<i>Dogma</i>'s Sacred Profanity
At a press conference following the screening of his film Dogma ,
which will have its first public showing October 4 as part of the New York Film
Festival, the writer, director, and professed devout Catholic Kevin Smith
appeared both shell-shocked and befuddled by the outrage that his movie, sight
unseen, had provoked. We're talking about a fury so fierce (it has been
spearheaded by a group called the Catholic League) that Miramax and its parent
company, Disney, dropped the theological comedy-thriller like a hot cross bun.
Protests are planned for Monday at Lincoln Center, and all involved (the
picture's new distributor is Lion's Gate Films) have braced themselves for more
noise and death threats. The only silver lining, said Smith, was that he'd
edited out that "elephant-dung Madonna scene. I mean, it's one thing to have
the Catholic League mad at you, but you don't want to have the mayor of New
York mad at you."
Finally seeing the movie, I find it hard not to share Smith's perplexity. It
would be one thing if Dogma were, as charged, virulently anti-Catholic
or even blasphemous. But the film, a sort of apocalyptic Miltonian vaudeville,
is among the most passionately religious and God-fearing ever made in this
country. It's supremely moving. True, it's also raucous, bloody, smutty, and
strewn with four-letter words, and the final incarnation of the Almighty has
little in common with depictions you might find in, say, the Vatican museum.
Yet the qualities that make Dogma seem a work of irreverence are
precisely those that make it so spiritually reanimating. The film has been made
by an artist for whom questions of faith are central to daily life. It seems
only logical, then, not to segregate those questions from that life but to
weave them in with the filmmaker's other obsessions: friendship, lust,
drinking, love of trashy horror flicks, and the compulsion to sit around
b.s.'ing all night about why the Creator made so many things that are patently
absurd.
The movie's canvas--too vast to itemize completely here--features a New
Jersey bishop (a Borscht Belt turn by George Carlin) who argues that Jesus
should not be represented by gory images of his earthy demise. After all: "He
was a booster !" Seizing on a loophole in Catholic dogma, the Bishop
plans to reconsecrate his church so that anyone who passes through its archway
will be officially cleansed of sin and entitled to enter heaven. This attracts
the notice of two waggish, somewhat insane fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt
Damon, who have a hilarious Hope-Crosby rapport): They have spent 2,000
depressing years in exile (in Wisconsin) and now see a way to "go home." The
problem, then, is the tension between dogma and God's will. If the angels (who
become serial killers on their trek to New Jersey, gorily murdering Ten
Commandments violators as a kind of last hurrah), succeed in their mission, God
will be shown to be fallible, the center will not hold, and the apocalypse will
destroy all life in the universe.
Representatives of the Devil, naturally, do all they can to make that
happen, while God's servants--among them Alan Rickman as the resonant and
wearily fey "Voice of God," Salma Hayek as a slinky muse, and Chris Rock as the
"Thirteenth Apostle" (the black one expunged from Scripture)--struggle to stave
off Armageddon. For reasons that would spoil a number of surprises, their
efforts revolve around a Catholic woman named Bethany (an unprecedentedly
soulful Linda Fiorentino), who goes to church every Sunday but feels that God
has stopped listening. The core of the film, emotionally, is Bethany's
conversations with sundry mortals, angels, and demons about her loss of faith.
The complaints about Catholic dogma are voiced by Rock's liberal Apostle, who
argues that what matters most is faith and not the rituals that are supposed to
give it a Seal of Approval.
So yes, Dogma is critical of organized religion. But why not regard
it as the constructive criticism of a believer? Smith described it as "kicking
the tires of my faith," and added that he considers both God and Jesus
"friends" who would not be averse to having fun poked at them--especially when
that fun is grounded in a fervent respect for their existence and power. In the
movie's credits, Smith thanks a "Sister Theresa," who changed his life, he
said, when she declared that Jesus' remark during the Last Supper that Peter
would be the rock of his church was likely facetious--a joke. Suddenly, Smith
said, the figures at the heart of Christianity weren't abstract theological
mouthpieces but flesh-and-blood humans who spoke his language.
Smith believes that the Catholic League, which is authorized by neither the
Church nor the Vatican, was looking for an excuse to attack Disney that
particular week. (Many of the letters sent to Miramax chairmen Harvey and Bob
Weinstein were homicidally anti-Semitic.) But I'm not so sure that the film
would have slipped by unnoticed in any event. Another deeply devout and
religious film, Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptaion of Christ (1988),
was furiously attacked for portraying Jesus as lost and uncertain--plagued by
doubts. Smith slyly echoes Scorsese's film when Rickman's Voice of God,
attempting to convert the reluctant Bethany to his cause, explains that Jesus
didn't take it any better when told of the painful destiny that awaited him: "I
had to deliver the news to a scared child who only wanted to play with other
children." There are people who find threatening the idea that no serious
faith, no faith worth a damn--not of men, angels, or even Jesus--could possibly
be untested.
It's the atheists and agnostics who have the easiest time making movies
nowadays--the ones who don't confront the issue of faith at all. The believers,
meanwhile, get crucified. "I tried to do something good and got hassled for
it," said Smith. "To spread the word of Christ, and also throw in a few fart
and dick jokes." An amusing series of titles that open the film now urge the
audience not to get too worked up--to see the movie not as a fanatical attack
on religion but as a reverent goof. But he's worried about the "good
Christians" who haven't seen Dogma yet and have written to say that he
better buy himself a flak jacket. Once they see it, he said, their minds
will change--"I mean, it's got a rubber poop monster!"
