One of the highlights from this year's festival was being able to attend the (unofficial) world premiere screening of TCFF board member and "Borat" director Larry Charles' latest film, "Religulous." Though this explanation is fairly superfluous to anyone who has even heard of the film, the title is derived from merging the words "religion" and "ridiculous," suggesting that the film is - surprise! - a documentary mocking the absurdity of organized religion. Talk-show host Bill Maher ("Politically Incorrect," "Real Time with Bill Maher") stars in the film, traveling to religious destinations around the world to interview members and leaders of various religious groups, politicians, and scientists.
"Religulous" movie poster
As someone still in recovery from six agonizing years of Catholic school, I was extremely anxious to see "Religulous" and I clearly was not alone: this screening was the first to sell out at this year's festival, happening in just over a half-hour. The audience responded with an overwhelmingly positive reception to one of the funniest films I've seen this year. Absolutely hilarious, the film doesn't shy away from taking cheap shots, but is careful not to use them as a shortcut to any of its more eloquently addressed points. Most of the humor comes from responses to what the interviewees themselves say, combined with wickedly clever interview editing, interjection of relevant movie clips, and text inserted during interviews (citing inaccurate facts as they are being spoken). Bill Maher becomes the thread that holds this together, with his well-timed wit calling attention to the absurdity of the situation while furthering along an argument. It's the film's cleverness that gives it the edge, rather than just mocking its subjects; this is one of the strengths that should save it from being accused of taking a 'point-and-laugh' approach to religion.
That said, "Religulous" does have an agenda. It in no way pretends to be positioning itself impartially and is irreverent towards everything it encounters. The only politically correct thing about the film is that it is an equal opportunity offender, not focusing on any one domination but attempting to hit all of them, which actually allows the film to narrow its focus. Rather than attempting to disprove each religion one by one, Maher uses his wit to his advantage, establishing negative broad cultural patterns within the population of those who practice organized religion. Maher inserts disclaimers insisting that he is attacking religion, not the concept of God. Though the film makes little distinction between the two, it isn't terribly relevant to its overarching idea, which assaults organized religion for a point - to say that followers of a religion, the "religulous," if you will, vote, which inevitably affects the way that politics of the world are run. The film takes a somber tone at its conclusion, as it replaces the playfulness of the interviews with a commentary on the destructive powers of religious conviction that will continue to happen on a global scale, insisting that man alone is responsible for the creation of war, violence and environmental damage, and that this realization is the only logical step toward stopping these epidemics.
Larry Charles and Bill Maher on location for "Religulous"
It would be difficult for one to argue about this film without accusations of being influenced by some religious bias. The film is offensive to, well, just about everyone, and as director Larry Charles pointed out at Friday's Q & A, Bill Maher is willing to be hated for this film (unfortunately for the sake of a great pun, the term "martyr" was not used), and both Charles and Maher are aware of the huge controversy that will inevitably surround it. This problem might also be the film's most powerful asset - it's not afraid to get its hands dirty, and it wants to get personal. Fortunately for Larry Charles and Bill Maher, they back up an intelligent socio-political standpoint with a hilarious, well-articulated film on the status and problems of religion in the 21st century.
"Religulous" will be officially premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in select theaters starting October 3, 2008.
Powered by FireStats
One Comment
I was very excited to get a ticket to see this film as I'm a big fan of Bill Maher's show and love Charle's effort in Borat. The show was sold out in minutes.
Sadly, the film comes nowhere close to Charles last effort, Borat. It's only sporadically funny and relies mostly on cuts to archival footage and old campy movies about religion for its gags. Meanwhile, the effort feels very much cobbled together, lazily constructed(boom mikes and second cameras can be spotted in many of the shots), and riddled with all kinds of biases and stereotypes that cynically defeats the film's essential call for a more rational approach to faith-based thought.
Charles and Bill Maher travel all over the world to try to come to terms with the power, prevalence, and irrationality of religion. They manage to locate a seemingly infinite number of freaks, extremists, and closeted homosexuals and proceed to make them look stupid, not so difficult. Yet, if these people don't sufficiently embarrass themselves, then Charles mocks them with text that appears below their comments, sound effects that ridicules them(a mean lady gets a a witch's cackle), and cuts that reduce them to the moronic. There isn't much space here, ironically, for a personal response, or a moment to let something sink in; the cuts come at furious, demanding, and pejorative pace and sequence.
This is done not just for comic effect, where it often fails save in the purely sophomoric dimension, but has a polemical intent that favors Charles' overt biases and facile, but semi-racist, connections. For example, at one point, a man in charge of a religious theme park where they reenact scenes of the crucifiction, says many visitors come from far away, even the Gaza Strip. As soon as the words come out of the man's mouth, Charles cuts to a gun-wielding Arab in a mask. In fact, Charles projects dozens of images violent Arabs(welcome to Hollywood!) using archival footage to further the claim, however unexplored in the film, that Islam is an inherently violent religion, a claim often made by right-wing idealogues. Charles and Maher ignore the political dimension as an explanatory variable in violence, blame it on religion, and take a decidly simplistic view of terrorism in the process, ignoring class and social justice and imperial humiliations as possible causes for violence. There is no mention of state-based violence by Christian and Jewish armies that use religion as their moral justification. While I realize that such a scope may be difficult in such a forum, Charles and Maher appear to want us to take their arguments seriously and question our assumptions about religion, while neither has bothered to do the same by shamelessly taking the low road and falling in line to the media's ignoble history of projecting violent images of Arabs and Muslims when they bother to show them at all(Read Shaheen's "Reel Arabs"). If this had some comic purpose, it might be understood, but here, it comes off like propaganda of a nasty and ignorant order. (They even roll out Yassir Arafat, an avowed Arab secularist, in a montage of religious extremists who encourage violence)
It's a shame that Charles relied so heavily on archival footage and sound effects for comic effect. In Borat, he plays it closer to the vest and allows Sascha Cohen to carry the film. Perhaps his cinematic sleights of hand were a necessity in the editing room since there wasn't enough quality footage. Still, Charles stated after the film that he wants to release 15 hours of film on t.v. that ended up on the cutting room floor in thirty minute increments. I would recommend the same for this effort, which would be much better suited to television, preferably the higher numbers in the cable universe. It's a shame because this is a film I really wanted to like. The hallelujeuh chorus on the left has lately gotten so loud and uniform, I really wish we could sing a new tune or two, a little less cynically perhaps.
Post a Comment