I am crying out of anger about this pretentious stylish waste of time. Here you see the passion of Christ transferred – not so much in the contemporary or near suspected future but in the world of advertising film's aesthetic. Most of the actors look like being casted straight from the catwalk, performing most serious actions like they were posing for an ambitious shooting. The settings, the light - it's all about beauty shots (even Judas' hanging loop looks like a pastiche of the "Conjuring"-poster) mixed with scenes of violence supposed to be graphic (yes, it hurts, when a nail is hammered through your palm, so what?) and to appear political (with a few suits and ties the Sanhedrin is turned - guess what? - into a bunch of bankers. Isn't that one of the most obvious antisemitic clichés by the way? - Put a black bag over Jesus' head and kick him in a tiled basement - there you go Abu-Ghuraib, but why?). There is not a single interesting idea to be found here - except maybe the question: What did Lazarus do, when he heard that his Saviour couldn't save himself? Meanwhile the story is mostly sticking to the biblical template it's mounted with found footage of various street riots all over the world (but obviously NOT in the world the film is actually showing). What is supposed to illustrate the world wide crisis, the gap between the few riches and the poor majority Jesus came to solve, is just illustrating the gap between provincial longing for meaningful artistic action and media's reflection of the reality. In short: this seems to me the worst example of misled ambition, maybe since Mel Gibson idea to take a long lens shot through the stigmata's hole of resurrected Christ in his own passion.
Review of Jesus Cries
