The Brand New Testament (2015)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The director has a very good grasp of creating visual pleasing experiences. The imagery has a lot of creativity and imagination. It may come across as jarring or pretentious with all those "unnecessary" stylistic choices, but nonetheless all of them are interesting in their own right. The direction is playful and it looks very expensive and cinematic. From extreme wide shots, extreme close-ups, dutch angles, shallow focus, split diopter, lateral tracking shots, cg aided compositing, miniatures, the mundane and miraculous... you name it. Kind of like Brian de Palma but much more over the top. The playfulness seems to strive for an otherworldly and humorous feel. On the other hand it is heart-warming.Unfortunately the movie feels a little long and that is due to its structure. The plot is somewhat weak and there is no tension or ticking clock element. The division into episodes feels a little stop-and-go and that can be tiring. The overarcing story gets rather murky as a result. And there is a literal deus ex machina. In every other movie that would be bad but it fits this particular premise. Also they neglected to give god a character arc. He just gets humiliated with no redemption.In a lot of ways this movie is like Mr Nobody by the same director. Same strengths, same weaknesses.With all that said, I think this filmmaker should be making movies more frequently. Maybe hire another screenwriter but keep making movies nonstop.

Nowadays a film like this one by Belgian veteran Dormael is quite the rare bird. "Le tout nouveu testament" is at once sweet and brutal, maudlin and without clichéd sentiment, magical, yet grounded, funny and heartfelt without being nauseating; simple with moments of profundity but without being forced. It has Beatle-esque messages: love is all you need, live life on your terms and don't be a victim of what you may perceive as fate.Ea (who is played masterfully by Pili Groyne) lives in Brussels and is the daughter of God or Dieu (Benoit Poelvoorde), a salacious, abusive and bitter creator of mankind, who browbeats his peaceful loving wife and crucified his only son for going off the beaten path (which meant ditching the cynicism and self-hatred of his father). Ea at ten years old grows tired of her father, takes the advice of her older brother who in the film is a living statuette of himself on the mount, and hijacks her father's computer, a computer which controls the whole of mankind. Soon everyone in Brussels gets a text message stating the exact amount of time each person has left to live. What ensues is anarchy of sorts—people begin to live on their own terms. Ea then escapes to Brussels through her families' clothes washer that doubles as an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole to the city, where she has set out to find six apostles to add to her brother's twelve to round out the number to eighteen—the number of players it takes to play a proper baseball game…Ea's saintly mother's favorite sport. Thus, the adventure begins with an angry God on her heels.The storytelling is beautiful and though it is complex and quick to add characters with their own story lines the plot is never allowed to get out of hand. The scenarios, the dialogue, it is all taut and witty and for the subject matter full of originality. The set designs by Sylvie Olive and Pascalle Willame are truly brilliant and have been aptly awarded. The lush cinematography at the hands of Christophe Beaucarne (who has worked on other visually striking films "Chicken with Plums," "The Blue Room," and Dormael's own "Mr. Nobody") finds a striking harmony with the overarching majestic sensibility that rushes from the film, start to finish. The CGI (which I am admittedly picky about how it is used) works in perfect accordance with the brilliant color schemes and precise compositions that allow infinite space for flourishing impressionist absurdity. The acting is wonderful and charming…not to mention Catherine Deneuve falling in passionate love with a gorilla. But, that being said, Groyne doesn't only hold her own on screen with a living legend like Deneuve—she is the screen."The Brand New Testament" does irk me. I watch and I think aloud, "This is what Hollywood should aspire to: Intellectual, entertaining, funny, absurd and magical well-crafted filmmaking." We shouldn't have to buy a man from Mexico to give us "Birdman." Why should we be afraid of the whimsical? Everything that is done well always has its place in moderation. The writing and construction in "The Brand New Testament" is taut and witty, without the tongue in cheek. It is writing that puts the sentimental, the brutal, the happy, the sad, the magical and the mundane in its proper place at the proper time and takes blasphemy and the people who will accuse the film of blasphemy and gently but with a s**t eating grin eschew them through Ea's rabbit hole. If you want to watch a fun,well crafted, thought provoking film that evokes similar unapologetic fancies, emotions and styles of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's frenetic,ultra-cute "Amelie" or even Tim Burton's film of visual wonder and thematic sentiment "Big Fish" then setback and enjoy. With or without God, cinema can still be magic.

The concept of the movies was good and really interesting, you will indulge in the movies and at every moment make your own theory about the end. This is the best thing a movies can do to its viewer.The only thing i don't like in the whole movie was how easily we believed that the God is only interested in us and other species are not so interesting to him, we are only few thousand years old but our attitude is bigger than anything else.If this movie would have shown the POV of other species also with the concept of god relating to them, then i must have given it the whole 10 out of 10. The end showed clearly that deep inside our heart we humans want everything to be controlled by us and need everything like how we want them to be. This will make us like the main villain of the movies (I can't tell you who is he).

This takes many things that people question about reality and turn them into comedy (bread falling always on the side that has something on it instead of the other side amongst other things). The beginning really has some drive to it and it is overall a fun movie to watch. It does take its time though, especially when it comes to "choosing" people and giving us their back-story.The acting is good, though some of the themes will rather annoy than offend people. Whether they are atheist or religious won't matter, if you don't think it's funny. And while it's provocative, it's also sort of "respectful" in a way. Still the basic idea alone almost warrants the running time and the viewing itself.