New Things #13: The Book of Clarence
Maybe I just didn’t get The Book of Clarence. That’s certainly a possibility. But I believe I did and I think it just wasn’t that good.
Two of the cardinal rules of screenwriting/filmmaking are:
You have to make decisions.
The story must go where the characters and their actions lead it, not where the filmmaker wants it to go.
The Book of Clarence doesn’t just break these rules, it obliterates them.
The premise of the film is a ne’er do well in Jerusalem in 33 AD decides to pretend to be the new Messiah. It’s an idea that’s ripe with possibilities and writer/direct Jeymes Samuel tries to do them all.
On one hand, the film makes a clever decision to tell (for lack of a better term) a “hood movie” but based in the first century. It plays with many of the tropes of black inner-city cinema and sets them in the age of Jesus. Clarence is on his grind but not very successful, he runs afoul of the neighborhood bully/gangster, and has to find a way out. He’s also in love with the girl next door / sister of said gangster, and wants to move his mom to a nicer place.
This is an interesting approach but then Samuel also wants to make a revisionist history explaining how things might have gone down back then and why we ended up with Christianity as we know it. It tells a story of what might have happened for us to get the stories and images of the current Christ.
On top of that, Samuel also wants to make a redemption story. I’ll go more into this later but this is the biggest failing of the movie, it’s completely nonsensical, and gives us the most unearned ending since “Baby Boy.”
There’s also some family drama with Clarence’s twin brother and his mom, which is completely superfluous. The brother only seems to serve as someone to give or hear expository dialogue.
The film also randomly throws in references to various Biblical characters, with Samson, Goliath, Jezebel, and others all making Marvel-esque cameos. (The dialogue in the film also wavers from sounding like Bible verse to moments of modern language. Often times the change is an attempt at humor but it’s more miss than hit.)
While all of that is going on, the director still finds time to showcase his music. Jeymes Samuel (the younger brother of musical artist Seal) didn’t just write and direct the movie, he also wrote the music, and you can tell he’s invested in it because he’s constantly slowing down the movie so he can play out another one of his forgettable* tracks.
(*It should be noted that my ability to judge music in movies isn’t good. I left “Frozen” thinking that it didn’t have any real standout songs. Still, I stand by my take on the music from “Clarence.”)
With so much on film’s plate, it’s not surprising that the side characters are all underserved and underdeveloped. Everyone is just there to serve Clarence’s story. That’s especially problematic when one of the side characters is Jesus himself.
Also, when you take on this much, the film’s pacing is likely going to be a slog and this film takes about an hour before the story starts. And even after all of that time, the inciting action is Clarence doing drugs until a light bulb appears above his head. (And if you didn’t get the on-the-nose reference, a character explains that it looks like he has an idea.)
Now, it’s not impossible to juggle most of these issues and still make a good movie but you’re going to need some creative agility to stick the landing and… holy hell, does this movie not stick the landing.
This is where the second issue comes in. Samuel has an idea of where the movie needs to go but in no way, shape, or form do the characters or their actions lead us there. Characters don’t grow, they suddenly, inexplicably change. Clarence is considered a “good guy” throughout the film despite spending the entire film as either a drug dealer, fraud, and/or kind of guy who literally steals clothes from a homeless person. Even while he’s having a crisis of conscience (that arrives out of nowhere for no reason other than the story needs him to have one), he still buys fancy clothes and throws a big party to try to impress/hook up with the girl next door. Christian redemption is based on faith and Clarence’s main teaching as a false prophet is that Knowledge is stronger than faith, and the film (and Jesus in the film) seem to agree and go along with that idea. Admittedly, I’m a lapsed Catholic but the entire Christian angle of the film doesn’t seem to understand faith or Christianity at all. Moreso, it feels like Samuel saying, “Wouldn’t it be better if Christianity worked like this?” (Again, part of “this” being the core belief of the film’s false prophet.)
The final act is a neverending slog that is truly baffling at times and then Samuel lobs brutality into the mix, making it all the more difficult to watch. Most of the final act forgoes the “hood tropes” from earlier except for one moment that’s lobbed in at the end. It is so out of place that it is almost comical if not for Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s performance and the fact that it happens while stark violence is unfolding on screen.
Looking at some reviews, I’m struck by how many people laud Samuel’s direction. To me, the visuals are almost completely style over substance. Much like his screenwriting, the camera work seems more guided by his desire to add some gimmicks than driven by anything that’s happening on screen. I’m not sure what the decisions he’s making are supposed to tell us or how they forward the story. It’s not different from his first film “The Harder They Fall” which reminded me of the campiness of Sam Raimi’s “The Quick and The Dead.”
In the end, much like the last movie I saw, “The Beekeeper”, this film simply didn’t work for me. The key difference, though, is that “The Beekeeper” intended to be nonsense.