The Brand New Testament

2015 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: God, lounging around in a bathrobe in a Belgium high-rise, is a bit of a jerk as he plots on a desktop computer ways to make our lives on earth miserable. Already having dealt with a rebellious hippie son who sneaked away to mess things up for him with humans, he now is faced with a situation where his only daughter whisks away to collect her own apostles and have somebody scribe a brand new testament.

With Mr. Nobody, Toto the Hero, and this, Jaco Van Dormael has proven to be, if not the most prolific director who ever lived, a cinematically creative force. The style of this reminds me most of the Caro/Jeunet collaborations (Delicatessen, Amelie). There's an outlandish visual appeal that is refreshing, and there are just so many ideas in this thing. It's like Van Dormael thought up this slightly blasphemous concept, brainstormed pages and pages of ideas that he could use in the story, and then couldn't get rid of a single one of his ideas because they were like his babies or something. I believe I criticized a recent blockbuster for having too many ideas, but with Van Dormael, it just seems to fit in with his overall aesthetic. It's perfectly alright if a little of this director's soup gets spilled on the tablecloth and probably ok if it ends up in my lap, too.

So in The Brand New Testament, you get a look at God and his relationship with his wife, the daughter escaping and finding first a scribe for her new testament and then six apostles to help her do whatever she thinks she's doing, backstories for each one of those apostles, explanations for why dropped toast always falls jam/jelly-side down, possible explanations for why giraffes don't roam the streets of Brussels, and this investigation of how different people might react if given a countdown of how much time they have left on earth. It's a lot for one movie to tackle, and although it doesn't dig in enough with any one of those to make any profound statements, the whole thing is completely delightful.

The tone is mostly breezy although there's a lot of darker comedy. A concept that on the surface seems like it would be very cynical and maybe even offensive winds up not being that way at all. Well, this would more than likely offend most Christians, but we're talking about the same people who are offended by Harry Potter. And actually, just the role that female characters play in this might be enough to offend most Christians. You don't even really need this meanspirited slob of a God to do that. But my point is that I don't think Van Dormael's intentions are to offend or criticize religion or spirituality or piss anybody off. Like all good religious movies, this really investigates human nature more, has this philosophical heart at the center of all the crazy comedy. Even the ending, which I won't give away, probably has more to do with humans and our place in the world than on deities and their roles.

It's really a very lovely movie.

Catherine Deneuve winds up in bed with a gorilla in this one. That's right, people. That's the type of movie we're dealing with here. Oh, and Dominique Abel--that guy in The Fairy and L'Iceberg--is also in this. He gets a comical and visually-clever nude scene early in the movie before making his exit.