I watched the movie, Risen, again yesterday afternoon, pausing throughout to try to take notes and make comments on what is taking place since I forget details so quickly. I also watched the selected essays or short subjects on the movie by the writers and others. They make clear at the beginning that what they were producing was a real mystery, detective story, which I thought true even the first time I saw the movie. Clavius, the Roman Tribune who is directly responsible to The Prefect, Pilate, is essentially charged with finding the body of the crucified "messiah" so that when the Emperor shows up in ten days there will be peace in Jerusalem and that the zealots will have been dealt with, so to speak. Like a good detective he examines the crime scene. The ropes look as though they had burst asunder, not been cut by grave robbing disciples, an important detail, as are the stories the lying guards tell as he questions them.
The story then has a literary frame: it begins in the Judean desert, A.D. 33 with a very distant, unrecognizable figure moving through the foreground toward the camera. I think there are probably four takes as the perspective brings the figure ever closer until it focuses on his face. (I used to know what these perspectives were called, but I have forgotten the technical language.). In any case the Face of the Man is essentially full screen, because, I think, the movie is about faces at its heart, and the actors, Joseph Fiennes and Cliff Curtis, are marvelous in what they express and reveal. (No critics would agree with my enthusiasm.)
The first image we see then, before we see that the distant figure is actually a man, is the desert, a central image in any Biblical story. A good meaning of the desert as image is that of Psalm 63: "O God Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh longs after Thee as in a barren and dry land where no water is." That is, a desert, a dry desolate place where conditions are essentially life-threatening. If we take the Christian, theological perspective (obviously, I do), then the story is truly about the desire for God as that desire manifests itself or is fulfilled in the meaning and presence of the second person of the trinity, the fully human, fully divine Yeshua or Jesus. That meaning is present in the resurrected figure of the movie though never explained as I just did. The delightful aspect of the movie is that we are given an outsider's perspective on the events of 33 A.D. The figure we meet in the desert is a man who has had a mysterious, unsettling, supernatural experience. He enters what seems to be an empty inn with only an innkeeper present who notices that the man is wearing a Tribune's ring, the last element of his former life that he will totally abandon by the end of the movie. The Tribune's story then is unfolded to the innkeeper, which becomes the literary frame for the movie; the Tribune, Clavius, reveals what is within him and what accounts for the shocked and startled nature of his face in the beginning.
Regarding faces, I am reminded of the lines in Prufrock, the social dimension of our lives: there will be "time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." The social perspective is always present as the Romans interact with one another and with the Jews. What really is going on within the character who stands before you? Can you trust him, one of Pilate's continual concerns about the people around him. Incidentally, his face is a marvelous study in world-weariness, anxiety, and ennui. The Emperor is coming; there must be "Order! ORDER!" he impresses on the Tribune, truly face to face, midway through the movie.
In the movie the Tribune's story reveals what is truly "going on" within him and as in Prufrock, an encounter that will change his life forever. Whereas Prufrock will gain some insight into what lies behind our social meetings, the Tribune will be transformed by an encounter unmake so his entire world, and anyone's world, if the story is true, or if, as at the end of the movie, as the innkeeper asks the former Tribune, now just Clavius, do you believe it? The basis for his answer "I do," is worth reflecting on, and that answer is the consequence of the unfolding action of the story.
The Tribune's story begins with the reality of a Roman soldier's life: war, death and destruction. His tenth legion is required to put an end to the uprising of the Jewish zealots. That skirmish ends with the Tribune executing the rebel leader, Barabas, presumably the man who received his freedom when the Jews clamored for the crucifixion of Jesus. Barabas mocks Clavius with the image of Yahweh sending a messiah to put an end to Roman rule forever. Clavius responds in kind and sends him to Yahweh with a brutal sword thrust. Death and destruction, the life of the Roman Tribune.
"Did you win?" Asks Pilate when he meets his Tribune immediately after his return to Jerusalem, before the Tribune even has a chance to wash the filth of battle off himself. Face to face it is essentially all Pilate cares about, that and his Tribune's ambition for Rome and a life of wealth, power, and peace. Can they turn their backs on one another? Well, the Tribune is trustworthy, one feels, Pilate, not so much, perhaps.
In any case, Pilate explains that he has had to crucify a Jewish messianic figure in order to prevent another Jewish uprising. He gives the task of breaking the figure's legs to end his suffering to Clavius, who has also acquired from Pilate a second in command, or aide, Lucius, the son of a friend of Pilate. Clavius' face reveals his real lack of enthusiasm for this "gift," Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame, whose youthful face is a pleasant contrast to the worn, exhausted face to Clavius.
The central climactic scene of the first part of the movie, the story, is the encounter with the crucifixion figures. The Tribune comes in at the end of the action. The thieves are still very much with us and he gives the order to his Centurian, another marvelous face of a figure who has seen into the innocence of the man he is required to kill and been changed by that encounter! (Goodness, I like this movie!). Clavius notices the change and gives the order but immediately sends the Centurian off with the message to Pilate that all are dead, as if to get his Centurian out of there and away from the supposed messiah.
Those of us who know the Biblical account that the Christs legs will not be broken. For one thing, he appears to be dead; for another Yeshua's mother and Mary Magdalene are there and the weary Tribune has some compassion for the mother. He does not know Mary Magdalene yet, though he will come to know her later in his quest for the body, another transformed figure, in his story, a prostitute presumably "known" by every man in his legion. Instead of the legs then he orders the pilum, the spear up into the heart through his side, taking no chances.
The most import element of this scene is the necessary face to face meeting of the Tribune with the dead Yeshua and the image of the dead, crucified man's face is very powerful. In fact the image could be that of a painting, stark in the reality of death and suffering it expresses, and Clavius must see the face and pause before it, looking up as the Christ looks down, for this image will reoccur in the movie much later beside the face of the now living Christ before him. The movie counterpart to this scene occurs when Clavius discovers the living Yeshua for the first time in the "upper room." Yeshua dead, no doubt; Yeshua living, no doubt. Clavius' dilemma in the movie is how to understand this irreconcilable reality. Crucified, mutilated dead men do not appear living and healthy, talking, smiling, and eating and welcoming the man pursuing him: "Come in, Clavius, there are no enemies here." Clavius drops his weapon of death and destruction, his sword, the image of his central meaning as soldier up to this point, and walks into the room where the joyous disciples and Yeshua are celebrating.
Earlier when asked what he desired, among the answers he gave was this final one, "a day without death," which is what he is on his way toward meeting at the end, with his words returned to him by Yeshua. The messiah overcomes death, somehow, and the images of death are pervasive in the beginning of the story. If we miss or dismiss those images we lose some of the force of the movie about the impossible conquering of the other force set against us, death itself. Even Pilate points out that we will all end up dead like the unidentifiable corpse they are trying to pass off as Yeshua.
The more I think about the movie though the more I see that one of its possible failures is that the writers failed to see the real consequences of Clavius' encounter with the resurrected Christ, instead only seeing that encounter simply produce a kind of logical dilemma and a very subdued, "I do." In other words, the writers may have failed to see into the real meaning of their own story. Shouldn't Clavius, after all be truly awed and humbled by what he has seen and experienced?