Hollywood is pagan. Always has been. Sodom, Babylon, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, Miami… the historical geography of sin is well known, in part because the very concept of the city is, since Babel, a challenge to the heavens and their gods. But when the mecca of cinema began to exploit the historiography of the Mediterranean of antiquity with multicolored tunics and polystyrene columns, it discovered that its peplums were an ideal model to put The Bible in images, just by changing Cleopatra for Delilah or Zipporah. And in pious countries, as is the case, Jewish redemptions and other pious legends were reserved so that these days without meat would be less collected and more voluptuous.
The biblical films were a combination of joy and sacredness, ideal for flouting the norm, a transfer to the dark room of the chickpeas with cod and without pork that during Passion Week fed the world to the demon of our flesh. But that ended.
Cinemas no longer release biblical passages, which does not prevent streaming platforms from honoring such a venerable tradition of venerations. Filmin, without a doubt the company that best exploits its catalog of films and series with “temporary exhibitions” – reorganizations of the collection in accordance with discourses related to the immediate –, has arranged two specific itineraries for Holy Week: in Classic Saints they bring together the usual stations of Calvary, from Jesus Christ Superstar to The Greatest Story Ever Told, from The Last Temptation of Christ to Spartacus, interspersed with other less conventional lives of saints, such as The Name of the Rose, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or, of course Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Much more interesting is that, taking advantage of the premiere on the platform of the formidable and elusive Teresa by Paula Ortiz and Juan Mayorga, they propose a collection called The Religious where, next to premieres like Mamacruz, the irreverent comedy by Patricia Ortega, all the heterodoxies appear. conceivable, from Ida, by Pawe? Pawlikowski, to Habemus Papam, by Nanni Moretti, passing through Camino, by Javier Fesser, Benedetta, by Paul Verhoeven, or the classics Dies irae and The Passion of Joan of Arc, by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Meanwhile, in the halls, the week of the Passion takes place along very different paths, not exempt from ecstasy or ordeals, but from recollection and contrition. On the one hand, the Christic version of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by D.H., continues to extend its aegis. Lawrence, which Frank Herbert took to deep space, novelizing the British colonial rage in the desert and the genesis of Arab nationalism under the title Dune, which the fashionable Canadian, Denis Villeneuve, has turned into a luxurious diptych to the greater glory of the majestic digital peplum greatness. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is the interstellar messianic Lawrence of Arabia in this classic postcolonial “aristocrat redeems and empowers the natives” cycle.
For those nostalgic for the stories of prayers, resurrections and tear-jerking devotions like the Sevillian arrow, Ghostbusters returns, the once comedy and now sentimental New Year’s Eve mass sponsored by the orphan Jason Reitman, although this time it is Gil Kenan, a specialist in syrups and other resurrections, who takes the controls of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The boomer generation has another opportunity to reconnect with their childhood and lick their wounds on days of torrijas.
The relationship of both with religious myths is evident and, on the other hand, they recreate the fantastical and saving vocation of all religious legends, so they are a perfect substitute for the Golgothas that we once thought about. And although today it is entering a clear creative and financial decline in movie theaters, the posters of superhero gangs survive in the platform premieres – Avengers: Endgame collapsed the box office at the cost of leaving both the comic universe and the capabilities bloodless. by Disney/Marvel producer Kevin Feige – irrefutable proof that Western culture is more Greco-Roman than Judeo-Christian: the obvious correlate of the current superheroic pantheon is the mythology of classical antiquity, and the journey of the genre, initiated by Zack Snyder in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, operates by challenging the alleged monotheistic moral solidity of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) towards the mundane ambiguity of Greco-Roman polytheism, with heroes poisoned by imperfections and doubts, like a competition heterogeneous of contradictory gods and monsters who are both and neither, and therefore barely force us or govern us. Like in that Rome.
The gods of these new equinox weeks only know how to be trivial or tribal, in other words, everyday – as all those in the Marvel and DC universes have been for years – or monstrous – untamed beasts that are more demons than gods, that is , they are more reverse than verse. And of the latter, the two most iconic arrive in theaters, lacking exemplary value, but not sacramental: virtuous alliance of King Kong (romantic myth inspired by the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle) and Godzilla (Japanese icon resulting from the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Godzilla and Kong: The New Empire, the second installment of this joint venture between the myths of the West and the East forced by the markets, premieres with the patent subtext of the colossal scale of the new challenges and their emancipation from the national borders of our efforts. : they are pandemic and warming, contemporary ordeals.
The discourse of monsters, antithesis or revenge of the saints, impossible beings whose torments do not come to provide us with salvation but with extinction, is not new either and was already recorded by ancient cartographers on yellowed parchment maps: “Beyond there live dragons.”
