'The Book of Clarence' Review: Jeymes Samuel's Biblical Satire Is All Bark, No Bite
While The Book of Clarence boasts great lead performances and a terrific sense of style, its thematic underpinnings through its theological setting are all surface-level, unafraid to question anything it unevenly presents.
The first image of Jeymes Samuel’s The Book of Clarence is its most striking: an ultra-wide shot presenting a group of people standing on crosses, crucified, with a rousing Western-like score (from Samuel himself) that directly evokes the work of Ennio Morricone. Then, a close-up of our protagonist, Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield), is crucified and reminiscing about his past life.
The film then cuts to that past life, which sees Clarence and his best friend, Elijah (RJ Cyler), racing against Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor) in the streets of Jerusalem after attempting to run over a beggar (Benedict Cumberbatch) with his carriage. The race doesn’t go well, as Clarence and Elijah crash land directly into Jesus (Nicholas Pinnock) and his twelve apostles, one of them being Clarence’s brother, Thomas (also played by Stanfield).
We then learn of one crucial element that will feed the protagonist Samuel throughout his 129 minutes: Clarence is an atheist and thinks his brother is delusional in following someone who says he is bringing hope to the Holy Land but is, in reality, tricking his people. However, when Clarence begins to have trouble with Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), to whom he owes money and is also in love with his sister, Varinia (Anna Diop), he believes he can absolve himself by becoming a believer.
The premise itself is great, and it’s even greater when you learn that Clarence wants to appease a higher power by becoming the thirteenth apostle of Jesus. When it doesn’t work, he seeks to become the next Messiah himself by performing the same “miracles” as the real Messiah, but in an attempt to gain enough money to pay Jedediah and hopefully get the girl.
It begins to work until it attracts the attention of the Roman Empire, who arrest Clarence for posing as a Messiah. While Clarence tells Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy) that it was all a lie, the governor still wants to set an example to Judeah by crucifying him and anyone associated with Jesus of Nazareth. It’s from there that The Book of Clarence begins to derail, never knowing if it should stick close to the Biblical story of The New Testament or satirize it.
When it attempts to reinterpret The New Testament, it works, but to an extent. Stanfield and Cyler are always entertaining to watch throughout, and the film’s style is rhythmically structured through Samuel’s compositions and original songs, which, at times, are highly inspiring and propulse the film forward. The rhythm is what gives The Book of Clarence its raison d’être, with Samuel giving an incredible marriage of images and sounds akin to visual (and spiritual) poetry.
One scene, in particular, is the closest Samuel (and cinematographer Rob Hardy) will get to capturing spiritual enlightenment, as Clarence and Elijah get literally and figuratively high off weed and begin to float in the air. It’s at that moment that a lightbulb appears on top of Clarence, giving him the idea of a lifetime that will ultimately send him to his doom. However, for one brief moment, spiritual enlightenment looks — and feels — real.
With a style that is highly evocative and distinct from other Biblical satires or retellings of the story of Christ, one would think a movie like this would work, especially with such an incredible ensemble on display. Credit where credit is due: there isn’t a single bad performance in The Book of Clarence, even if the material teeters from decently chuckling to cataclysmically abysmal.
One such scene sees Clarence visit Mary (Alfre Woodard), where Samuel attempts to reinterpret the concept of the Immaculate Conception, where the belief of the Virgin Mary’s birth of Jesus absolves her from all sin. A couple of lines from Woodard’s portrayal of Mary work well, but the scene itself has no idea what it wants to say about the birth of Jesus, and Clarence attempts to peer through what he believes is a scam, no matter what she tells him. One wonders why this scene was here in the first place if the story re-shifts The New Testament from Jesus to Clarence.
The running bit involving Cumberbatch’s beggar is also a victim of Samuel’s empty satire: Cumberbatch’s presence is tiresome until an encounter with Jesus sees him as the star of the film’s best visual gag. But Samuel quickly fizzles out the joke instead of sitting with it for a bit and seeing the repercussions of Cumberbatch’s character change. Ultimately, the Oscar-winning actor’s performance is fine, but his talents are completely wasted.
It’s only because of Stanfield, Cyler, and Omar Sy, who portrays the immortal Barabbas, that the film is relatively engaging to watch. Stanfield, in particular, shines in a dual role as a man who believes a higher power doesn’t exist until he begins to experience that higher power for himself. The shift is dramatically felt into one of the film’s few exciting — but predictable — setpieces, in which Clarence walks on water after Pontius Pilate tells him to prove he is not a Messiah.
Stanfield’s performance in the first half of The Book of Clarence is more crowd-pleasing, whilst his spiritual enlightenment progressively changes him to the consensual depiction of who Jesus was through its stories by its apostles in The New Testament. Perhaps this is what Samuel wants to tell through his overlong and, ultimately, vapid satire. However, there’s no throughline in his division of the film into three “books” that makes it hard to grasp exactly what he wants audiences to retain from the Bible and what he wants to recontextualize through the figure of Clarence.
It’s even more frustrating when the film blends modern slang with Bible scripture in the characters’ lines, making The Book of Clarence an anachronistic retelling of The New Testament. While one particular line definitely worked in the audience, one has to ask why Samuel wanted to blend the old and the new. There surely must be something he wants us to feel and hear when blending a historical story with contemporary themes and feelings.
Yet, it seems like the most unimportant part of Samuel’s film, as he completely gives it up when the audience is introduced to McAvoy’s Pontius Pilate. From there, the comedy is gone, the rhythmic (and striking) marriage of image and sound is also gone, and the performances also take a nose-dive. The Book of Clarence transforms itself into a rote and exploitative finale that directly harkens back to Mel Gibson’s repulsive The Passion of the Christ.
Any good intention Samuel had with making The Book of Clarence is completely gone, with the movie nauseatingly stretching itself to near-torturous territory, never knowing when to end and what to say about Clarence’s quest for Faith. It’s clear he had nothing to say, regardless of his powerful image and sound-making and great performances from Stanfield et al. Had the film profoundly changed the story of The New Testament to fit contemporary times, it likely would’ve been a smash hit. But Samuel is too busy juggling satire and Biblical recreations that he ultimately fails to make a thoughtful — and entertaining — satire on religion and the Bible. Rewriting scripture is one thing. Rehashing the Bible without any theological underpinning behind it all is lazy and boring.