The Miracle Maker (2000, Stanislav Sokolov & Derek Hayes) (Patreon)

47/100

Not a film I'd ever have watched (or likely even have heard of) had it not been requested, as faith-based cinema—like religious faith in general—isn't really my thing. Stop-motion, on the other hand, very much is my thing, so it seemed possible that form and content might wrestle each other to a draw. And that's more or less what happened, though I did have some initial difficulties with this particular animation style. In a vacuum, such naturalistic puppets and landscapes seem kinda purpose-defeating: If your goal is to make it look as real as possible, just shoot actors on locations (which I doubt is much more expensive than this sort of mammoth stop-motion undertaking). Plus there's the whole uncanny-valley aspect, which here made me unduly conscious of the jerkiness in characters' movements. Thing is, though, a fair bit of the movie isn't stop-motion. Flashbacks, fantasies, Jesus' parables, and various other interludes employ cel animation (or its digital equivalent, anyway), and the contrast between abstraction levels is actually quite effective—so much so that it reliably took me a split second, each time the film switches back from hand-drawn(-looking) figures to puppets, for me to register/remember that they are puppets rather than people. Neat trick, that. And the cel(-ish) animation takes full advantage of opportunities to depict miraculous events that often look hokey or unconvincing in live-action, especially on a fairly low budget.

As Mamet might ask, however, what is all this technical expertise in aid of? A: It's in aid of a condensed New Testament adaptation, ostensibly viewing Jesus' life through the eyes of a very minor (unnamed, in fact, though she's called Tamar here) Biblical character. This conceit gets largely abandoned after the first reel or so, following which we just get a pretty standard highlight reel: raising Lazarus, flipping the moneychangers' tables, "one of you will betray me," etc. etc. Not only is this all very familiar to anyone raised Catholic (as I was), it's mostly pitched at childrens' level, with an emotional palette that's deliberately broad and uncomplicated. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, except that I'm no longer 10 years old and consequently crave something meatier. The gentleman who requested this review likely won't care for the comparison—I believe he refuses, on principle, to watch the film I'm about to mention—but it's hard for me to take The Miracle Maker very seriously when I've seen Scorsese's harrowing portrait of a genuinely uncertain, frightened, all-too-human Messiah; Last Temptation's Jesus may not reflect what various Christian denominations believe, but he's a zillion times more dramatically compelling than anything that Ralph Fiennes gets to voice. (I watched the English-language version.) Speaking of which, pretty stellar cast all around: David Thewlis as Judas, Miranda Richardson as Mary Magdalene, Richard E. Grant as John the Baptist, Ian Holm as Pontius Pilate, William Hurt and Julie Christie as the sick girl's parents, on and on. But they're all relegated to what's basically a visually impressive Sunday school lesson. Which, again, just isn't my thing. 

"Reasonably painless!"—Mike D'Angelo, Patreon