The Chosen
The story of the followers and supporting characters surrounding a certain itinerant apocalyptic Jewish preacher in 1st century Roman-occupied Near East get a closer examination.
Not sci-fi nor fantasy, but it involves real life supernatural lore so I think this qualifies.
There’s going to be a lot of strong feelings either way about this series, so pick your opinion and just run with it. You’ll find something to love and something to hate about it, and that’s before you get to the meta-narrative of the creators and whatever controversies you find online with them and the production.
I read one criticism—the only criticism I bothered with—that the creators were “adding to scripture,” which we Christians consider a big no-no across the board. I don’t think this “adding” the case, simply because the intent is not there. If The Chosen is adding to scripture, then so is every scriptural commentary, every sermon ever preached, every theological tradition is doing the same, and in a much more profound way than a speculative fictional narrative that attempts to fill in the historical gaps.
Let’s start with the humor, eh? No modern audience, especially a western one, would understand what 1st century Jews found funny, so I would expect a filmmaker to translate instances of humor that we would get. In literary translation terms that’s called the creating the dynamic equivalent, accounting not just for linguistic but socio-cultural factors when translating a text so another audience can grasp it. So, I would expect the humor to be something we would be able to understand as such. I did sniffle approvingly at the “new bug” joke Simon Peter did.
There was controversy about Jesus refusing to heal Little James’ gimp leg: would He have done it or not? I am split on this, but I lean a bit towards the “no” camp. Jesus never refused to heal anyone who explicitly came to Him, though there were instances where He was around sick people and didn’t heal them—the Bethsaida pool narrative from John 5 comes to mind. On the other hand, Jesus said and did some outrageous things where His closest followers, the apostles, were concerned. He sent them into dangerous areas to say some crazy things but He also gave them what they needed, spiritually, to accomplish what they needed to. Jesus refusing to heal Little John for the express reason that it would make LJ’s testimony stronger was something Jesus would do. It feels in character for Him.
Side note about LJ: showing him during the Beatitudes montage when Jesus mention “blessed are the meek” misinterprets what “meek” actually means in context, implying that LJ’s infirmity was part of his meekness. “Meek” means “controlled power,” and usually in the context of enduring injustice and waiting on God’s timing and vengeance, which doesn’t quite fit LJ’s predicament.
Some other weird things:
- A Pharisee using “proletariat,” a word that wouldn’t be around for a few more millennia. What he said made sense but the use of the word really threw me. This is the same type of anachronism as the humor thing I mentioned but it really stuck out to me.
- Joseph being black, or at least partially. Joseph was fully a Hebrew man; Matthew burns a lot of calories in his first chapter to document this. I don’t know what the writers were thinking but it’s probably for diversity quota reasons, although there were plenty of scenes in the series taking place in metropolitan areas where there were the occasional non-Hebrew, non-Roman fellow in camera shot, without being so stupidly inaccurate.
- Mary Magdalene in the Nomad tavern. I can see her going to a tavern of some sort if she’s looking to go back to her old ways, but she’s not gonna drink and gamble with the fellas. That would be astronomically inappropriate and dangerous, even for the morally loosey-goosey Romans. I can see a women-only place where she’d fall into her naughty girl habits, but not with the guys. Also, Mary leaving Jesus’ camp to travel a decent distance alone would not have happened, and what makes is worse is that they show a Roman guard ignoring her as she traveled. A low-level Roman grunt on patrol on a city’s outskirts, even if he wasn’t keen on helping a Jew, would definitely be stopping her to avoid risking getting chewed out for negligence. This treatment threw me after the flashback depiction of Jesus’ mom frantically searching for Him in the streets from Luke 2. In that, a man stopped her and asked her what she was doing outside alone, which is what everyone in eye- and ear-shot would be thinking back then. No one, especially women, likely would be in public alone unless in very specific and crazy circumstances.
- Jesus saying “I am the law of Moses” in the Nazareth synagogue scene. It feels like the type of thing He would say, though it’s a paraphrase of a verse from the Book of Mormon.
- Matthew being autistic. Autism wasn’t a thing back then since there were no vaccines (heyo!*), but you can build a good case that he was very much an outsider. A Jewish tax collector could have been unusually good with numbers and wouldn’t fit in well neither with his countrymen nor the Roman authorities, so he’d always have awkward interactions with both parties.
Some good things I noticed:
- Remarks from the disciples about Greek attitudes. There were two that stuck out. One scene where a few of the disciples were watching Simon the Zealot do exercises in the morning and one of them remarked along the lines of “paying attention to the body so much smacks of Hellenism”. A similar comment was made when talking about putting on plays or acting. Jesus and His followers would be very cautious of foreign philosophies like that.
