The Book of Life (1998)

This film was made at a point when perceived walls between the real and the virtual were starting more obviously to crumble; and it titrates some of Hartley's continuing substantive and stylistic concerns into old and new archetypes. I haven't seen it for a while, need to watch again; I expect it would feel prescient. PJ Harvey as Mary Magdalene is, for me, a significant bonus (but all the acting's great).OK IMDb requires me to add 4 more lines. The visuals are great. The dialogue is great. The details are significant. Time in the abstract as well as history and what we tell ourselves about them are substantive concerns, among others. The perhaps ineluctable connection between creation and destruction. P.S.: I personally do not read this as being particularly about Christianity per se.Let's see if that's enough.

The Devil and Jesus discuss the end of the world on the eve of the new millennium. It's like a more humanistic and clever version of "Dogma" with lots of shaky, blur streaked Wang Kar Wai-ish digital camera work. An enjoyable experiment, but not as effortless as Hartley's earlier films. I still haven't a movie by him I haven't enjoyed. Martin Donovan as always delivers the deadpan dialog and rock starlet P.J. Harvey backs him as Magdalena his assistant (completely platonic). I think the woman whose soul get's sold is Hartley's wife. It does however benefit from a short time, never lingering longer than it needs to or wasting any time. I give it an extra half star for knowing when to close shop. A good sense of timing is important.

It opens - and for half an hour, runs - like an educational programme on the Old Testament, although not without humour. The movie finally begins to grow wings when the biblical cant gets dropped. In a scene of mixed success Martin Donovan (Jesus) decides to renege on kicking off the Apocalypse and the final quarter of an hour is a sort of humanist 'what's all the fuss about?' play-out, gilded with optimistic conjecture against a (retrospectively, miserably ironic) long shot of the WTC twin towers.Apart from Donovan's authority, the acting is split. There's the thespian melodrama of the rest of the cast: this, though formally contrived for biblical presentation, is appropriate for the modern, paranoid comedy that Hartley's aiming at. But I was also pleasantly surprised at the contribution of PJ Harvey (credited thus, and in danger of existing within the film solely as the pop star entity she is, not least in a set piece scene in a record store and a perilously patchy soundtrack to which contributes). She remained cool - a sort of disingenuous lack of focus - in the manner of many pop icons who have taken to film (I'm thinking the Jagger of Performance here) but nonetheless maintained a convincing integration with both cast and project.Ultimately affirmative, but this bittersweet essay is a bit too much like one and relies more on the perseverance than the imagination of its audience. 4/10

Hartley on low-key form: Martin Donovan, born to play Jesus, comes as Messiah to millenial Manhatten; P.J. Harvey is excellent as sidekick Magdelena. A slight film, but drily amusing, short and sweet.