Jesus of Montreal
Jesus of Montreal (French: Jésus de Montréal) is a 1989 Canadian comedy drama film written and directed by Denys Arcand, and starring Lothaire Bluteau, Catherine Wilkening and Johanne-Marie Tremblay. The film tells the story of a group of actors in Montreal who perform a Passion play in a Quebec church (the film uses the grounds of Saint Joseph's Oratory on Mount Royal), combining religious belief with unconventional theories on a historical Jesus. As the church turns against the main actor and author of the play, his life increasingly mirrors the story of Jesus, and the film adapts numerous stories from the New Testament.
Jesus of Montreal
Jésus de Montréal
Denys Arcand
Roger Frappier
Pierre Gendron
Monique Létourneau
Cineplex Odeon Films (Canada)
UGC Distribution (France)[1]
- 17 May 1989
118 minutes
Canada
France
French
English
$4.2 million[2]
The film came out to critical acclaim and won numerous awards, including the Genie Award for Best Picture and the Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. The film was also nominated for the 1989 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Critics in the Toronto International Film Festival have regarded the film as one of the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time.
Plot[edit]
In Montreal, an unknown actor named Daniel is hired by a Roman Catholic pilgrimage's site ("le sanctuaire") to present a Passion play in its gardens. The priest, Father Leclerc, asks him to "modernize" the classic play the church has been using, which he considers dated. Despite working with material others consider to be clichéd, Daniel is inspired and carries out intensive academic research, consulting archaeology to check the historicity of Jesus and drawing on supposed information on Jesus in the Talmud, using the Talmud name Yeshua Ben Pantera for Jesus, whom he portrays. He includes arguments that the biological father of Jesus was a Roman soldier who left Palestine shortly after impregnating the unwed Mary. He assembles his cast, found from insignificant and disreputable backgrounds (one being a man who does pornographic voiceovers), and moves in with two of them, Constance and Mireille.
When the play is performed, the audience is thrilled; the show receives excellent reviews. Father Leclerc, however, regards it as controversial. He angrily distances himself from Daniel. The actor's life is further complicated when he attends one of Mireille's auditions. Mireille is told to remove her top, causing an outburst from Daniel in which he damages equipment and assaults a director, resulting in criminal charges. When the higher authorities of the Roman Catholic Church strongly object to his interpretation of Jesus and security forces stop a performance, the audience and actors oppose them and Daniel is injured in an ensuing accident.
Daniel is first taken by ambulance to an overrun Catholic hospital where he is neglected. He leaves and collapses on a Montreal Metro platform. The same ambulance takes him to the Jewish General Hospital. Despite immediate, skilled, and energetic efforts by the doctors and nurses, he is pronounced brain dead. His doctor asks for the consent of his friends, since he has no known relatives, to take his organs for donation, stating that they would have been able to save him if he had been brought in half an hour earlier. After his death, his eyes and heart are used to restore the health of other patients.
In the wake of his death, Daniel's friends start a theatre company to carry on his work.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
In Canada, it won the Golden Reel Award, indicating the highest box-office performance of any Canadian film that year[34] with a gross of C$2.53 million in Canada.[35] It went on to gross C$3 million.[3] In English Canada, it was among only three Canadian films to gross over $500,000 between 1987 and 1990, along with Black Robe and Dead Ringers[36] with a gross of C$747,000.[35]
Jesus of Montreal did not enjoy the degree of success in France as Arcand's prior The Decline of the American Empire (1986),[37] drawing an audience of 187,827 people, the eighth highest for a Quebec film to date.[38] Generally, the film did not meet expectations in drawing audiences in countries with predominantly Roman Catholic populations, with Arcand claiming using the name Jesus in the title made the subject matter appear cliché.[39] In the U.S., Stephen J. Nichols referred to it as "not-very-popular" and said it was Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ "to dominate the 1980s" in dramatic portrayals of Jesus.[40]