It’s Easter, for those who celebrate. Enjoy your chocolate.
Personally speaking, despite being raised a Catholic and having attended fourteen years of Catholic school (including four years with the Jesuits), I cannot say I’m exactly the “best” Catholic out there. I mean, I’m pretty much what you could call “lapsed.” I would suggest I’m probably agnostic, more than anything else, but the combination of fourteen years of schooling and my first exposure to the music of Black Sabbath* really drove home the point that the church wasn’t really my bag. When it came time to go to college, I felt I was more than done with the whole religious bent. I developed a pronounced disdain for rigid dogma and a naughty affinity for brazen blasphemy that continues to rile certain members of my family. But while I may frequently think that the faith is too deeply couched in intolerance, guilt and fear (what? Am I wrong?), I don’t genuinely begrudge anyone else’s adherence to it, although my absolute favorite combination of words in the English language continues to be “Mass is cancelled.”
But last night, when my wife, son and I were wondering what we should watch after dinner, the notion of the seasonably appropriate “The Ten Commandments” was invoked (not by me, mind you). I actually don’t mind the film, but felt it was a bit too … lengthy for our purposes. My alternative was to suggest “Life of Brian,” a slavishly more enjoyable take on comparable subject matter, albeit filtered through Monty Python’s refreshing disregard for the sacrosanct.
After that was shot down (by the wife), I raised the notion of a film that might otherwise seem like an unlikely stretch for a church-dodger like myself, that being 1973’s “Godspell.” I have my reasons.
For a start, while it was never a hotbed of holy rollers, my childhood home did, oddly enough, come equipped with the original cast recording of the off-Broadway production of “Godspell,” which I remember being in somewhat regular rotation (again, mind you, not by me). The folksy-acoustic pop-friendly songs from same (a little lighter than the ponderously serious fare from the similarly inclined “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which was also quite a mainstay, at the time) fit perfectly when played alongside my mother’s Judy Collins, James Taylor, Carole King and Cat Stevens records. I remember my older sister playing the crap out of “Day By Day,” which is only cloyingly churchy if you pay too close attention to the lyrics. While I may bristle at the revelation, if you play those songs today, I can still practically sing along with them to the letter.
The film from two years after that LP’s release, however, has what I’d consider a special bonus that has absolutely nothing to do with absolution, salvation, forgiveness, evangelism or any of that incense-sodden claptrap. Filmed entirely in the New York City of 1972 (and starring the ridiculously afro’d Victor Garber as Jesus), “Godspell” is an unwitting time capsule of the same, gritty Manhattan captured in films like “Serpico” and “Mean Streets,” albeit with significantly less gunplay and swearing.
Not unlike the film adaptation of “The Wiz” or Milos Forman’s “Hair” from a few years later, the Manhattan depicted in “Godspell” is actually more of a painterly, fanciful portrayal than any presented by Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet. But given my particular predilections, I cannot help but be fascinated by it, even if it means enduring the Gospel of Matthew being sung at me.
Enjoy this taster, and Happy Easter.
*Actually, somewhat ironically, despite the band's ominous moniker, Black Sabbath’s stance on all things occult and/or Satanic was more a wary aversion than an espousal. Led Zeppelin was far more sympathetic of that sensibility, albeit in a nuanced way — unlike, say, Venom, although Venom’s endorsement of all things Satanic was more vaudevillian than in earnest.
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