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Dogma
(****)
Seeing this film now has given me one major regret. That only regret is that I didn't see it before making my top ten list for 1999. Director Kevin Smith has crafted a picture that brilliantly combines a great sense of humor with a profound theological experience.
I am a big fan of Smith's first outing, "Clerks". I saw a great writer with a well honed sense of humor; I also saw a director who knew how to set up his actors for their scenes. However, his camera work could have used some practice. With "Dogma", Smith shows me that he may have only improved slightly in the cinematography department, but he's grown by leaps and bounds in other areas. As a result, those small improvements with the camera seem phenomenal.
The story centers around two angels named Bartleby and Loki (Affleck and Damon, respectively), who were long ago banished by God to serve eternity in Wisconsin. They find a loophole in Catholic Dogma that allows them to enter Heaven on a plenary indulgence. Unfortunately, this would prove God fallible, and their re-entry into Heaven would unmake everything that God has created.
Cut to our heroine, Bethany (ravishingly beautiful Linda Fiorentino), the Last Scion. One late night the Metatron (Alan Rickman) comes to her and charges her with a mission: stop the renegade angels from getting to that church.
She gets help; two prophets and an Apostle. The prophets are an unlikely duo; Jay and Silent Bob (Mewes and Kevin Smith himself). Both are perverts, and Jay doesn't shut up. Fortunately, Smith writes Jay's character as being so stupid that his constant chattering is consistently funny. The Apostle is the 13th, Rufus (Chris Rock); who's more than a little miffed that he's been written out of the Bible by those gosh darned Catholics because of his skin color.
The beauty of Smith's film isn't his obvious love for God. It lies in Smith's unwillingness to take hypocrisy and ineptitude lying down. Smith tells us that, Hey, it's a good thing to believe in God. It's great to know that a man has died for our sins. But we keep screwing the message up. At one point one character even remarks "leave it to the catholics to unmake the world...you people don't celebrate God, you mourn Him."
It's an interesting feeling to see this movie. I recently watched Martin Scorcese's "The Last Temptation of Christ", a very different kind of movie. But really, the only major difference between them is in the tone. Both films tell us that it's not really what religion we follow and have faith in; what's important is to have faith in something. After all, it's not every day we find out God is a woman...and a Canadian.