Go out with the superhero movies, in the biblical epic? From Trip to Bethlehem has The chosenthe fourth season of and the recent one of Martin Scorsese announcement that he will start shooting a film based on the Shūsaku Endō film A life of Jesus later this year, films about Jesus multiply. Maybe, just maybe, 2024 will even be the year Terrence Malick Finally finishes editing his long-gestating Jesus project, The way of the wind.
In the middle of it all is Clarence’s book, which it seems offers a perspective on the New Testament that you won’t get in more devotional or high-brow films. Inspired by films as diverse as Ben Hur And The Life of Brian from Monty Pythonand featuring a predominantly black cast, Clarence tells a story that is sometimes epic, sometimes humorous which is not enough about Jesus himself.
Centered on a fictional character who lives alongside the greatest story ever told, the film is written and directed by Jeymes Samuel, also known as The Bullitts, the rapper turned filmmaker who made a splash a few years ago with the Black Western. The harder they fall. This film, stylized as it was, was widely touted as a “corrective” to the Western genre and popular perceptions of the past, drawing attention to real outlaws and lawmen who had been largely overlooked by previous filmmakers.
Clarence’s book, in U.S. theaters Friday, has a somewhat different agenda. Here, Samuel indulges his love of classic biblical epics while filtering the genre through his own experiences as someone growing up on “the hood” (i.e. a predominantly black public housing estate in London) .
“Clarence is your man”, Samuel said Squire. “Clarence is literally just a guy on the block, through whose eyes we look at this era and learn stories.” Clarence’s book may be set in Jerusalem in 33 A.D., but the film’s world is playful and anachronistic, with gladiators, chariots, and crucifixions rubbing shoulders with nightclubs, pot dealers, and barbershops.
This might sound like a recipe for comedy, and Clarence’s book it certainly does – sometimes. But anyone waiting for an updated version of World History, Part IIwill be a surprise. It’s striking that there is a genuine quest for spiritual improvement at the heart of this film, and it sometimes moves beyond the tropes of biblical films to engage more directly with the book on which the genre is based .
The film revolves around the titular Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield), a hapless “ungodly weed seller” who happens to be the identical twin brother of the Apostle Thomas (also Stanfield). Thomas’ name, of course, is Aramaic for “twin.” Samuel has a little fun with his sources, but he also subverts expectations by transforming Thomas – famous, rightly or not, for his doubts – into the embodiment of a pious religious belief, while making Clarence the skeptic who does not believe in God. and is convinced that all of Jesus’ miracles must be mere “tricks.”
Clarence is upset that Thomas left home to be with Jesus while their mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) was ill. If religion causes people to disown their family, he reasons, that’s all the more reason to reject it altogether. (The film doesn’t explicitly mention this, but the biblical Jesus commended his disciples for leaving their families to follow him in Matthew 19:27-29 and Luke 18:28-30, and it’s fascinating to watch a biblical film explore what that means. I would have felt like I was one of the loved ones left behind.)
Clarence, however, thinks that religion can have its uses – and here, Samuel’s storyline is at its weakest. When Clarence finds himself in debt to a local gangster (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), he turns to local religious leaders, hoping that their aura can rub off on him and protect him from the gang.
First, he asks Jean-Baptiste (a very funny David Oyelowo) to dip him in his “holy water”. Then he asks Jesus’ apostles to let him join their ranks. And when that doesn’t work, he finally decides to go into the messiah business, posing as a new Christ and asking his best friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) to play the role of the “cured” dead or disabled by his touch. The crowds offer him offerings for his “miracles,” money that he intends to use to pay off his debt.
Clarence never explains why a gangster would be so impressed by a religious conversion that he would forgive Clarence’s debt, nor does it make Clarence’s instant fame plausible. (The title character in Brian’s life attracted followers involuntarily– it was a joke.)
We often get the impression that Samuel wanted to include certain scenes and characters so badly that he inserted them into the story under the flimsiest of pretexts. When Judas (Micheal Ward) challenges Clarence to prove his worth by freeing slaves, for example, Clarence ends up fighting a gladiator named Barabbas the Immortal (Omar Sy). Samuel clearly wanted to film old-fashioned gladiator fights, but the story around this scene doesn’t make sense.
Clarence’s miracles may be fake, but Jesus’ (Nicholas Pinnock) miracles, when we finally get to see them, are anything but. Indeed, they go well beyond the biblical model.
When Clarence meets Jesus’ mother, Mary (Alfre Woodard), she describes how Jesus turned clay pigeons into live birds as a child, a story that comes straight out of the apocryphal tale. Gospel of the Infancy of Thomas. When Jesus confronts a crowd that wants to stone Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor), he doesn’t just talk to them; he freezes their stones in mid-air like Neo freezing bullets in The matrix. And when Jesus reveals at the Last Supper that one of his disciples will betray him, the disciples are suddenly frozen in place – with one notable, hesitant exception – in a scene that recalls the famous paintings of the moment, as well as those of Hollywood before. mimicry of these works.
Samuel plays with iconography in other ways as well. The fact that the non-Roman characters are almost all played by black actors is at first glance barely recognized. But it becomes significant when a confrontation with Roman soldiers plays into modern concerns about official racism and police brutality. More caustically, the film suggests that the White Jesus of later art arises from mistaken identity. Unfortunately, the film’s account of this mistake is one of many plot twists with too little narrative sense. (No spoilers here, but it’s almost a causal loop.)
Through it all – including fantastical touches such as the light bulb-like orbs that appear above Clarence’s head when he has an idea –Clarence keeps returning to more serious themes. “Be the body, not the shadow,” Clarence’s mother says, worried that her son is drifting through life. When Clarence tries to tell Varinia (Anna Diop), the woman he is in love with, that he is a “changed man,” she responds that she believes in growth, not change. And Clarence repeatedly says that “knowledge is stronger than belief,” a statement first deployed to explain his lack of faith and which takes on new meaning as the story progresses.
When the film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival three months ago, a lot Comments note that it undergoes very abrupt tonal shifts, and most critics seemed to think that the film was better in its earlier, funnier sections. I’m not so sure. Clarence is riddled with plot holes and inexplicable twists and turns, but the early scenes are a particularly disjointed mess, while the latter part is where everything starts to come together.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the ending is also the part of the film where Jesus becomes a more important part of the narrative, while Clarence’s story fits into the familiar pattern of a trial before Pilate ( James McAvoy) and all that follows. It’s possible that Samuel is just pretending here, but I don’t think so. Thanks in large part to Stanfield’s performance, the film’s final scenes have a sincerity that transcends genre conventions and Samuel’s playful adjustments. Clarence’s book is not a gospel, but it has an undeniable fascination for the Good News.
Peter T. Chattaway is a film critic with a particular interest in biblical films. He lives with his family in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.
