanbase.

Though it will never be championed as an insightful work of either religious art or patriarchal psychology, I Can Only Imagine does manage to be a good film about a great song. As expected from frame 1, Finley/Millard navigates a fully humanising redemptive round-trip by the end of Act 3, perfectly timed for the rousing cinematic treatment that the song thoroughly deserves (which was, I must confess, the first time I had heard it).

THE STUDENT

Stars: Pyotr Skvortsov, Viktoriya Isakova, Yuliya Aug, Aleksandra Revenko, Nikolai Roshin, Svetlana Bragarnik and Aleksandr Gorchilin.
Writer: Kirill Serebrennikov; based upon the play Martyr by Marius von Mayenburg.
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov

Screening in Un Certain Regard at 69^th Festival du Cannes; reviewed at the Salles Debussy.

Rating: 4/5

Fervent creationism faces off against wide-eyed Darwinism amidst the already volatile environment of high school life in Kirill Serebrennikov’s chilling psychological drama, The Student. The Russian auteur’s journey into the dark recesses of a fanatical mindset provides religious extremism with a truly terrifying façade – the unbridled and fearless arrogance of a disenfranchised teenage boy.

Serebrennikov (Yuri’s Day, 2008; Betrayal, 2012) offers up a compelling microcosm of the faith-vs-fact debate that has grown in intensity and ferocity around the world in recent decades. That he also bolsters his narrative with themes such as teenage sexuality, institutional bias and agenda, free speech and Oedipal issues proves both ambitious and intellectually engrossing. The melding of the director’s storytelling skill and playwright Marius von Mayenburg’s stageplay proves a match made in…well, it’s a good match.

The titular protagonist is Veniamin Yuzhin (the remarkable Pyotr Skvortsov), a lean, surly teenage boy living with his struggling single-mom (Yuliya Aug). In a pre-credit sequence, he seems to be remarking with typical teenage disengagement that he wants out of his school’s mandatory swimming lessons on “religious grounds.” Only after he is taunted by the bikini-clad mean girl Lidiya (Aleksandra Revenko) and ends up submerged beneath the bodies of his classmates do we learn of his spiritual will; the young man lives an existence devoted to the Bible scriptures, each memorised and instantly recalled, often with a cruel bitterness capable of levelling any counterpoint.

Soon, the school body is energised and enraged by Veniamin’s outbursts, none more so than biology teacher Elena (Viktoriya Isakova) who finds both her devotion to scientific study and faith-free middle-class life the target of the teenage evangelist’s wrath. In one ferocious sequence, Veniamin’s reacts to a carrot-and-condom sex education lesson by stripping bare and leaping from table to table, citing verse after verse of the scripture’s stance on love, sex and marriage. The passages cited begin to take on deeply anti-social views, be they homophobic, anti-semitic or just plain hypocritical; the foreboding sense that Veniamin’s crusade is about to turn irreparably destructive mounts with tangible tension.

With the school administration towing both the Kremlin’s line on religious education (in 2013, President Putin made the teaching of faith-based culture compulsory in secondary schools) and allowing for their own beliefs to affect their handling of Veniamin’s and Elena’s conflict, the scourge of religious extremism leads to an inevitably chaotic and tragic conclusion. The filmmaker leaves no doubt as to the role that unwavering and literal devotion to the written word of God plays in his narrative; Serebrennikov is not the type of director to create this vivid, scorched landscape of complex morality and biblical scale and then not take a stand.

As rich in allegorical intent as the very best of Russian cinema, The Student will ignite post-screening debate as it traverses the global festival circuit. Religious devotion at the expense of the very humanity it purports to enrich is endemic to every faith-based society; the existence of Kirill Serebrennikov’s frantic, frightening film will help to generate crucial discussion on the true nature of dogmatic fundamentalism the world over.

RISEN

Stars: Joseph Fiennes, Peter Firth, Tom Felton, Cliff Curtis, Maria Botto, Luis Callejo, Antonio Gil, Stephen Hagan, Stewart Scudamore and Joe Manjon.
Writers: Kevin Reynolds and Paul Aiello.
Director: Kevin Reynolds.

