The Brand New Testament, 2015.
Directed by Jaco Van Dormael.
Starring Pili Groyne, Benoit Poelvoorde, Catherine Deneuve and Yolande Moreau.
SYNOPSIS:
God is alive and living in Brussels, but he’s not as you imagine him. Bad tempered, scruffy and more than fond of a drink, he locks himself away in a vast office in front of his computer, where he invents laws and irritations to make life more difficult for us mere mortals. He’s less than benevolent to his long-suffering wife and also has a young daughter, as well as the son that everybody knows about. But when he pushes the girl too far, she gets her revenge by hacking into his computer so that everybody receives a text telling them their individual death date. It’s a life changer, regardless of how long they’ve got left. Or not.
We all know we’re going to die at some time – death, taxes, blah, blah – but we try not to think about it. I mean, would you really want to know exactly when it’s going to happen? Not how or where, just when. In The Brand New Testament, everybody receives a text telling them, immediately whetting your appetite for how they’re going to react. Their appointed dates and times are all different. Like the man who checks the text as he’s driving, finds he’s only got a couple more seconds …… and you can guess the rest. Or there are those with decades left, like the recurrent Kevin, who throws himself off tall buildings, aeroplanes and bridges because he knows he’s not going to die. Others might as a result of his actions – that’s because it was their turn – but he always survives, despite the neck brace, leg plaster and other assorted injuries.
The God (Benoit Poelvoorde) overseeing this world is nothing short of a git, clad in a permanent scowl and equally permanent dirty dressing gown, guzzling beer and not caring in the least for humanity. He’s more like the meddling gods Shakespeare had in mind in tragedies like King Lear – “they play with us for sport” – so his laws dictate that toast always lands jam side down and that the queue next to the one you’re in always moves faster. We’ve all been there, now we know who’s responsible.
What we also discover about him is that he has a daughter, Ea (Pili Groyne), as well as the long-departed son, JC, who we all know about. And it’s that big brother that encourages the girl to leave home, but he also entrusts her with writing the brand new testament of the title. To do that, she needs to recruit six disciples because it’s their stories, not hers, that will fill the pages. So there’s would-be assassin Francois (Francois Damiens) who views his profession with a wonderfully warped logic. If he doesn’t hit his target, it wasn’t their turn. If he does, it was. Either way, he’s not responsible. There’s Martine (Catherine Deneuve) who’s trapped in a loveless marriage and, after paying for sex with a much younger man, she finds happiness with a gorilla she purchases from a circus. And, yes, it’s a person in a hairy suit.
That’s not the only so-called special effect which is more than a little obvious. Not that director Jaco Van Dormael should be taking lessons from Jon Favreau and The Jungle Book team, because he’s trying to create a humorous fantasy, a whimsical look at life and its influences with the occasional touch of a fairy story thrown in. Ea’s escape route to the outside world owes is a first cousin of C S Lewis’s wardrobe. The sad thing is that it doesn’t always have the magic of a fairy tale, especially in the latter stages. To be frank, he cops out, giving it a conclusion that’s less than the idea deserves. He’s spent the whole film building up to the climax and wastes it by giving us something really feeble.
The film’s charm – and it has plenty – comes from its quirkiness, even if it is self-conscious at times. There’s little in the way of philosophical thought, something of a surprise given the subject matter, because Van Dormael is keeping it light and amusing. That side of it works, but there’s so little depth that the end result of frivolous and lightweight – entertaining and inventive, certainly, but not much more than that.
If you want a testament to follow, you’d be better off with the previous one.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper – Follow me on Twitter, check out my blog and listen to my podcast, Talking Pictures.
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published April 13, 2016. Updated November 13, 2019.
