A movie review by Father
Scott Archer
March 4, 2016
A movie based on a Biblical event which is covered in only one chapter of each of the
first three gospels, and just two in the fourth, should, at the very least, remain faithful to the
source material; furthermore, it should not be considered as presumptuous to expect that any use of artistic license would not change the original
story. Risen, a film written by Kevin
Reynolds and Paul Aiello, and directed by the former, fails on both counts, needlessly
abandoning the Gospel in favor of elements which are alien to the original story. Beyond that, this movie depicts interactions between the Apostles and followers of Christ as being more reminiscent of a modern charismatic prayer
meeting than of any scholarly consensus regarding the nature of early Christian communities.
The story is centered on
the eye witness account of Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), a Roman tribune present at
the crucifixion, who eventually searches for the body of Christ, and finally
becomes a believer. The movie begins with Clavius presiding over the crucifixion of
Christ. This scene should be fairly straight forward: The Gospel of John tells us, “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his
mother and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus
therefore had seen his mother and the disciple whom he loved... (John
19:26-27). Instead of the scene so clearly described in the Gospel of John, Risen presents the viewer with the Blessed Mother, the only time we see her, standing at a
great distance away, with Mary Magdalen. The Blessed Mother is wailing loudly,
though this is not recorded in Scripture, and John the Apostle is not seen at
all.
One would think a movie
about the resurrection would show the resurrection. The movie shows a stone
rolled in front of the tomb, and later ropes were used to secure it to the tomb,
but there was no depiction of the resurrection. The movie does not stay true to the gospels in
regard to Christ’s resurrection appearances. In one scene Christ healed a
leper. The resurrection was the ultimate miracle to prove that He was the
Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. After witnessing the resurrection, there
would be no need for further miracles. Finally, to my utter amazement, there was no
Ascension! In the end, Christ simply walked backwards as he spoke a few of the words
recorded in Scripture.
Throughout, the depiction of
the apostles and Christ, played by Cliff Curtis, was beyond distracting. There
was a lot of hugging and laughing. The character of Bartholomew, when not
laughing at being threatened with crucifixion, stared with glistening eyes as
he spoke of his faith. When the other apostles and Christ were not laughing,
they were hugging. Another distraction was the continued use of the name Yeshua instead of Jesus. It made no sense,
given the fact that all the other characters were called by their English
names; for example, Mary, Peter, Andrew, and Bartholomew.
Risen fails
because it ignores much of the Scriptural accounts of these events, it portrays
the Blessed Mother, Jesus, and the apostles in ways foreign to our traditional
understanding of their characters, and it adds material that makes no sense in
the context of the story. There are wonderful movies that have been made about
the life of Christ; this is not one of them.
