Choosing To Be Contrarian On “The Chosen”

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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23 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    King David! For what it’s worth, our church told us not to go see it. It warned of getting a lot of stuff wrong and there was nudity.

    Since then, I’ve also learned that the movie was a stinker. If you read the stories, there’s a lot of good stuff in there (and, yeah, nudity) but if you can’t make the Goliath scene the tentpole, you done messed up.

    I mean, if a *SPORTING* company makes a better David/Goliath scene for a freaking *COMMERCIAL*, you should just go back down to the minors and let someone else up there.Report

  2. Pinky says:

    You’ve definitely written an article about a decision you’ve made without explaining why you made it. No one can take that away from you.Report

  3. Marchmaine says:

    I’m with you on Biblical movies with Jesus as the main character. I just don’t think they can be pulled off – not as cinema/film. I think you can do a sort of documentary where the character is a live-action stand-in for the narrator.

    I think there’s more room for art where Jesus is off-stage, like, say, Ben Hur or Quo Vadis (for classics) or even Anne Rice’s depiction of the flight to Egypt which is biblical, but not biblically narrated (though it does get a bit dodgy with toddler Jesus – but hey – lots of great dodgy toddler Jesus art/music).

    So, I’d like to see more art which accounts for Jesus off-stage (in the fullest sense)… and there have been some recent films where this has been done well (A hidden life, Bella and a others come to mind)… but other than the documentary placeholder, I just don’t think it is really reasonable to try to ‘model’ Jesus in a script.

    Finally, since we’re *not* talking about The Passion of the Christ, I *won’t* say that I find the film really is about The Passion and counter-intuitively Christ is appropriately ‘off-stage’ … but since we’re not talking about it, I’ll leave it at that.

    I’m ambivalent about marketing for religious art/movies… the relationship between Patron/Grifter has been fraught through the ages. And because my role as the pointy-end-of-the-offline-Catholic-spear is to watch bad popular art (usually left/liberal) I’ll probably watch an episode(?) of The Chosen — for science.Report

    • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

      The Passion of the Christ gets away with it I think because it can be looked at as an ultra high budget passion play. As ‘big’ as it was it dodges the question of artistic merit. You can make the case that it isn’t the point anymore than it would be for a living stations of the cross. All but the most intentionally secular of audiences will intuitively get that.

      An interesting point of comparison might be The Message. I saw it in a world religions class I took long ago. I wouldn’t call it good in any normal sense but I actually thought the attempted adherence to Muslim prohibition on depictions of Muhammad helped more than it hurt. As much as the movie is about Muhammad the cinematic focus is on his followers.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

        Yeah, that’s a really good point and probably an even better way to put it about The Passion.

        Haven’t seen The Message, but sounds like conforming theory.Report

        • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

          It’s long as hell. And there’s definitely some moments where it sounds like an episode of Lassie. ‘What’s that the prophet said? That we should flee Mecca to seek refuge in Ethiopia?’

          But where that isn’t happening it gets close to the standards of the golden age biblical epics, which IMO is pretty good as far as the religious film genre goes.Report

    • He’s also offstage in The Life of Brian.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

      Yeah, the problem with writing The Man Himself is that you’re going to get it wrong according to a good third of your audience no matter what you do.

      Heck, I was in a church play back in 1991 and Jesus only showed up with his back to the audience for the crucifixion and, in the script, he was doing his lines in standard English and the guy changed his lines to the KJV version when he did it live.

      sigh

      Anyway, it’s best to do the stories that were off to the side and show how much that Guy over there was changing things at the time. Show the ripples from the stone thrown into the pond.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to Marchmaine says:

      “I’m with you on Biblical movies with Jesus as the main character. I just don’t think they can be pulled off – not as cinema/film.”

      Feel the need to give a shout out to Last Temptation here.Report

  4. I was wondering why Chaim Potok was trending.

    Seriously, it’s quite a good book; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BCEPO58/Report

  5. John Puccio says:

    The considerable extracurricular baggage aside, The Passion of the Christ was a brilliant film. I say that as a non-believer.

    Your stance touches on an adjacent topic – can you separate art from the artist and, if not, where do you draw the line?Report

  6. LeeEsq says:

    Bible stories were popular choices during the first half of the 20th century because nearly everybody knew enough of the story to get what was going on. Their main problem is that you can tell many of them in not a lot of time and need filler to get them to movie length. Like the entire story of Jesus from beginning to end could be done in two hours or maybe two and half hours and hit all of the highlights. The other Bible stories are going to be shorter in film form unless you add a lot of filler to make things movie length. Noah is an example of the later, same with the Ten Commandments.

    These days the problem with Bible movies is Culture War. During the first half of the 20th century, nearly everybody in the United States was nominally some type of Christian besides the Jews and atheists and agnostics kept their mouth shut. These days you have a much more diverse religious demography and lots of Americans who are entirely non-religious. A few months ago, a young woman in my social circle, didn’t know what the Golden Calf from the story of the Exodus was. This means that Bible films are niche products rather than for the general public. Comic book movies are where the modern universal mythos are in the United States.Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    One interesting thing I’ve noticed about Bible movies is that every attempt to turn the Book of Esther into a movie seems to have failed even when Bible movies could make big bucks with the general public, My guess is that they felt compelled to add God into a story that doesn’t really have much religion. If they told the story of Esther as a glamorous epic movie with colorful clothing, palace intrigue, and sex it might work better.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

      1. Tell the story as it is actually written and include all of the sex and violence
      2. Appeal to an actual audience

      I mean, seriously: The Elijah story? There is some good shit in the Elijah stuff. Ahab and Jezebel, the challenge to Baal, the bottomless jar of food and bottomless jug of oil, the scene with the earthquake and the tornado, the whole “dogs will lick your blood” thing? And how he didn’t, you know, actually *DIE*???

      That’s not a movie. That’s a season of Netflix television right there. Make Jezebel a name and give her a body double and give the audience decapitations and tits and you’re going to have the best word of mouth ever. Have pastors say “I can’t recommend it… but… it is *TECHNICALLY* accurate, though it enjoys being lurid far too much for me to call it ‘Biblical'” and you’ll get word of mouth like you wouldn’t believe.

      End the show with Elisha walking away with the mantle and have him hear some kids making fun of his baldness. Final shot is him looking at the kids.

      Seriously. This is a license to print money.Report

  8. Bob K says:

    But have you seen Gibson’s Apocalypto? I recently rewatched it. Quite interesting.Report