Rating: 3/5

For those already imbued with the spirit, Risen will have you praising the heavens…or, at the very least, Sony Pictures, who have jumped on the profitable faith-based film resurgence via their new worldwide acquisitions division, Life Affirm. For secular types, director Kevin Reynolds’s modestly mounted take on the mythology of Easter will play as two distinct halves; an old-Hollywood ‘Roman scandal’ spin on the threat of the prophet to the Empire’s might, that morphs into a dramatically inert ‘greatest hits’ package of the newly reborn Saviour’s miracles.

The central figure is Roman tribune Clavius, a career soldier introduced slaying anti-Roman zealots with a soulless indifference to life. Joseph Fiennes, his eyebrow ridge and leathery visage recalling a young Roy Scheider, delivers a performance that spans ‘brooding intensity’ and ‘distracted nonchalance’; it is one of the lesser Fiennes' better roles, though entirely in line with the production’s mid-level ambitions.

Clavius’ God-of-choice is Mars, so when called upon by Pontius Pilate (a typically theatrical Peter Firth) to see off the latest would-be messiah down in the crucifixion district, he begrudgingly saddles up and heads for the ceremony, his green 2IC Lucius (Tom Felton) by his side. Upon arrival a passionate crowd of followers, wailing for their slain oracle, greets him; Clavius’ interaction with the disciples and encounter with the martyred prophet, Yeshua of Nazareth, are some of the film’s most affecting scenes (though, thankfully, come up well short of the physical horrors depicted in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ).

Pilate, pressured by Rome to rid the landscape of dissenting voices before a Jerusalem uprising gathers strength, entrusts Clavius with the cave burial of Yeshua. The gravesite entrance is sealed with a boulder wrapped in rope and wax (!) and left in the care of two surly guards (whose broad Brit accents and constant whining veer dangerously close to Monty Python territory). When the tomb is disturbed and Yeshua’s body vanishes, the pressure is on Clavius to hunt down the corpse and bring to justice those responsible. A real-world explanation for the image on The Shroud of Turin represents a key moment of objectivity and brings a degree of balance, at least to this passage of the plot.

Reynolds handles the ‘manhunt’ narrative with a pro’s touch, the journeyman director hoping for his own resurrection after a wilderness period following notorious debacles (Rapa Nui; Waterworld) and box office duds (Tristan & Isolde; Red Dawn). The first half of Risen benefits immeasurably under the experienced filmmaker’s assured touch, the lean drama clipping along at an engaging pace. 

But Reynolds’s best efforts can’t provide Risen with much forward momentum after the apparent resurrection of Yeshua. Clavius becomes fixated upon the reborn man, his hardened non-believer status melting away as he witnesses miracles for which Reynolds and neophyte co-scripter Paul Aiello provide no reasonable context or explanation; they just happen, sending Yeshua’s unquestioning, doe-eyed disciples (both on-screen and, one assumes, amongst the target audience) into joyous rapture.

To borrow a line from comedian Greg Proops’ podcast, these scenes constitute the boring, preachy part; the Roman soldier’s transformation from heathen killing machine to breathy advocate of Yeshua’s journey may be the film’s reason for being, but it never rings true. Events told of in Sunday schools the world over are well staged (the bounty of fish provided for his starving followers; the laying of healing hands upon a leper), but they serve no dramatic purpose and exist only to bolster the ‘message’.

Of particular interest is the casting as Yeshua of Cliff Curtis, a respected character actor after a series of ethnically diverse portrayals (African American in Bringing Out the Dead; Iraqi in Three Kings; Latino in Training Day; Colombian in Blow; Indian in A Thousand Words; his native Maori in Whale Rider and breakthrough film, Once Were Warriors). Recent theorising by scholars opines that the alleged time and place in which the scriptures took place suggest Yeshua was likely of ‘middle Eastern’ appearance. Given that the film’s demographic resides in the middle-American bible belt, the portrayal of Christ as anything other than the blonde, bearded archetype favoured for centuries in western art and literature (as will be seen when Ewan McGregor’s take on Jesus in The Last Days in The Desert emerges late in 2016) must be considered risky. Curtis' dark-skinned incarnation represents a welcome gamble-of-sorts in an otherwise conventional, if mostly effective, biblical retelling.