THE BIG QUESTION (2004)
Directors: Francesco Cabras, Alberto Molinari
Cast: Greg, the Dog
Interviewees: Mel Gibson, Monica Bellucci, James Caviezel, Rosalinda Celentano, Maia Morgenstern
Screenplay: Francesco Cabras
It is unfortunate that The Big Question, an intelligent and thought-provoking documentary about faith, was made before the December 2004 tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people around the Indian Ocean. Filmmakers Francesco Cabras and Alberto Molinari could then have asked one more pertinent question to their dozens of subjects on the set of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ: if there is a God (or Goddess, or gods, or goddesses), how could such a horrific, unimaginably destructive tragedy have taken place?
Answers would surely have been as thoughtful, stupid, funny, mean-spirited, wacky, and/or illuminating as those provided by dozens of interviewees of different religions, nationalities, and social backgrounds when responding to questions such as Who is God for you? and How would you describe who God is to your child?
Cabras (the bad thief Gesmas in Gibson's The Passion) and Molinari had previously worked together on the documentary Italian Soldiers / Spaghetti Requiem, shot during the making of the Nicolas Cage-Penélope Cruz vehicle Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which Cabras had a bit part. While that documentary was a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a Hollywood movie on location (Greece, with numerous Italian extras), The Big Question has nothing to do with the making of The Passion of the Christ in the outskirts of the ancient town of Matera, in Southern Italy — except in that it uses those associated with Mel Gibson's film as a (limited) microcosm of the human race. (As per the filmmakers, The Big Question was inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1965 Comizi d'amore, in which the Italian director asks his subjects about their views on sex.)
In The Big Question, we never see Cabras and Molinari actually asking the questions. Instead, we are treated to a variety of heads of different sizes, shapes, colors, and age groups talking directly to the camera. (In a montage representing thought and faith as manifested through the body, we see closeups of talking hands.)
Although a mostly static camera focused on nonstop talking heads may sound unexciting, the directors' cinematic approach in The Big Question is in fact fully involving. The questions asked may be grammatically simple, but they are both profound and complex. So, when the interviewees talk while looking into the camera, it is as if they are having an intimate conversation with us, whether agreeing with or challenging our own beliefs and assumptions.
Even within the documentary's relatively confined boundaries, the responses to questions about God and faith are remarkably disparate. Radically different viewpoints are spilled forth, sometimes leading to disagreements between the interviewees themselves. At other times, we see through the filmmakers' clever montage how the various concepts of divinity are at their core intellectual decisions based on one's cultural background, level of intelligence, and personal experiences and prejudices.
Among those providing memorable talking-head moments is a wide-eyed, wildly gesticulating Mel Gibson, who — very convincingly — says he's "prone to be insane," while explaining how he felt the urge to look for divine guidance when he found himself lost in the nothingness of fame and wealth. In another curious vignette, a Christian clergyman declares that there is only one God — of the Christian kind — and that it's either faith in that God or No Salvation, for "in the end something has to be right." Unfortunately, the Christian man of the cloth isn't followed by an equally radical Muslim imam asserting that it's either Allah or Eternal Damnation, but we do get to see Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern (the Virgin Mary in The Passion) stating that "when you start to say my religion is better than your religion, then it's the end."
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