director/screenwriter
Kevin Smith
producer
Scott Mosier
cinematographer
Robert D. Yeoman
music
Howard Shore
editors
Scott Mosier
Kevin Smith
cast
Linda Fiorentino (Bethany Sloane)
Ben Affleck (Bartleby)
Matt Damon (Loki)
Alan Rickman (Metatron)
Salma Hayek (Serendipity)
Chris Rock (Rufus)
Jason Lee (Azrael)
Jason Mewes (Jay)
Kevin Smith (Silent Bob)
George Carlin (Cardinal Glick)
Bud Cort (John Doe Jersey)
Alanis Morissette (God)
Jeff Anderson (Gun Salesman)
Brian O'Halloran (Grant Hicks)
Janeane Garofalo (Liz)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 130m
u.s.
release: 11/12/99
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other kevin
smith films
reviewed on this website:
- chasing
amy
- clerks
- clerks II
- jay & silent bob strike back
- jersey
girl
- mallrats
|
When
the hounds of righteous indignation are unleashed upon a movie,
invariably nothing in the movie itself really deserves the barking
and slobbering. Dogma, the new farce by writer-director
Kevin Smith, is an agreeably rumpled and scattershot comedy about
nothing less than faith. It asks the big questions: If there
is a God, did He -- or She -- really intend there to be churches
and factions at odds with each other? Don't all the doctrinal
squabbling and chauvinistic claims (one's own religion is the
only true religion, etc.) take people even further away from
the basics as taught by Christ? And do women fart when having
anal sex? (This is a Kevin Smith movie, after all.)
On one level, Dogma can be enjoyed as Smith's big blow-out
-- his action-adventure/quest epic, with a cast picked to please
the fans; it's also his New Jersey biblical epic. If you ran
Nikos Kazantzakis through the View Askew blender, the result
would taste something like Dogma -- a lumpy but tangy
concoction that goes down easy. Smith begins with a strong premise:
Two outcast angels, the former angel of death Loki (Matt Damon)
and the watcher angel Bartleby (Ben Affleck), have found a way
to get back into Heaven. The Catholic Church is kicking off a
new user-friendly PR program with a surefire lure for sinners:
Pass under the arches of the New Jersey diocese and you're absolved
of sin. Loki and Bartleby figure they'll take advantage of this
loophole, get absolved, and get back to Heaven.
They're not the heroes here, though. Their scheme, if successful,
will disprove the infallibility of God and negate existence itself.
So God, in the form of a spokes-angel named Metatron (Alan Rickman),
recruits a disillusioned Catholic and abortion-clinic worker,
Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), to help stop the renegade angels.
Other metaphysical entities keep popping up: the slickster demon
Azrael (Jason Lee), who'd love to see everything come crashing
down; Rufus (Chris Rock), the obscure "13th apostle"
left out of the Bible because he's black; and a Muse named Serendipity
(Salma Hayek) who got stuck on Earth and became a stripper. Not
to mention the prophet stoners Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes
and Smith himself).
What you hear throughout Dogma, liberally peppered with
the usual prankish profanities, is Kevin Smith having a conversation
with himself about his faith (he's a devout Catholic in real
life). He puts his ideas in the mouths of all the characters,
each of whom defends his or her own theological turf. The ideas
come out in a rough tumble, with the becoming awkwardness of
flawed human beings trying to live by the ideal of God -- or
the awkwardness of a director struggling to make sense of it
all. Dogma is fairly disorganized, but it has the honest
heartbeat of a filmmaker busily stitching a bunch of elements
into a crazyquilt of farce and faith.
Some of Dogma staggers and stumbles. An early test print
ran better than three hours; Smith carved it down to just over
two, and I have a feeling a lot of plot coherence is littering
the editing-room floor (perhaps to be restored on the future
DVD). Bartleby, for instance, seems to undergo an abrupt shift
in behavior, and the character of Bethany, though most appealingly
played by Fiorentino, just seems to be along for the ride (she
may be intended as the audience's spokesperson, an everyday woman
amongst a ragtag group of gods and monsters). The movie has everything
including the kitchen sink; Smith juggles a lot of balls,
and inevitably he drops some -- as always, he wants to let you
know every little thing that's been on his mind since the last
time you listened to him. Overall, though, Dogma is Smith's
most consistently engaging movie since Clerks
-- a rude yet, in the end, reverent ramble encompassing an excrement
demon, a handstanding God, and everything in between. |