Streetwise but down-on-his-luck, Clarence is struggling to find a better life for his family, while fighting to free himself of debt. Captivated by the power and glory of the rising Messiah and His...
If The Harder We Fall is a witty western homage that fulfills both its ambition and purpose, The Book of Clarence is a mind-melting sermon on the mount, screaming out an immensely rewarding narrative gamble that constantly trips but doesn’t quite fumble from its own confusing payoff.
Not much is made clear on what the films intentions are but it’s easy to tell Jeymes Samuel is having a ball the entire way through; his direction almost gleefully, messily at ease with the film’s own erratic rhythms and the excitement that bleeds out from each scene might as be contagious. It’s definite proof of versatility as a director.
His stylistic verve that was established in his previous film are boastfully, brashly up front and center but they each have their own pros and cons. The tactile costumes blends the old with the new to craft an authentic balance in attire and the delicately balanced, yet expansive cinematography is coked out the ass with energy to spare. Its framing captures the scale of those older Biblical epics yet an overindulgence of flourishes in the editing room dampen those flames before they can really catch fire.
Its utilization of its production design is particularly noteworthy as its intentionally semi-anachronistic style matches the brash boldness of its creator despite its faithful recreations and emulations of the past. I adore how the longer the film progresses, the more it visually matches his spiritual ascension to Jesus Himself right before his crucifixion; exquisitely colourful and brilliantly lit. The pacing is never too rushed and how they managed to take Jeyme’s music score and songs and incorporated them both to an almost soulful, operatic degree was perplexing. It fits well for the characters journey ahead but the sheer amount of them tended to be the overwhelming at times.
Even the stilted dialogue meant to mirror and mix Biblical verses with modern terms and slang isn’t safe from the unwieldy tonal swerves; a few decent lines came out of it but its humor feels more neutered than anything else. Thankfully, the acting doesn’t suffer as badly as those; many of the performers in this are quite soulful in their portrayals.
Yet, their character stand-ins are easy to dissect and pick apart from a distance away though, only having one to two distinct traits to differentiate from the other.
For those who may be curious about this, there is no Book of Clarence in either the Old or New Testament. Just like The Harder We Fall, this story mixes alternate historical revisionism to its advantage, an overt inspiration from the bible to make a profound statement about spirituality rather than organized religion. Jeyme’s first film spoke on the silence of generational violence while this one is a more laidback, personal story of one man coming to terms with his transgressions and with that, his journey into becoming a more humble, honest man. It should go without saying this film is pretty cliche deep down to its bone marrow despite its old-school Hollywood-style, hipster pop gospel, playful Pythonesque satirical structure playing into this Life of Brian template and because of how much weight it carries, it feels breathless in the attempt to stay limber and agile with its content.
But adjusting to the cheeky, loose tone becomes easy after a while and if you can get past that, the experience is somewhat pleasant. It has a clear understanding and respect for the source material it represents, playing with the scripture of the New Testament to rowdy means while staying genuinely tasteful and you can’t fault for being high on personality.
If you were to ask me what the hell this film is trying to tell me, the best I can deduce after a second viewing is this: between the humanist nature of God, what measure of divinity lies in us all, the mocking of religious fervor, the way organized Christianity has—for lack of a better term—adapted history to suit the views of certain people and the world and the value of basic compassion and grace in a world where God’s intervention isn’t a given, its primary intentions are to take aim at the basis of Christianity through a modern lens while dissecting what is faith to someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus. Finding meaning in life and figuring out what we truly believe can be a convoluted mess in reality and I think that’s what this films twisted irreverent tonal shifts are meant to convey.
Sure, it can only provide mere lip service or some forced image to compliment those ideas at a time but Jeymes is very deliberate in not picking a side to this conflict between religious faith and spiritual faith because the point isn’t to really downplay faith, but examines what our motives are behind it.
Still, that journey to get there is anything but a straight line because that’s the problem with having so many ideas: the film itself seems at odds with what to to do with its source material between remixing or subverting ye olde sword-and-sandal tales and it constantly victimizes itself to an uneven stop-start wavelength that’s hard to stand on. Putting aside how this foundation never prepared me for the gradual shift it takes near the end, there’s no getting away from how the film itself crescendos near the end of the first act only to stagnate the rest of the way through.
Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
The ideas of entertainment and enlightenment are not conflicting ideals in the slightest but this movie has them clash so frequently, this teetering scaffold looks very middling because of it. Thankfully, this is one cross that shouldn’t be all that heavy to bear.
