STIGMATA

Bleeder's Digest
Guest Review by Mike Flores

After the mixed press Stigmata was hit with, I went to the film not quite knowing what to expect and kind of even dreading going.

What I didn’t expect to find was a film that is the most angrily anti-Catholic film since Mark of the Devil. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for the first pop culture artifact to deal with, of all things, the Nag Hammadi Bible!

Gabriel Byrne is Father Andrew Kiernan, a priest with a science background who investigates supernatural occurrences for the Vatican. As the film opens, he discovers in a small village a crying statue of Mary that he can’t explain. Over his objections, he is removed from the case by higher-ups and sent to investigate a bloody and bizarre stigmata-like attack on hairdresser Frankie Page, played with terrific anguish by psychotronic fave Patricia Arquette. For the uninitiated, stigmata is the occurrence of wounds that appear from unseen forces and replicate the wounds of Christ. Father Kiernan is confused by her symptoms because she is an atheist. Technically, atheists aren’t supposed to bleed like Christ. When it becomes clear she is not faking, Father Kiernan must put aside his own religious beliefs to help her. This leads to a powerful scene when Frankie is possessed and covers her home with ancient writings. The writing turns out to be from the Nag Hammadi Bible, and the message could threaten the existence of organized religion.

In the late 1940’s a sheep herder discovered a vase with ancient writings in it. Often confused with the Dead Sea scrolls, and quite unlike the present modern day Bible, some parts of which were written by committee over a two-hundred- year period, the Nag Hammadi was written while Christ was alive and up to about thirty years after his death. The Nag Hammadi not only has an entire sermon by Mary Magdalene ( proving that women could be priests in the early days of Christianity), it also has an entire sermon by Christ. Think about it. When you look through the Bible there are very few actual quotes of Christ. This is an entire sermon!

So you figure the Pope would throw his hat in the air and every religion on earth would be beating down the door to get their hands on the sermon and begin discussing it with each other, right? Well, you would be wrong. When the religious historians discovered Christ’s actual words they went into shock.

They wouldn’t let any of the translations out. Finally, after years of blocking the translation, real historians took over and began releasing the work. Although unknown to most people, those who have read them, including myself, are profoundly moved by the words of the people alive at the time. I don’t care if you’re the hardest-line atheist, the two things you immediately pick up on when you read them is that over the centuries the Church has conveniently discarded beliefs Christ had that were very anti-organized religion. And that all Christians have totally missed the boat on what Christ was about.

If one viewer of this film goes out and reads the translations, it can only mean misery for today’s organized religions. Stigmata may someday have the same effect on religion that Martin Luther did when he posted his demands to the church centuries ago. And don’t think they don’t know it.

All this from a horror film? Believe it. Like peeling an onion, this film makes you think and reveals more and more about religion with every layer you delve into. It has some genuinely scary and gory scenes, but it has many profound scenes as well. Billy Corgan from SMASHING PUMPKINS does a lot of the music; the camera direction from Jeff Kimball (let’s face it, he made Jacob's Ladder the good film it was) is terrific. Rupert Wainwright directs like a man on a mission. The film is as wonderful to look at as it is thought-provoking. A horror movie with a mind! Much, much better than it had to be!

Possession; blood; ghosts; psi-phenomena; wrath of Jehovah.

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