La Vie de Jesus

One of filmmaking's greatest challenges is the accurate portrayal of boredom and apathy; ironically, the closer you come to truly conveying the monotony of a dead-end existence, the more likely it is that your audience will wind up as bored and apathetic as your characters. Bruno Dumont, in his debut film, does a superlative job of capturing the particular hell that is stasis--so much so that I simply couldn't wait for the movie to end. Worse, the film is numbingly predictable; as soon as the friendly Arab character, Kader (Kader Chaatouf), was introduced, I wondered how long it would be before our mindless, hulking protagonist, Freddy (David Douche), either seriously wounded or killed him. The answer, to my dismay, was: the entire damn movie. I was alarmed and disturbed to find myself thinking things like "I wish this creep would hurry up and kill that nice Arab" and "Hasn't he killed that Arab yet? What time is it, anyway?" Dumont's plodding approach equates the brutal murder of an innocent man with the sound of the second shoe thudding onto the floor. Not recommended. (M. D'Angelo) [Blu-ray/DVD Review—June 18, 2019—Criterion, 96 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $29.95, Blu-ray: $39.95—Making its latest appearance on DVD and debut on Blu-ray, 1997’s La Vie de Jésus features a great transfer with an uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray release. Extras include a 2014 conversation between director Bruno Dumont and critic Philippe Rouyer (39 min.), segments from two episodes of the French TV show Le cercle de minuit (26 min.), a new interview with Dumont (16 min.), and an essay by critic Nicholas Elliott. Bottom line: a film that split critics, Dumont’s debut shines on Blu-ray.]