Jesus of Montreal: The Avant-Garde Jesus Movie

Third Friday of Lent

We are now at the halfway point in this Lenten cinema series. Jésus de Montréal is movie number four, and we have four more to go after this. While I have enjoyed each of the three previous films in different ways, this one is my favorite thus far. The story and execution are just so unusual and unique with a mixture of earthiness and mysticism wrapped up in a type of non-religious Christianity. If that even makes sense. That’s why this is The Avant-Garde Jesus Movie. Leave it to the French — or the Québécois in this case — to experiment with presenting such an ancient, well-known story in a completely unexpected way.

Jésus de Montréal follows Daniel Coulombe, a talented, unknown actor, who is hired by the priest of a Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in Montreal to update and modernize their small Passion play production. We get to see a bit of the original version on VHS, and it’s basically an extremely traditional and overly theatrical Stations of the Cross. Daniel conducts background research — mostly archaeological and historical — to bring different perspectives to such a well-known story, gathers a diverse troupe of actors, and finally stages the modernized Passion play in the gardens of the pilgrimage site. As the film continues to unfold, the trajectories of the characters in the Gospels begin to merge with the…