SON OF MAN (2006)

Mark Dornford-May's movie, only his second feature, is a retelling of the Jesus story in 21st century Africa. Stylistically it's most likely inspiration is Pier Paolo Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), which, while ostensibly set in the correct historical period, embraced anachronistic elements (like American gospel songs on the soundtrack) while paring away the opulent details that characterized Hollywood gospel films. Son of Man is a very musical film, its range extending from spiritual ecstasy to choral defiance. The music carries much of the burden of the film's spirituality. The story, as told here, is arguably more mundane.

The opening promises something less mundane. We start with the temptations in the desert, Satan goading a Jesus in robes and whiteface to make stones from bread, jump off a cliff, etc. Jesus (Andile Kosi) has enough, finally, and shoves the Evil One off a sand dune. "Get thee behind me Satan," he says -- familiar enough. What follows isn't: "This is my world!" Satan disagrees, of course.

It looks like we've been dropped in the middle of a familiar story in well-established modern cinema fashion, but this opening proves more of a prologue, a preliminary to Jesus's decision to be born in the African kingdom of Judea, a nation torn by strife pitting King Herode against a shadowy foreign-backed Democratic Coalition. In a village a woman flees from machete-wielding dancing killers. She plays dead in a schoolroom full of massacred children, and the soldiers (and Satan) miss her. Just when she thinks she's safe an angel, a child adorned with white feathers, performs the annunciation. She and her husband (his role as minimal as ever) become refugees, and she gives birth in a shed as a host of child-angels summon shepherds to the scene. A few years later the family barely escapes a massacre of children at a checkpoint. The child angel appears again, offering little Jesus his protection. The boy rejects it, reaffirming: "This is my world!"

From this point, Dornford-May and his writing team try to have things both ways. Jesus retains his own divine powers, enabling him to heal, exorcise and revive. But while he's clearly a supernatural being, his kingdom is very much of this (or "my") world. In fact, he hardly talks of a "kingdom" at all, of God or otherwise. His is a political mission. He denounces Herode and his foreign-manipulated successors in turn; he denounces the imperialist mentality that dismisses Africans as mere tribal savages; he denounces the U.S. for blocking the production of cheap medicine through the use of commercial patents. "We have been lied to," he repeats, "Evil did not fall." His answer is solidarity, justice and nonviolence. Some of his own disciples have been guerrilla fighters (some of the others are women); he makes them give up their guns. As videos of his sermons circulate and stories of miracles boost his credibility, the Democratic Coalition sees him as a political rival. They want their inside man, Judas, to get the evidence they need to justify taking Jesus down. The Passion, or at least the opening act, will be televised -- or at least it could be later....

As a non-believer, it may not be my business to say whether Son of Man gets Jesus "right" or not, but two things about it struck me as peculiar. First, the concept of Jesus as a primarily political actor is bound to be controversial. The idea of a Jesus who really says nothing about God or God's supposed love for man, will be a deal-breaker for many Christians. For my part, I do wonder whether it misrepresents the historical Jesus, but some people say the Gospels misrepresent him, also. Second, Christianity is going to have a very different history in the video age. The African Jesus is sometimes surrounded by camcorders, and some of his sayings, at least, can be recorded indisputably. But because the filmmakers are bound by the traditional Jesus narrative, they don't really explore the implications of an Incarnation in the Information Age.

Son of Man is ultimately a cultural rather than a religious document, though it could be described as liberation theology. Its effort to make Jesus relevant to contemporary Africa tells us as much about the filmmakers' vision of Africa as it does about their idea of Christianity. As a Jesus movie, some viewers will find it more palatable than the more gruesomely faithful Passion of the Christ. People who admire the Pasolini Gospel may find Son of Man a natural next step, though they might be surprised to see the end borrow the long shadow symbolizing resurrection from the Nicholas Ray King of Kings. For people who are students or fans of the Jesus genre, as I am to an extent, Son of Man is obviously worth seeing, but I'd also recommend it as a film of interest, if not necessarily a great film, to anyone interested in politically-committed African cinema.

This trailer, uploaded to YouTube by AiMfilmfest, gives a good idea of the mix of modernity and archetypes throughout the picture: