It was only after writing an entire but dissatisfying reflection on a different piece of artistic influence that I realized there was actually only one option. How could I have been so slow to not recognize the piece of art that has easily been most significant in my life. In fact I think it is precisely because it is so embedded into my life and my family's life and perhaps in particular my faith that it can be difficult to step outside of my own life and see it. This can be highlighted in particular by perhaps some of the most blasphemous moments of my own life this past year as I responded with a medium a level of interest and occasional disappointment as Amy and I visited the Holy Sepulchre, Temple Mount, Gethsamne, and Galilee but with rapturous delight and unending excitement as we were able to visit some of the sites that the film of Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar were filmed and also explore geography similar to that of the film.
The film Jesus Christ Superstar, would be what my father point to if asked about his conversion to Christianity. He was a teenager in Holland when the movie came out and he went to see it. The film had a tremendous impact on him, in particular he would cite the absolute gut wrenching anguish and horror of Mary Magdeline during the scene of Jesus flogging. The horror of the scene is, not achieved at all by graphic violence, such as in the Passion, but rather in the emotional reactions of the various characters who are witnesses. This I think highlights a power unique to film that allows the audience to be in a story and intimately connected with characters as if you were standing right next to your best friend, lover or enemy, experiencing their love, anguish, fury, doubt and fear. There is an intimacy that the audience can experience with characters of a film that is to my eye utterly unique, outside of perhaps a small amount of non traditional, very experimental theater.
The music of Superstar is a staple of my family's house, particularly around Easter. Similarly, the movie has been an Easter tradition since I was around 10 or 12. The profound and witty lyrics, breathtaking landscapes, passionate voices and performance have breathed life and humanity into a story too often presented with stiff sterility. Taking primarily Judas' perspective the movie is filled with doubts and questions. The line “You've begun to matter more than the things you say” is example of the brilliant irony with which profound theology is acknowledged and explored. “Jesus is important” Caiphus pronounces while plotting his crucifixion and also concedes “Jesus is cool.” The question, “Who is Jesus?” central to the gospels echoes through the whole opera, “Who are you? What have you sacrificed?” rings repeatedly through the title song immediately after Pilot questions, “Who is this Jesus? Why is is he different?” Even Jesus passionately questions his own death during his sung prayer in Gethsamne. This posture of doubt and question, obviously deeply influenced by our skeptical culture, is to my eye, in the case of Jesus Christ Superstar, one of earnest humility and genuine question. Irony and wit, cloak such an earnest yearning for truth from the source of the question itself, that Superstar remains spectacularly powerful. The quality of openness is something that I have come to deeply appreciate in art of all kinds. I think that great art is an invitation rather than a command, an invitation to explore both the art and the world.
It is in this openness, in both viewing and creating art that, I believe God's grace and providence can be powerfully witnessed. Jesus Christ Superstar, to the horror of many Christians has no resurrection scene or music. The final music which closes the show is titled “John 19:41,” which reads, “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.” Everyone in the movie gets back on the bus, even the successful suicide Judas, who stares to the cross of the one person left behind. The final shot of the movie is of the remaining cross at sunset. As the shot zooms out to close the film, a figure appears at the bottom left of the screen barely visible and walks across the screen directly in from of the cross followed by a flock of sheep. Director Norman Jewison recounts this Bedouin shepherd as coming out of no where and in no way an intended or directed event but rather a providential moment that left them in tears and thus closes the movie. As a Christian, I experience this as actually perhaps the most powerful and yet understated resurrection scene to occur in the history of cinema. The testimony of Jewison, highlights to me that as we engage creatively, we are not alone, but that the creative God who delights in his creation creates with us. The great directors Stanley Kubrick and also Terrence Malick shoot hours of footage and sometimes hundreds of takes in there desire to capture the unplanned moments of a Bedouin shepherd, a butterfly landing on a finger, or that unintentional bump of another actor. In this way I believe, our art can become prayers.
