TV-movie: The Jesus Video
Dec. 3rd, 2005 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartAnd again, I was promised the visual adaptation of a great book and was sorely disappointed.
There is this excellent German novel Das Jesus Video, which is about the prospect a video camera being found in a 2000-year-old grave at a digging in Israel... a video camera that Sony still has in development and that isn't due to come out for another year yet. This leads to much guesswork, until all parties realize that there must be a camera somewhere indeed, with actual video records of Jesus himself.
Everyone gets extremely agitated, of course, especially the Vatican and the Congragation of Faith (the leader of which the current Pope was for a long time), which is the actual succesor of the Holy Inquisition. Everyone wants the camera, the Vatican most - to destroy the record, as the historic Jesus would not match their teachings, they say. Much scheming ensues. In the end, the Vatican gets the record and destroys it, but it's too late. It has already been copied and distributed by the hundreds.
And now comes what makes the book really great. The hard proof doesn't solve the question of belief or disbelief at all. Those who are willing to believe, feel their beliefs proved. Those who are not call the record a fake, although it is not. So, this is a wonderfully philosophical piece, disguised as an action novel. Or as a sci-fi.
They made a bad action movie out of it. With lots of gruesome torture performed by the thugs of the Vatican, by killing off two of the three main characters, by putting a sappy romance into it, and by making the main character the actual time traveller, which, in the book, he was not.
Reminiscences of the LOTR movies and the Earthsea miniseries came up again. I'm fearing the Narnia movie already. I don't think I will keep this record. :(
Cross-posted to the Otherworlds board.
There is this excellent German novel Das Jesus Video, which is about the prospect a video camera being found in a 2000-year-old grave at a digging in Israel... a video camera that Sony still has in development and that isn't due to come out for another year yet. This leads to much guesswork, until all parties realize that there must be a camera somewhere indeed, with actual video records of Jesus himself.
Everyone gets extremely agitated, of course, especially the Vatican and the Congragation of Faith (the leader of which the current Pope was for a long time), which is the actual succesor of the Holy Inquisition. Everyone wants the camera, the Vatican most - to destroy the record, as the historic Jesus would not match their teachings, they say. Much scheming ensues. In the end, the Vatican gets the record and destroys it, but it's too late. It has already been copied and distributed by the hundreds.
And now comes what makes the book really great. The hard proof doesn't solve the question of belief or disbelief at all. Those who are willing to believe, feel their beliefs proved. Those who are not call the record a fake, although it is not. So, this is a wonderfully philosophical piece, disguised as an action novel. Or as a sci-fi.
They made a bad action movie out of it. With lots of gruesome torture performed by the thugs of the Vatican, by killing off two of the three main characters, by putting a sappy romance into it, and by making the main character the actual time traveller, which, in the book, he was not.
Reminiscences of the LOTR movies and the Earthsea miniseries came up again. I'm fearing the Narnia movie already. I don't think I will keep this record. :(
Cross-posted to the Otherworlds board.
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Date: 2005-12-05 04:09 pm (UTC)Which is shorter than my loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong list of "movies I should see."
Where does the time go? [grin]