Jesus of Montreal - Passion Play or Passionate Players

About the Film

Daniel Coulombe (Lothaire Bluteau) is engaged by a Montreal priest to improve on the parish's tired passion play. He is quietly excited by the possibility and invites a group of old actor friends to join him in revitalizing and bringing new life to the play. They will stage the performance outside by torchlight on the crest of Mount Royal with the lights of the below. The script is modern, visceral, and engages the audience. The actors all manage to improve their Real life situations examples include a man who gives up dubbing scripts for porno movies and a woman leaves an abusive partner to become Mary Magdalene.

At first, the priest is happy with their efforts, but he looses his confidence and credibility when Daniel figures out that he is sleeping with one of the female actors. The play is a huge success, but nameless clerical authorities are disturbed by the sexuality and the avant-garde performance; in the absence of support from the priest, they revoke the right to perform.

As an act of defiance the troupe performs the play anyway, hoping the police will be sympathetic to them. A naked Coulombe is arrested off the cross in the midst of his crucifixion scene. An altercation takes place and ultimately he suffers an accidental head injury. He is then taken by ambulance to a busy hospital where he is refused treatment. Daniel is able to recover enough to sign himself out but collapses in a subway station. He is attended by the two dismayed and disoriented women who again take him to another hospital, the Jewish Hospital, where he dies.

In an unlikely resurrection scene a doctor asks his female companions to give his body over to donate his organs. Though they are not family they agree and his body is used to being life and wholeness to others.

The shift

As we see the film progress it becomes more and more about the experiences of the actors and how much they mirror the passion narrative. My question is if the film is a true passion passion play or if it is simply the tale of passionate actors who are putting on a passion play. Daniel has begun to identify with his character. Accompanying Mireille to an audition for a beer commercial, he is enraged when she is humiliated by the producer and director. Taking a cue from Jesus in the Temple, he smashes the television equipment and drives the advertising clients out of the theatre.

In the midst of the next performance of the Passion play, Daniel is arrested by the police on charges of aggravated assault and vandalism. Released from custody after a hearing, Daniel is propositioned by Richard Cardinal (Yves Jacques), a show business lawyer who offers to make him a superstar; through the right career planning, he is assured all of Montreal could be his.

Theology

While it is clear that Daniel is an actor portraying Jesus in a live action passion play. The film begins to quickly draw you into him as a Jesus figure and not just an actor. In one of the crucial scenes in Jesus of Montreal, Father Leclerc tells Daniel that churchgoers don't want to be informed about what his research reveals about Jesus. They come looking for happiness; they hope to be consoled with the good news that "Jesus loves them and awaits them." Turned out by the church, Daniel must find his own understanding of what Jesus means. The path leads to the innards of the city where his life and death give significance to the Scriptural passage "Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friends."

Critique

By the film's end it's hard to tell where one person ends and the other begins. The story is simple and the movie is powerful. The performances are gripping. Jesus of Montreal seems to be born, perhaps, as a critique of society in the 80’s, but which still brings to life the Passion. It brings to life the Passion of Christ through the passion of man.