The Book of Life (1998)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Good movie but grossly overrated

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

I used to love this film for it's poetic and visual style and that Hal Hartley style I fell in love with which includes the dialogue and the way the characters move about and the humor. I considered this film a beautiful work of art. But I came to the conclusion that since I believe in The Bible that I have to accept that this movie is blasphemous and goes against the true Word of God and thus an attack on God and came to the realization that God would not approve of this movie no matter how much of a sense of humor God may have. The movie is fictional but still teaches a false gospel and by doing so is very dangerous and wrong. False gospels like this do not take God seriously, and non-believers will find this gospel (despite the fact that we already know is fictional) is more appealing and more attractive that what The Bible actually tells us and thus help lead more people astray and not accept the fact that the Apocalypse in the Bible must happen as the divine justice of a most perfect God against a most wicked world.

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.

This movie was pretentious, foppish and just down right not funny. The filming technique reminded me of MTV. I am a fan of Hartley. But what was he thinking of? So much more thought could have gone into this movie, considering the subject matter. This could have been a true theoretical battle over good and evil, but Hartley, it appears used the stand technique of psyching out the viewer.