Jesus of Montreal

After years of making political documentaries only to have them banned (or refused English language prints: same thing) by the Canadian National Film Board, and low budget political feature films (which are rarely seen), Denys Arcand became an overnight success with The Decline Of The American Empire, which concerned two groups of middle-aged people discussing sex. His follow up, Jesus Of Montreal, won the jury pnze at the Cannes Film Festival. Arcand had truly arrived.

In Montreal a young actor, Daniel (Lothaire Bluteau, Black Robe, Orlando) is given the job of directing and taking the lead role in the Passion Play. He rewrites the script, casts good actors, and becomes unexpectedly the toast of the town. But gradually, inevitably, Daniel begins to take on the characteristics of the role he is playing.

Only once are the similarities between Daniel and Christ too explicitly, blatantly shown: in the scene where Daniel runs amok during the shooting of a seedy commercial (where Christ drives the money-changers from the temple). Elsewhere the devil appears as a show-business lawyer to tempt Daniel with the kingdoms of the media and the actors are betrayed by the play's Judatic producer under pressure from the conservative parishioners.

All this allows Arcand to make some brutal caricatures of the media, religion and bureaucracy, and although he sometimes takes a sledgehammer to his victims, this cannot be said to be an overtly political film. Jesus Of Montreal is about maintaining integrity in a worid which is losing its grip on reality, and affirms Arcand's position as a player on the international film scene while remaining astutely Canadian.

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96