In this film, with dialogue mostly in the Xhosa language, the story of Jesus Christ is transplanted to contemporary South Africa in a striking, culturally specific and overall thrilling way. This film isn’t perfect; it’s not going to supplant Franco Zeffirelli’s six hour Jesus of Nazareth as my favorite film about Jesus, but the specificity and uniqueness of this film’s vision makes it a worthy companion piece. In the political turmoil, constant violence and grinding poverty of much of South Africa, Dornford-May finds an environment that mirrors the brutality and suffering of Biblical times in a lot of ways. And I really loved the down to earth aesthetic of this film. The angels are all portrayed by children and they’re mostly differentiated by simply having feathers stuck more or less randomly into their clothes or even glued to their skin. These aren’t wings, just individual feathers here and there are on their bodies and I found it to be really striking. Likewise, during the Nativity sequence of the film, there’s a fantastic shot of this film’s Mary huddled in a cluttered shed and she’s framed in the shot so that, instead of the traditional halo of much of Western European art, her head is encircled by a rusty fan behind her.
I would say that this movie has flaws or at least areas in which it is weaker than others. This may be down to cultural differences to story-telling, acting or writing, I’m not sure. The dialogue scenes are often taken at a weirdly fast pace and the acting is not always good. Andile Kosi has no real charisma at all as Jesus and the film is more interested in placing him in interesting visual compositions than it is in actually letting us connect with him on a human level or hear any of his actual teachings. You’d think this whole thing about the “Jesus” in a Jesus movie not really registering would be pretty crippling, but I think the idea here is that this isn’t a movie to watch if you have no idea who Jesus is and haven’t heard the story before. This is kind of the movie to watch when you’ve heard the story enough times that you know it pretty well and you want to see it done differently. And as someone who has read the Gospels numerous times and knows the story pretty well backwards and forwards, this movie did give me some things I’ve never thought about before. I have to give a shout out to the way the film uses the Satan character; he’s portrayed as a kind of warlord figure, carrying about an antelope leg as a kind of swagger stick and while he’s most prominent in the temptation in the wilderness section, he recurs throughout the film, always lurking about on the edges, seen in glimpses, close-ups of his boots in the dirt or that antelope leg dangling from his hand or over his arm. The use of music is really spectacular and I think the film makes an interesting connection between the Jewish and African uses of music in their culture. When the Virgin Mary delivers the Magnificat here, she does exactly what the Bible says Mary does: she bursts freely and suddenly into song. Most movies of the European tradition treat the Magnificat as a kind of recitation/prayer and that works, but there’s something refreshing and not at all jarring in the way this film highlights music as music. And they do something with the crucifixion that is so surprising and different and culturally specific that I kind of would consider it a spoiler to even tell you what it is. I was pretty shocked by it in a good way; they just recontextualize the entire event of Jesus being placed on that cross and stage it in a way I’ve never seen before and I found it quite moving actually.
So, this isn’t a perfect film and it’s certainly not a good place to start your journey through the Jesuses of cinema. Some of the acting is a little amateurish and the movie rushes in places I kind of wish it didn’t. But it all adds up to a movie that just wants its presentation to be primarily visual and musical. Very vibe based, if I could be so informal about it; but this movie wants to be informal, I think, with its Jesus in torn t-shirt and blue jeans, its angels rough-and-tumble scuffling and laughing with each other as they wait to deliver their messages. And it really does work, a familiar story told in a very specific, very unique way that draws out different perspectives and surprising moments. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – story of Jesus transplanted to contemporary South Africa is culturally specific, surprising & down-to-earth; acting & writing take a back seat to interesting visuals and atmosphere. 3 ½ stars.