Abel Ferrara
© AFP Vincenzo PintoVENICE, Italy (AFP) - Ferrara's apocalyptic film focuses on what it is to have faith, who Jesus Christ was and why is there such violent intolerance between religions.
He tells the story in a movie about the making of a movie, whose avant-garde director Tony, played by Matthew Modine, casts himself as Jesus Christ in his controverisal "This is My Blood."
Marie Palesi, played by Juliette Binoche, is so inspired by her film-within-the-film role as Mary Magdalene that she decides to travel to Jerusalem to continue her spiritual journey when the film shoot is completed.
Later in New York, a top TV host, Ted Younger (Forest Whitaker) and his wife go through a personal crisis in the midst of making a week-long television special investigating Christ, in which he interviews Tony about his film.
Ferrara told a press conference in Venice that he was only able to make the film with what he called "passion dollars" after the success of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" made a film about religion acceptable.
"For a long time I've been trying to make this film and everyone told me you couldn't make a film about religion. What can I say, passion dollars baby!" Ferrara said in his jazzy New York drawl.
The grim but ultimately hopeful film is a statement of the 53-year-old Ferrara's religious faith: "At a certain point you have to get off the fence and state your case."
The movie uses documentary touches throughout, as when Whitaker interviews real life theologians like Rome-based Jewish community leader Amos Luzzati and Catholic thinker Jean-Yves Leloup.
Ferrara uses them to support the film's central case that Mary Magdalene, depicted in the Gospel as a prostitute, was in fact one of Jesus's 12 apostles.
The film also uses real violence. A suicide bomb shatters the calm of a meal Mary has with her hosts in Jerusalem, and Whitaker's television journalist is surrounded by monitors depicting the rolling violence of the present-day Palestinian Intifada.
This includes well known news footage of a young Palestinian boy and his father shot dead while crouching in the crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians.
"The point is there are ideas worth dying for but not worth killing for. For whom the bells toll, baby. Some boy straps a bomb to himself and that bomb's for us too, you know what I'm saying?"
Ferrara, who directed and co-wrote the film with Simone Lageoles and Mario Isabella, has made a series of strange, off-kilter movies since his 1979 debut with "The Driller Killer," including "King of New York" with Christopher Walken, "Bad Lieutenant" with Harvey Keitel and "Snake Eyes" with Madonna.
But he said September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States forced him to rethink film-making. "Nine-11 was the ultimate wake-up call. We didn't make any films for a while after that," he said in Venice, where his appearance at a press conference won his an lengthy ovation from critics.
For Whitaker, whose role as a newsman who finds God has put him in line for the Best Actor prize at this 62nd Venice festival, making the movie "was a chance to expand myself and deepen my connection with the universe and with God."
"For me it had a lot of relevance to things I was thought earlier in my life," said the actor, whose grandfather was a Texan preacher.
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