{"id":76,"date":"2002-04-30T15:56:10","date_gmt":"2002-04-30T22:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=76"},"modified":"2002-04-30T15:56:10","modified_gmt":"2002-04-30T22:56:10","slug":"the-book-of-life-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Life – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Guardian (London), August 27, 1997<\/em>
\n<\/bapocalypse,>By Jonathan Romney<\/p>\n

As prophesied by Hal Hartley, the Apocalypse will come when Jesus flies into JFK in search of The Book holding the names of the redeemed. The book is an Apple Mac Powerbook, of course, and it only takes a double-click to unfasten the seals that will summon plague, pestilence and the rising of the dead souls. But first, the Messiah must engage in negotiations with uptown lawyers, a breed especially beloved of the Almighty.<\/p>\n

“The Book of Life,” an hour-long vignette, is Hartley all over. Jesus is played by the director’s craggy-faced, impassive regular Martin Donovan as a charismatic, careworn executive in a business suit. His brisk, glamorous personal assistant, Mary Magdalene, is played to rather wooden effect by avant-rock queen PJ Harvey. Satan is in town too, a shambling lounge-lizard. Played by Thomas Jay Ryan, with an appealingly shaggy Tom Waits edge, it’s Satan who provides the film’s pithiest moments. But isn’t that always the way?<\/p>\n

“The Book of Life” is a new departure for Hartley only in terms of the visuals. Shot with High-Definition TV equipment, the image constantly shakes, shivers and blurs. But the film relies too heavily on this visual frenzy for its energy: it suffers from Hartley’s usual complaints, a stiltedness in the dialogue and acting, and a chronic fixation with surface glamour.<\/p>\n

The trouble is, there’s nothing very new about the film’s satirical passion play. Jesus and Satan engage in philosophical disputations like a couple of boardroom litigants. They used to work for the same boss, Jesus points out. “I quit,” retorts Satan. “You were fired,” Jesus corrects him.<\/p>\n

The metaphysical crux of the story revolves around the fate of the one Good Soul in New York, a Japanese waitress (Miho Nikaido), who wins a million on the lottery and decides to spend it all dispensing soup — which makes for one of the film’s better running gags. But the more flip the film becomes, the more you feel that Hartley imagines it to be a terribly trenchant jeu d’esprit rather than the souped-up sketch that it is.<\/p>\n

The mix of dry theological dialogues and disjointed slapstick suggests warmed-over Dostoevsky given a Godard polish. So this is how the world ends, neither with a bang nor a whimper but an arched eyebrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian (London), August 27, 1997 By Jonathan Romney As prophesied by Hal Hartley, the Apocalypse will come when Jesus flies into JFK in search of The Book holding the names of the redeemed. The book is an Apple Mac Powerbook, of course, and it only takes a double-click to unfasten the seals that will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}