After a quick lunch at a little cafe called City Snacks, just round the corner from the Museum of St. John, I caught a bus to Waterloo to see a Pier Paolo Pasolino film entitloed "The Gospel According to Matthew", which was showing at 3.00 p.m. I just made it; getting of the bus at the last stop at ten to three, I hurried along Stamford Street, and then to the Embankment, and arrived at the ticket office with about two minutes to spare. Fortunately, there was no queue and they had some tickets left for that performance, so I was in luck.
"The Gospel According to Matthew", which won praise from the Vatican, is a beautiful film, shot entirely using untained actors, the dialogue is sparse and almost entirely taken from St. Matthew's Gospel. The actors themselves play their parts convincingly, despite their lack of formal training; they are obviusly ordinary people, rather than professionals. There was an otherworldliness about the girl who played the angel, who first appeared to Joseph as a part of a dream. she later made other appearance, such as to the Holy Family in Egypt anf at the tomb.
If I have any criticisms of the film, one of them would be that the character who played Jesus was sometimes too forceful, as when he threw the moneychangers out of the temple; somehow, his language seemed to violent and forceful.
My other criticism would be that I wonder how much people would understand of the story if they did not know it already; to anyone familiar with the Gospel, it was easy to follow, but if one wasn't?Somehow I think they would go away very confused, wondering what it was all about. But perhaps that is inevitable with a film of this sort.
No comments:
Post a Comment