The Book of Clarence (2024)

Score: 3 / 5

Biblical epics are largely a thing of the past, but burgeoning pop-culture auteur Jeymes Samuel doesn't accept that as a reason not to make a speactacle of it. In much the same way he reinvented, reimagined, and/or reclaimed Westerns in his Netflix feature The Harder They Fall, here he turns his considerable aesthetic skills to a genre that really shouldn't include him. Or, rather, hasn't historically. He knows this, he disagrees with this, and he charges forward anyway with knowing charm and style to spare. That doesn't make the film "good" as many audiences will surely claim, especially since the film does not -- and I repeat, does not -- fit the bill of a sacrilegious comedy as its marketing suggested.

Don't get me wrong; it has plenty of outrageously funny moments. But The Book of Clarence has a lot more on its mind than simply positing a Black Jesus in the historical shadow of the white one Westerners long ago accepted as truth. Its trailers suggested that was the width and breadth of this film, but really, most of the funny bits in the film were the same as in its marketing. The rest of the substantial film -- which feels every minute of two hours and then some -- is dramatic, thoughtful, calculated and curated, and more than a bit bewildering.

Without retracing its plot, which is sweeping and strange, suffice it to say that your general concept is accurate: Clarence (the endlessly fabulous LaKeith Stanfield) is a street hustler in Jerusalem at the time of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Seeing the success of Jesus inspires Clarence and his vagabond friends, so they launch their own messianic cult, one of cynical atheists and outsiders who want money and influence, yes, but also to prove that the so-called Messiah and other false prophets are just that: false. Clarence seems as eager to make an easy buck as he is to pull back the curtain on mysticism and faith. Naturally, they run afoul of Jesus's apostles, the Pharisees, and eventually the Roman overlords. What starts as a clever, insightful, and culturally relevant satire quickly morphs into a sincere attempt at historical drama before careening unexpectedly into heavy tragedy of faith and a conversion story for the ages.

The problem is, by the time it loses its sense of humor, the film also loses its originality. SPOILER ALERT. When Clarence is inevitably captured and brought before Pontius Pilate (a recklessly funny James McAvoy, whose hammy performance just feels nasty at this point in the tragedy of Clarence), it's oddly indiscernible from a layperson's summary of the passion of the Christ, complete with a climactic carrying of his cross to Golgotha and graphic crucifixion sequence. Sure, it acknowledges the horrific racist lynchings and spectacle of bleeding Black bodies that excites the white Romans (and, by extension, us), and it encourages thought of the men killed with Jesus and martyred for Jesus afterward, but the story of Clarence is not fundamentally different from that of Jesus except that he himself carries no salvific or supernatural powers of his own and that, in the end, it is his spiritual conversion and resurrection by his unwitting teacher that saves him.

This conclusion feels inchoate at best -- incoherent at worst -- after so many brilliant, insightful, incisive scenes that came before. Opening the film with a chariot chase (a la Ben Hur) between Clarence and Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor) is a stroke of genius, along with a bizarre subplot that motivates Clarence's need for funds to repay crime lord Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa). It helps, too, that the film's on-location shoot in Italy offers breathtaking landscape views at every turn, and cinematographer Rob Hardy makes the most of every scene. Other performances steal their respective scenes, including David Oyelowo as a sassy John the Baptist, Marianne Jean-Baptiste as the longsuffering mother of Clarence (and his brother, the apostle Thomas), and especially Omar Sy as ex-gladiator-turned-disciple-of-Clarence Barabbas. Yes, that Barabbas.

There's the magnificent scene with Alfre Woodard as Mary, mother of Jesus. There's the surprise and delightful inclusion of Benedict Cumberbatch as a dirty beggar who, once cleaned up, looks like every painting of Jesus ever made, and who gets crucified for that. There's the odd but interesting dynamics between the real Jesus (Nicholas Pinnock) and his followers, especially Judas (Michael Ward), and the mystifying focus on the telekinetic powers Jesus manifests, such as stopping stones in midair before they hit Mary Magdalene. As a curious counterpoint to visual effects like this, Samuel features moments of postmodern tomfoolery such as literalizing a couple lightbulb moments over Clarence's head as he hatches his schemes.

I just don't know who this movie is for. It flirts with lambasting Christianity, or at least the historical bent toward unifying white supremacy with Christianity, but repeatedly and intentionally stops short. It offers many profoundly affecting moments of insight about liberation theology, even positing a literal Black Jesus as a crucial character and having him engage with all Black disciples, but then focuses on so many other things than them. It provides presumably satirical Black gangsters and whores for a drug-induced Clarence to fraternize with, which feels notably less racially tasteful even as it suggests more Americanized storytelling (worth noting: Samuel also provided music, and significant moments feel drawn-out solely for his masturbatory musical sensibilities, including needless slow-motion scenes and a fun but bizarre nightclub dance routine). It tries to be funny, is often subtly so, but ends up feeling pretty tragic and melancholy. It tries to be smarter than faith allows, and ends completely giving into Clarence's conversion and seems to ask us to, too. If Samuels wanted to remake The Passion of the Christ with a Black Jesus, he should have just done that; if he wanted to do anything else, he should have stuck to his instincts and done that. Instead he gave us a strange exploitation film that makes fun of its own sensibilities as much as it tries to legitimize itself, making the whole experience a fascinating and endlessly debatable fever dream of half-baked ideas and missed opportunities.