“Faithful Viewer” is an occasional feature in which RNS reporters plumb religion and spirituality in film, television, books, music and other forms of popular culture.
An unbeliever in the midst of an existential crisis meets Jesus and has a conversion experience. High-mindedness — not high jinks — ensues.
Audiences have seen this old Hollywood trope before: in “Quo Vadis,” (1951), “The Robe,” (1953), “Ben Hur” (1959). And now in “Risen,” opening Friday (Feb. 19), a month before Easter.
And while a lot has changed in the nearly seven decades since the first of these “come to Jesus” movies, the core plot mechanism of “he-of-little-faith meeting the ultimate man of faith” remains.
Why the resurrection of such an old narrative device, minus the sequined costumes, wigs and Max Factor makeup, which have been replaced by whips, scourges and buckets of blood (thanks, Mel Gibson and “The Passion of the Christ”!)?
“I think the idea of being carried through the narrative of Christ, from his Crucifixion to the Resurrection and the Ascension, through the eyes of nonbeliever allows us to come at this from a soft angle,” said Joseph Fiennes, the British actor who plays unbeliever Clavius in “Risen.” “Clavius represents the everyman. We’re all on a hunt, theological or not. We’re all on some form of investigation or discovery.”
In “Risen,” Clavius is a high-ranking Roman soldier who, as the right-hand man of Pontius Pilate (an excellent Peter Firth), has a front-row seat at the Crucifixion. With his own eyes he sees Jesus dead and buried in a sealed tomb. So when the body is missing and reports of Jesus sightings come in, Clavius turns into the most skeptical of detectives, looking for the corpse.
Instead (SPOILER ALERT!) , he encounters a very much alive, very jolly Jesus (“Yeshua,” in this film, played by Cliff Curtis). From there, let’s just say Clavius makes some changes in his life.
The end.
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My wife and I went to see this movie the other day. We enjoyed it very much.
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