Film review by Kevin Patterson
STIGMATA Rating: ** (out of four) R, 1999 Director: Rupert Wainwright Screenplay: Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage Starring Cast: Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Pryce
STIGMATA arrives in theaters amidst a certain amount of controversy over its negative portrayal of the Catholic Church's authority structure. Personally, I don't think it's worth anyone's effort to get offended over something as incoherent as this film, which amounts to little more than a two-hour music video. Some half-hearted attempts are made to tell a story about Vatican concealment of a previously unknown gospel, but most of it makes very little sense and is drowned out by the endless MTV-style cutting and the disruptively loud soundtrack. Viewers are more likely to come away questioning the screenplay's logic than questioning their religious beliefs.
The title refers to a condition reportedly experienced by various religious believers throughout history, in which the person mysteriously begins to exhibit the wounds inflicted on Christ before he died: nail puncture holes in the wrists and feet, lacerations from a whip and a crown of thorns, and spear wounds to the sides. STIGMATA begins by introducing us to Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne), a Catholic priest and a former scientist who investigates reports of miracles for the Church. He is sent to Pittsburgh when Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette), a 23-year-old hair-stylist and, we learn, an atheist, begins to exhibit the stigmata. Andrew quickly realizes that this is probably legitimate, despite the fact that all previous stigmatics have been devout believers. She is taken to the hospital repeatedly for her injuries, supernatural events such as windows spontaneously breaking seem to follow her, she is hearing voices, and finally she channels an ancient Aramaic text and scrawls it on the wall of her apartment. Andrew's superior, Cardinal Houseman (Jonathan Pryce), however, is strangely disapproving and elusive, and eventually we learn why: the text that Frankie copied is a lost Gospel that Houseman fears could undermine the Church's authority, and he's willing to kill her to keep this discovery quiet.
If there's anything offensive to the Catholic Church here, it's that Andrew and Houseman both seem to be so ignorant about Catholicism. At the beginning, Andrew talks with his mentor in a Vatican library, who reveals that there are actually more supposed gospels in existence than the four in the Bible, and that mainstream Christianity simply hasn't accepted any of the others. This is very old news to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Biblical scholarship, and to suggest that Andrew wouldn't already know this from his seminary training is impossible to swallow. The message contained in the lost Gospel that Houseman seeks to suppress is that the Kingdom of God is found everywhere, most importantly in the individual, and not just in "structures of stone and marble" (i.e. churches). Seeing as Jesus more or less said this in the four traditional Gospels, I can't fathom why Houseman would think it's dangerous. No Catholic priest would deny that the relationship between God and the individual supercedes the importance of an institution, and it isn't as if the text called for the believers to start tearing down churches. Perhaps the biggest howler is when Frankie worries that she will soon die because she will eventually receive the fifth wound of the stigmata -- the spear to the sides, which she calls "the one that killed him." Andrew appears to share her concern, but tries to reassure her by telling her that no one has ever received all five wounds of the stigmata. Evidently he skipped the parts of his training that required him to actually open the Bible, because otherwise he would know that Christ died from being crucified, not from being stabbed to death with a spear.
STIGMATA is filmed in a dimly lit, grainy style of cinematography: it seems to have been inspired more by BATMAN or DARK CITY than JESUS OF NAZARETH. Director Rupert Wainwright's hyperactive camera work is effective in capturing the hallucinatory power of Frankie's supernatural experiences, but it tends to distract in the other scenes, and characterization and plot get lost in the unnecessarily jumpy cutting and the brain-pounding music by Smashing Pumpkins songwriter Billy Corgan. There is only a superficial exploration of the relationship between Frankie and Andrew: much of it focuses on the relatively dull notion that he finds her sexually tempting, and their differences of belief are underdeveloped. Andrew is an interesting character in that he's found himself guided more by science than by faith, but this is unfortunately played out in scenes that seem to lack much internal logic. At one point, when Frankie is channeling, he says, "Who are you?" and the voice of a dead priest tells him, "The messenger is unimportant." Later, she is channeling this same dead priest, and when Andrew asks the spirit if he can be the new messenger, the spirit responds, "The messenger believes. You only have doubt." Now hang on a second: I thought the messenger was unimportant. And if belief is a necessity, why did the spirit choose an atheist as his medium?
The marketing campaign for STIGMATA has touted it as another entry in the recent wave of supernatural thrillers. It is, in fact, the supernatural sequences that are the most effective, since the disorienting music-video style is actually appropriate for these scenes. Wainwright uses a clever technique during the stigmata scenes, cutting back and forth between Frankie exhibiting the wounds and black-and-white flashbacks in which the hammer and nails and the whip are used on Christ. The scenes in which Frankie channels through a deep male voice are also pretty unnerving. I've been told that this was lifted from THE EXORCIST, which I haven't seen, but regardless of where the idea came from, it does work. Even these scenes, however, are marred by poor story logic and a tendency to go over the top. A sequence in which a hysterical Frankie runs out into the middle of the street and causes cars to swerve out of control and crash into each other borders on being unintentionally funny, and the film is never quite clear on who she is channeling and why. Most of the time, it seems to be the dead priest, but there is the hint of demonic possession at one point when she tries to seduce Andrew and then starts cursing at him and throwing him around the room. I was left wondering whether the filmmakers intended for us to think that she was channeling both the spirits of the deceased and demonic visitors, or if they thought for some reason that the spirit of a dead Catholic priest would behave like this. More to the point, I wonder if they even cared, given that they seem much more interested in flashy cutting and visual pyrotechnics than in probing the meaning behind the images they create.
There is a scene midway through the film which illustrates much of what is wrong with Stigmata. Andrew and Frankie are sitting in an outdoor café, discussing their respective lives as Andrew reflects on some of the sacrifices he's made to become a priest. Then their voices become inaudible, with saccharine music playing while we watch their lips move. Then the scene is interrupted by Frankie suddenly exhibiting the thorn wounds on her forehead and screaming hysterically. Riveting, certainly, but the opportunity for character development is wasted in favor of more showy camera work. STIGMATA is a film that would almost be better viewed with the sound turned off, so that the viewer could enjoy the flair and breakneck pacing of the visuals without worrying about the story possibilities that are being squandered along the way.
If this review comes off as unnecessarily harsh, that's probably because STIGMATA is the most frustrating kind of mediocre film: the kind that could have and should have been good. There are many routes that the filmmakers could have taken that would have resulted in a far superior product. The interaction between an atheist receving divine revelation and a priest plagued by doubt could have made for an intriguing character piece. Andrew's dilemma as a priest trying to balance his religious faith and his scientific skepticism would have been a worthy topic in today's world. Frankie's story actually carries some strong Biblical parallels, most notably that of the unbeliever chosen by God and the idea that divine service is equal parts reward and burden. The film refers to each of these issues, but it can't sit still long enough to explore any of them in any depth. Later on, it tries to switch into full-blown conspiracy thriller mode, but the notion of a cardinal trying to suppress a message that's already in the Bible is too ill-conceived for this to be even remotely convincing.
It has yet to be seen whether or not STIGMATA will inspire the same level of widespread protest as, say, The Last Temptation of Christ. Frankly, the screenplay's picture of the Church is so misinformed that nothing it has to say on the subject can be taken especially seriously. If you absolutely must protest this film, my advice would be to forget the half-hearted attempts at theology and complain about the overwrought visuals and the sloppy storytelling instead.
Send comments to ktpattersn@aol.com.
http://members.aol.com/ReviewsKTP/reviews.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews