Spoiler alert! We discuss important plot points and the ending of “The Book of Clarence” (in theaters now), so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
“The Book of Clarence” tells a different kind of Biblical story, with its title turning to a false prophet in the time of Jesus Christ to make money. However, writer-director James Samuel turns serious at the end of the film, reimagining the crucifixion and resurrection with modern resonance.
Set in the year 33 AD — a dark take on the biblical epic genre — the film stars Lakeith Stanfield as Clarence, a herbalist from Jerusalem who sees the way people treat Jesus and his apostles and wants the same respect. He declares himself “the new Messiah,” films Jesus’ miracles with his friend Elijah (R.J. Cyler) and takes money from the public.
Clarence sets out to do some good, like freeing slaves, but is captured by Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy), who is after the Jesus-like “antichrist” (Nicholas Pinnock). To Clarence’s surprise, he did not drown when the Roman governor ordered him to walk through the water, and forced Pilate to crucify him.
Through Clarence, Samuel recreates Jesus’s carrying of the cross and crucifixion with brutal effectiveness. Clarence struggles up the hill carrying the cross as onlookers throw objects and Roman soldiers flog him, at one point his mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) screams, “They always take our children!”
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The burden Clarence carries in the scene is “the cross we all carry,” Samuel says. “This is the thing that we feel when we grow up in our environment and surroundings, and our parents feel like they are always taking our children in. There is a lot that has changed, but a lot that has not changed.
“It was the truth I had to tell,” the director says. “Along with the laughs, the smiles, the joy and laughter, there is also the pain that you don’t see coming until the day it happens, but it always hovers over us.”
The image of the black man walking toward his crucifixion “takes us out of the psychedelic version of that,” says David Oyelowo, who plays John the Baptist and is a devout Christian himself. “We’re used to that iconography of a white, sometimes blond, blue-eyed Jesus with this cross. Having it so far removed from what we’ve seen before means you’re suddenly able to approach that in a different way.”
Stanfield remembers “an abundance of emotions” during filming. “The cross was not unreasonably heavy, but it was not light either,” says the actor, who took off his shoes to feel the stones under his feet. “The image of being hit on the back with a whip did not occur to me, and what that could indicate or mean: power structures and how oppression was used to keep people compliant.
“I almost felt like I was carrying years and years of just wanting to tell the truth, and someone wanting to get by, wanting to be released and not being able to. And so it made every step worth it, and it made the blood and the sweat and the harder aspects of it worth it.”
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As in the Bible, Clarence died on the cross but rose again. In the final scene of the film, Jesus breaks the stone of the tomb in which Clarence is buried and tells him to rise. “He who believes in me will live, even if he dies,” Jesus says to Clarence, as a light bulb shines above the head of the former unbeliever, making him smile and cry.
Samuel wanted the audience to leave with an image of themselves: “We are here, and we are alive,” he says. “Clarence has been given another chance, what will he do with his time?”
Partly inspired by his memories of when he was 11, he believed that time was an abbreviation meaning “this is our time.”
“When you think about it, you treat people a lot better,” Samuel says. “You’ll be more aware of what you’re doing in the moment. Because really, we’re just here to catch a glimpse of the sun. But in that glimpse, the sun belongs to us.” What are you going to do about him?”
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