Sundance: Son of Man
Sunday night, January 22, 2006. I really want to like this film…but I just can’t muster much enthusiasm about it. Its backstory is quite inspiring: Director Mark Darnford-May went to South Africa and established a theater collective. Many of the members of the troop had never seen a play or film prior to joining his ensemble. Within a few years, the troop had produced this film, Son of Man, which takes the New Testament story of the life of Christ and places it in a contemporary setting in Africa. The concept could have worked very well. The film featured beautiful song and dance by the cast and a stunning physical setting…but I felt that the story often stayed too literal to the actual biblical story when there were so many opportunities to make meaningful interpretations. Toward the latter half of the story, the film seemed non-committal as to whether it wanted to make Jesus a secular/political leader or a spiritual one. It settled for attempting to make him both, someone who could perform spiritual miracles such as exorcisms as well as inspire citizens to stand up to government oppression. Granted, the same could be said about Jesus’ role in biblical Jerusalem, but the Jesus in Son of Man did seem to have a political agenda, which made his spiritual associations seem a bit out of place. The film did end on an academically interesting note, with the crucifiction of Christ actually representing the Resurrection — which Kelly pointed out is actually how the Christian church "resurrects" Christ today in that the cross is the symbol used by the church for Christianity.
