The
Bible: Saturday, Five
Don't
Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves: Monday,
BBC4
Paul
Whitelaw
I'm not a religious man, but after
sitting through the unbearable opening chapter of The Bible,
even I was moved to question what kind of vengeful deity would
unleash such horror on His creations. Utterly atrocious in every way,
this multimillion dollar turkey is undeniably awe-inspiring: it
requires an almost heroic kind of blundering ineptitude to reduce The
Big Book of Books to an incoherent, turgid mess.
Our hero in this case is Mark
Burnett, an LA-based producer hitherto best known for overseeing such
reality TV titans as Survivor, The Apprentice and The Voice
(and Shark Tank). Who better to spread God's word on
Earth?
Burnett's version of the Bible is a
loud, artless, empty spectacle riddled with laughable performances
and stilted dialogue. While I appreciate that the barnstorming,
sinner-smiting Old Testament doesn't exactly lend itself to subtlety,
the chap playing Abraham – to take just one example from a
uniformly dismal cast – gave a rafter-rattling performance that
even Brian Blessed would condemn for being “a bit much”.
Whether you're a believer or not,
shouldn't these parables, which have touched and inspired people for
millennia, be depicted with a tad more depth and dignity? Burnett's
Bible is so one-dimensional, it's impossible to invest in it on an
emotional or philosophical level. It's just a bunch of hirsute
ciphers bellowing at CGI skies.
Now, I know the Bible isn't supposed
to be taken literally – I'm not an idiot – but the inherent
danger with dramatisations of the Old Testament, especially one as
clumsy as this, is that it can come across as a camp explosion of
melodramatic nonsense: Cecil B. DeMille without the restraint.
Lot's wife being turned into an
unconvincingly-rendered pillar of salt was a particular comic
highlight, especially when accompanied by the straight-faced narrator
explaining what just happened as if it was the most natural thing in
the world.
The depiction of sinful Sodom looked
more like a gaggle of Levellers fans storming the bogs at
Glastonbury, although I must admit I wasn't expecting the violent
ninja battle which broke out in the middle of it (this must be what
the opening caption was referring to when it promised to honour the
spirit of the Bible).
And who among us knew that God
speaks, not with a commanding stentorian roar, but with a camp,
supercilious drawl, like a drowsy Kevin Spacey? Even more alarming is
the actor playing Satan's suspiciously close physical resemblance to
Obama. Burnett, who once produced a reality show starring Sarah
Palin, says it's just a coincidence. That's at least one commandment
broken right there.
God made a more low-key appearance in
Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, a sensitive three-part
Swedish drama about young men devastated by the 1980s AIDS epidemic.
Benjamin, a dutiful Jehovah's
Witness, gradually came to terms with his conflicted faith and
sexuality amid the nurturing embrace of Stockholm's gay subculture.
Similarly liberated was his first boyfriend, Rasmus, a
disenfranchised small-town boy given a powerful new sense of
identity. Inevitably, these happy scenes were tempered by tragedy in
the shape of unflinching flash-forwards to Rasmus dying in hospital,
as Benjamin, helpless, sat by his side.
A heartfelt slice of character-driven
social history, Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves – the
title comes from a nurse's sternly pragmatic advice regarding
disinfection – is marred slightly by its heavy-handed symbolism:
the flashbacks to young Rasmus being told about the magical qualities
of the white elk – a creature prized for being different, beautiful
and unique – were particularly awkward. Fortunately, its earnestly
poetic excesses are grounded in poignant reality by the understated
performances from the two leads.
No comments:
Post a Comment