Corpus Christi by Mateusz Pacewicz - 8.5 out of 10

Corpus Christi by Mateusz Pacewicz

8.5 out of 10

This motion picture has been nominated for the Academy Awards Best International Feature trophy, though it and the other contestants (all better than Boze Cialo) had no chance against Parasite, winner not only of this category, but for Best Motion Picture of the Year (the first foreign film to do that…ever), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, given that in spite of some extraordinary aspects of the story, the transcendent, haunting, complex, outré, perhaps only slightly off the target at times, Bartosz Bielenia the actor in the leading role of Daniel, the feature does venture into some less exulting territory, or as one critic has put it, the element of soap opera compromises the more thoughtful intents of the movie, to some extent…

Daniel is a twenty year old inmate of a Youth Detention Center, where he has to experience both terrible moments, such as the one that we see early on, where one other prisoner has his testicles caught in a machine, by the other jail birds who have something against him, or just play one of those sick games which would later involve the protagonist, but not just as watching out for the officials, as in that first torture, but engaged in a very violent fight with a much stronger, or at least heavier and bigger opponent, and some apparently inspiring events, such as the sermons and encouragements of the priest assigned to this Center, the original Priest Tomasz…

Indeed, the film opens with a talk by this clergy, who invites the inmates (and the audiences) to think about the meaning of life (Why are We here, though not in Monty Python fashion) and has a very iconoclast approach to ‘spreading the word of Christ’, which seems so much more appropriate to the medium where he has to work and would look effective as well, given what happens with the hero of the story…well, not the part where he plays the impostor surely, but where he tries to be good, generous with those in need, push love thy neighbor and try the prevention of evil thoughts and deeds…

What happens in this film is something we have seen or read before, most importantly in the sublime book by Sinclair Lewis - http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/04/elmer-gantry-by-sinclair-lewis-great.html - Elmer Gantry, adapted for the big screen, with the Divine Burt Lancaster in the leading role http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/11/note-on-elmer-gantry-based-on-novel-by.html - the plot centering on the idea of a fake priest that takes center stage based on his charm, powerful personality and eventually gaining financial or other advantage from the ignorant, duped crowds that want to believe he is a Savior and thus fool themselves into becoming followers, worshippers of this false idol…

There is a crucial difference in Corpus Christi, where we are not sure of the motives of the central personage, though some would say that Daniel ‘experiences a spiritual transformation’, which might be the perfect explanation, but the undersigned thinks this is more complicated than that and the initial launch into the ‘priesthood’ might have been rather involuntary, taken as a challenge by the young man who, when out of the Detention Center, takes drugs, has sex in a toilet (as so many times before surely) and then enters a verbal dispute on the bus, when a man comes to him and tells him to stop smoking and when the antihero (at this point he is no role model, on the contrary) challenges him like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct as she is told there is no smoking in the interrogation room but she just defies that…

The man who wanted the smoking to stop, so reasonably, shows his identification to show what happens if the young rebel keeps smoking as he had intended, sure that nothing much can happen to him in that environment, but then the policeman becomes rude, arrogant, discriminatory and shows why, at least in part, the antihero is so radicalized and defiant of the rules, when he states that he must surely come from the nearby Detention Center and he is on parole…this man of the law can ‘smell and see them a mile away…’ words to that effect, not a perfect rendition…

As he arrives in this village, the main character enters a church, where Eliza is sitting and presumably praying, and when they enter a dialogue and she seems to look somewhat down on him, Daniel decides to say he is a priest – the perspective of others writing about the plot is that he had always had this calling…well, maybe, my take is that he just felt he has to challenge, stupefy the girl – and thereupon he would act this part with gusto, though he rather looks like the figure from the Revivalist, Nontraditional, New Churches we read about in Latin America, Africa, the Emerging World, where in order to attract the masses, the clergy resort to all kinds of tactics, which include rock music, dancing, gospel like and pumped up versions of performances that defy old traditions and customs of the Catholic church…

There is a chance for this role playing, because the local priest is sick or just drinks too much and thus he asks for help from the young man and once one substitution is performed, with fresh, creative improvisations and some cues taken from the priest of Center, Father Tomasz, who was provoking the inmates to shout to the maximum level, the role seems to suit the young ‘clergy’, who pushes the limit further and further, confessing to the young ones in the village that he ‘had done everything, before entering this cloth, for priests are also humans…’ he does advocate for celibacy though, for once one enters the new calling, these are the rules and they have to be followed…provoking the public to think of the new provocations for the Pope, the idea that had just been rejected of having married priests in the remote corners of the Amazon…

Central to the narrative is the accident that had taken place and which had killed six young people, apparently killed by another driver, alone in his car, just as they had come out of some party – we see footage that seems to suggest the driver of the car with the young ones could have been drunk – and this results in a tragedy for the villagers, but also causes some vile acts, the dead ‘killer’ is refused burial in the village by the vicar and he is vilified by all the relatives, who would be exposed for their ‘ungodly’ behavior by the young priest, who tries to approach the widow of the ‘exiled dead’ and provokes some clashes with the rich mayor and others…in an amusing moment, Daniel has a ‘blessing’ of a new facility for the mayor where he talks about the vanity of the rich, the need to think of others and more in the same vein, asking all to kneel down…in the mud that is there…

Boze Cialo is a remarkable film, though it could have avoided some of the more flamboyant, perhaps inadequate immersions into soap opera domain…but even this experiment might be justifiable, for the public needs to be kept watching, in this age, they have little, if any penchant to watch philosophical, dark, deep features…