- John the Baptist seeming to be one of the only people that really understood Jesus. Jesus’ disciples viewed him as faithful, but a bit on the wacky side and a risk vector because he’d antagonize the authorities so much. Jesus seemed to have a soft spot for him. I didn’t like John’s beard, though.
- The flash forward, post-resurrection, of Matthew traveling to see Mary Magdalene hiding away in a cave with the bow and arrow lady, to deliver his gospel. The opening scene in season 2 of John interviewing people for his gospel. Bows and arrows, by the way, are mentioned all over scripture but you never see them in Biblical cinema unless it’s in a battle scene, so it was good to see it in everyday use.
- The general idea of depicting secondary Gospel characters. When you’re Jesus, everyone is a secondary character, but they have stories, too. It’s interesting to see the tactical nitty-gritty logistics of everything the disciples had to consider when organizing things, traveling, and hyping up their rabbi’s reputation. The diverse opinions of Pharisees got a lot of screentime and I feel that was necessary in a show like this to make their ultimate opposition to Jesus be believable. Nicodemus and the centurion from Matthew were aberrations, given their background, so seeing the lead ups to their canonical scenes gave them more weight.
- The one-er opening from season 2 (“one-er” is still an awful name for the technique; I’m calling it a “onesie” or a “one-shot”). It must’ve been a nightmare rehearsing it to get it right, and the all the considerations needed when filming during the golden hour when lighting conditions get nutty.
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
After her first bite of chocolate, a socially awkward toddler becomes aware of the world and people around her.
If you can get past the flat and clunky animation style, the story is a gem. Water is an obvious symbol of growth, or rather a gateway by which Amélie matures. The scene where the titular Amélie’s nanny explains, while she prepares dinner, how her parents died, was great storytelling using visual parallels.
Think of how you would expect the rich, high-class grandmother would act, and prepare to have your expectations…dashed, but believably. It takes some thoughtful writing to pull off that type inversion without swinging too far in the other direction.
The anonymous voiceover calling the baby “God” in the beginning was a little gross, but it was reasonably explained at the end. If you know how babies and toddlers behave in general, the “God” appellation is understandable. In fact, the only really unbelievable thing in the was the chocolate that kickstarted the second act: it was white chocolate. Ain’t no one, not even a baby, is going to have such a reaction to something as plain and vanilla (hah) as white chocolate. On the other hand, the chocolate was straight from Belgium, so…maybe?
Coincidentally, one of the B plots dealt with wartime reconciliation and it was handled a hundred times better than the Éiru disaster that played before it.
Éiru
A young girl entertaining hopes of becoming a great warrior for her tribe investigates the village well after it suddenly dries up.
This played before Little Amélie. When one of the productions outfits involved is named “Herstory,” you already know how it will turn out. The ending was abysmal, so I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you. The protag finds two gender-unspecified children, each from rival tribes, in the well. Instead of fighting like you would expect them too (LYWETT), they share the scarce water and then emerge from the well in different tribes’ villages like a student exchange program. Instead of the kids being scared out of their minds LYWETT, and instead of the adult villagers soiling their vaguely Celtic barbarian underclothes because one of their kids was replaced by a smelly, ugly one from a rival tribe LYWETT, the each of the foreign kids and each of the foreign tribes are happily shocked to see each other. Inexplicable motivation reversal multiplied thricely is bad writing.
Angel’s Egg
In a desolate, abandoned world, a young girl protecting a large egg encounters a mysterious man.
I have a post about its imagery here: “What Angel’s Egg is About” and you can watch Angel’s Egg here.
2001: A Space Odyssey meets The Road. A post-apocalyptic (maybe?), dreary, colorless, nearly-dialogueless, abstract and symbolic, moody novella-length piece. If you’re familiar with Final Fantasy 6’s concept art, you can tell Yoshitaka Amano had his hand in the character design and general ambience. There’s not a lot of production budget information out there for this, but I’m guessing there wasn’t a lot for Amano to work with. Assuming that’s the case, I wonder with films like these, if directors intentionally cut back on some aspects to really enhance some other parts. In Angel’s Egg’s case, there’s a slightly shorter runtime (and some protracted scenes with looping or minimal animation), not a lot of voice acting to edit through, not a lot of dialogue and plot going through constant revisions, and maybe not a lot of storyboarding to juggle. Oshii can divert a lot of the budget to give some TLC to the animation, and background and sound design. Hair and water, even if you’re not trying to make it detailed or realistic, can take a lot effort to make it not seem janky, and there’s a lot of movement of both things here.
Definitely an art house piece, not typical even for anime, which back then in 1985 was still foreign to western audiences.
* I don’t think vaccines cause autism, but I do think they play a role, probably with testosterone, since autism is prevalent in boys, and maybe something to do with mild trauma with infant circumcision. I don’t know how to read scientific literature, just like everyone who is reading this, so this view is purely based on conviction and a general mistrust of authorities.