'Jesus' is relevant and reverent
With the Messiah portrayed as a party-loving, joke-playing average guy and Satan done up like an Armani-clad, heavily moussed Hollywood mogul, the CBS miniseries "Jesus" runs little risk of being confused with anyone's idea of Sunday school.
But lest we send viewers off in search of seemingly less blasphemous fare, let them be advised that "Jesus" is more than just all right. It is enjoyable, easily the best miniseries of the May ratings period.
Faint praise, perhaps. But director Roger Young, a veteran of such biblical TV projects as "Joseph," "Moses" and "Solomon" for producer Lorenzo Minoli, has made "Jesus" relevant and reverent.
TV REVIEW
Someone out there will likely disagree after watching two hours Sunday and two more next Wednesday. But this is hardly the eyebrow raiser that, say, "Jesus Christ Superstar" was nearly 30 years ago. Nowhere in this two-night "epic event" does Herod Antipas demand of Jesus: "Prove to me that you're no fool; walk across my swimming pool!"
Sure, artistic license is taken. But mostly to good effect. Take the character Livio. If memory serves, he doesn't show up in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. But he's hard to miss in "Jesus." A Roman spy in Herod's court, Livio is the story's facilitator, passing along plot points rooted in biblical history even though Livio himself never existed.
It's the sort of dramatic contrivance currently under attack for wringing the credibility out of such "true story" films as "The Hurricane" and "The Insider." But, in the right hands -- not to mention in a story where hard facts are hard to come by anyway -- it can work wonders.
Director Young chose a favorite of his, G.W. Bailey, to play Livio. Known to many as the scheming Sgt. Rizzo from the later years of "M*A*S*H" (or the moronic Capt. Harris of the "Police Academy" films), Bailey has appeared in several of Young's projects, including "Solomon" and "Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy." In "Jesus," he makes Livio an obsequious sycophant who kisses up to higher-ups, the kind of weasel who makes Judas Iscariot look like an OK guy.
Bailey's scenes with the estimable Gary Oldman, who plays Pontius Pilate, help raise "Jesus" from the pile of May-sweeps detritus that inevitably clutters the schedule. It is the rare miniseries these days that bothers to pay serious attention to developments outside the realm of the principal characters, but Suzette Couture's script does noble justice to the personae of Pilate, Herod (Luca Barbareschi) and even the high priest Caiaphas (Christian Kohlund), who starts out as a heroic defender of the Jewish faith but ultimately succumbs to the political realities of his office when Jesus proves too charismatic a figure to ignore.
Aside from the usual lack of Semitic-looking people, "Jesus" is a worthy addition to the film industry's biblical canon, gently imparting the message that faith in the unknowable does not take destiny out of the hands of the faithful.
Though Jeremy Sisto almost underplays the title role in the quest for regular-guy authenticity, he effectively conveys the idea that a God who requires people to make their own choices in life isn't a mean God, just a demanding one.
If Jacqueline Bisset deserved an Emmy nomination for her barely noticeable maternal turn in "Joan of Arc" last year, she deserves canonization for her portrayal of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Since the miniseries focuses on the adult Jesus, Bisset's Mary is already comfortable in the knowledge of her son's ultimate mission, and Bisset graces the role with a subtle strength that makes CBS look brilliant for scheduling Part I on Mother's Day.
Although Debra Messing is miscast as Mary Magdalene -- Stefania Rocca, who plays Mary of Bethany, might have been a better choice -- the film does succeed on the strength of potent characterization, right down to Jeroen Krabbe's jarring Satan.
Young chose to dress Krabbe in modern attire -- a ploy that smacks of silliness unless one considers Christ's temptation in the desert to have been the sort of troublesome reverie in which reality is the first casualty. And when one thinks of the alternative Satan -- a guy in red leotard with horns and a barbed tail -- the black business suit is devilishly on point.
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