A Matter of Faith

When I posted my All-Time Favorites list in January, a few people expressed disbelief at my No. 1 choice, Dogma. I told them I'd write a post explaining it someday. Since I watched the movie against Monday, I decided it was time to write.

Warning: At exactly 1,000 words, this is the longest thing I've ever posted. Consider it an essay.

The first time I saw my favorite movie of all time, I didn’t even like it that much.

My friend Jen, then living in Oakland, and I watched Dogma on a rainy November afternoon in a near-deserted theater. We both came away disappointed. A month later, a couple of my friends took me to a packed New York City screening. I found the movie a lot funnier then. (This also proves my theory that comedies work much better in a crowded room, but that’s another essay for another post.)

As with many loves, my appreciation for Dogma grew over the years, but it was our fifth encounter that really solidified my adoration. Those same NYC friends who sponsored that Dogma viewing for my birthday ran a book club earlier this decade. For some reason, one month Paul suggested we should read the Gospels of Mark and Luke, so I decided to watch Kevin Smith’s ode to the Catholic Church to enhance the text. That was the first time I saw past the one-liners and the who’s who cast to really listen to what Smith was saying. I realized: Dogma ultimately is a story of faith. Look past the f-bombs and the carnage, and what you have, in fact, is a really spiritual film.

Bethany’s spiritual journey is, in a way, my spiritual journey. Like Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), when I go to church, it’s more out of habit – and while I haven’t actually written my grocery list, I have been to known to brainstorm the rest of my day. Early in Dogma, Bethany muses to her fellow abortion-clinic worker that she doesn’t think she has any faith left. Liz (Janeane Garofalo, who Smith said he wishes he’d cast as the lead) replies that faith is like a glass of water: When you’re young, the glass is small and easy to fill, but as you get older, the glass grows, and the same amount doesn’t fill it anymore. Bethany declares that she thinks God is dead.

Yet for all her cynicism, Bethany wants to know the comfort of God watching out for her, a feeling she had as a child. That’s an emotion with which I can identify, particularly when I’m at my most bitter. Bethany and I pray before we go to sleep, and we have crucifixes hanging by our beds. Bethany has a startling knowledge of her religion, and it’s not just because of “something out a Charlton Heston movie,” in spite of what the angel Metatron (Alan Rickman) moans. She wants to know what God is like; it’s a question she asks of those who have encountered Him … er, Her (Alanis Morissette). By the end of Dogma, Bethany grasps what the 13th Apostle Rufus (Chris Rock) has told her – that it’s better to have ideas than beliefs. “You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier,” he says. It’s a thought worth remembering.

Ah, Rufus. Rock (the funniest presence in Dogma) and Salma Hayek’s muse Serendipity have some of the most intelligent dialogue in Smith’s satire. Of Catholicism, Serendipity says, “You people don’t celebrate your faith. You mourn it.” How many times have I thought that! When Bethany questions whether another religion has it right, the Muse replies, “It doesn’t matter what faith you believe in. It’s that you have it.” As for Rufus, much of his dialogue is quotable and important, particularly during the aforementioned beliefs/ideas comparison. He talks of God’s dislike of what is carried out in His name, “especially the factioning of all the religions.” This leads to the difference between ideas and beliefs: “Life should be malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea generates that. Beliefs anchor you to a certain point and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.”

On Monday, I had my ninth viewing of Dogma, as part of the New Directors/New Films alumni series at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theatre. This time, I decided that Smith hasn’t been given enough credit as a director. Sure, the look is crude, and the special effects (the credits note a wing sculptor and a feather painter) can be cheesy, but in fact the movie is one giant Easter egg hunt.

Of course, one finds the trademarks of many Smith films – tributes to Star Wars, love of all things Jersey, recurring actors, and naturally stoner “hetero life-mates” Jay (Jason Mewes, hysterical as the profane accidental prophet) and Silent Bob (Smith) – but this time Smith adds some sight gags. The church Bethany attends? “The Laboured Voice of God.” The scene transitions are done the same way as Star Wars, wiping instead of cutting to the next scene. Most of all, there’s Mooby.

On their way to a church in New Jersey in order to exploit the plenary-indulgence loophole, the renegade angels Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) stop at a McDonald’s-like corporation called Mooby. Smith makes the invasive presence of the golden cow known throughout Dogma with hats, posters and dolls, all randomly dispersed into the film. The Complex Corp., Mooby’s parent (having bought the concept from a California mother and housewife), ironically has its headquarters by a church. Loki’s rants against idolatry and greed sound like something out of Ralph Nader’s campaign, while Bartleby’s musings about fallen society could be spoken by any disillusioned or disappointed clergyman or old-timer. “I remember when it was a sin to eat meat on Fridays,” Bartleby observes. While I don’t, I certainly know a lot of Catholics who do!

For all his characters’ outward crassness, Smith is a man of faith. He thanks God before anyone else in the credits, and he gives special mention to all four Gospels for having inspired his work. (See, I had a reason for reviewing Dogma during the Gospel book club!) He consulted with a church and a school while working on the screenplay. Honestly, I feel closer to God and my Catholic faith after seeing Dogma than I do after watching The Passion of the Christ.