THE Gospels provide little information about Jesus in terms of biographical details. As St John (20.31) says, they were written so that you may believe that he is the Christ and have life in his name. A new animated feature, The King of Kings (Cert. PG), strives to do much the same thing, though, additionally, we do get to see how it imagines he looks and sounds.
It comes from Angel Studios, which promotes “Godly movies the whole family can enjoy”, such as Cabrini (Arts, 8 March 2024) and Sound of Hope (Arts, 11 October 2024). Its latest production is based on Charles Dickens’s The Life of Our Lord, which he read, acting all the parts, to his children every Christmas. Only after all of them had died was it published as a book in 1934.
The film starts with Dickens (voiced by Kenneth Branagh) on stage, performing A Christmas Carol. His family watches from the wings until the rather precocious son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) interrupts the presentation, asserting that the story of King Arthur’s knights is far superior. Back home, the author’s wife, Catherine (Uma Thurman), counsels a nettled Charles to share with Walter his deeply held Christian beliefs in language that the boy would understand. So, the master storyteller devises (and not without humour) a means of winning Walter’s loyalty to someone who, like Arthur, is a great king.
From thereon, the film constitutes a blend of father, mother, and child talking about Jesus, which is then illustrated with scenes related in the Gospels. Echoing the style of the medieval Mystery plays, Charles and Walter gradually merge into the narrative themselves. Jesus’s story becomes their story. From a manger bursting with the promise of new life to a tomb wherein he lies on our behalf, it is skilfully executed.
As in all biblical movies, with the possible exception of Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964), we are treated to an amalgam of vignettes culled from the four Evangelists’ testimonies, irrespective of their different theological positions. Attention is given to several of the miracles, but not a single parable is told. The significance of the resurrection is confined to being something stupendously divine, but without any indication of its significance for the ways in which the lives of Easter people are fashioned by the experience. And, while there is steadfast adherence to any dialogue lifted straight from translations of the Gospels, speech emanating from the Dickens family is peppered with cultural anachronisms. That, with a lack of uniformity of accents (American and British), somewhat undermines credibility.
One cannot but admire the technical skill of Mofac Animation, the South Korean company behind this project, under the supervision of celebrated animator Seong-ho Jan, making his directorial debut. Despite the relative simplicity of its stop-motion puppetry, however, the UK’s The Miracle Maker provides a deeper sense of involvement. In that film, we were not just witnesses, but completing in our poor flesh the full tale of Christ’s afflictions here on earth.