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FALSE IDOLS
THE BOOK OF CLARENCE The Messiah is reimagined and ripped off in Jeymes Samuel’s audacious new Bible story.
The year that Jeymes Samuel, aka The Bullitts, was born, Monty Python’s Life of Brian drew accusations of blasphemy and was banned in several areas. Samuel’s own spin on the messianic dark-comedy is less antiorganised religion than Brian, but boldly portrays the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and Jesus himself, as Black. Samuel recalls how even his Black aunties raised eyebrows at the idea, and how his perception of the Messiah was based on a ‘3D picture of white Jesus on the crucifix, whose eyes would follow you around the kitchen.’
The film takes place in the final weeks of Jesus’ life but follows Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield), the twin brother of Thomas the Apostle (also Stanfield), who, in order to pay off a large debt, markets himself as an alternative Messiah and quickly reaps the rewards. Stanfield previously starred in The Harder They Fall for Samuel, but the writer-director goes further back with the man portraying Jesus himself. ‘I did not want to cast Nicholas Pinnock because he’s such a close friend. We go back 16 years,’ he says. ‘When you cast your friend as Jesus, you admit he’s your favourite actor alive.’
Pinnock’s race aside, the opportunity to play arguably the most revered person who ever lived doesn’t come around very often, something that Samuel finds puzzling. ‘I love biblical movies, and I don’t know why Hollywood stopped making them.’ But rather than just replicate the biblical epics of yesteryear, Samuel wanted to subvert our perception of them, but for different reasons than he did in Black western The Harder
They Fall. ‘Westerns were just whitewashed: one in four cowboys was Black,’ Samuel explains. ‘“Cowboy” was for people of colour and white people were “Cowheads”, so it was a reappropriation. With Clarence, I wanted to make a film that resembled the environment that I grew up in.’ As much as the past two millennia have seen change, what struck Samuel was all the things that have remained unchanged: religious and racial persecution and systemic oppression. ‘I wanted to show how familiar that world is,’ he says.
This meant affording the film’s female characters with personality and agency, including Alfre Woodard as the wise-cracking Virgin Mary; Anna Diop as the wise Varinia; and Teyana Taylor as a badass Mary Magdalene. ‘I believe there’s no era where women haven’t been the dominant reason for all of life,’ Samuel says. ‘Almost everything a man does he’s trying to impress women!’ Beyond competing for their approval, Samuel considers the women in his life the true powerhouses. ‘My mom taught me everything I know about film. My sister taught me swag. Mary Magdalene is the fastest chariot racer because the fastest driver in my ’hood was a girl called Chantel.’
Reimagining Mary Magdalene through the prism of Chantel from Kilburn is only one of the ways that Samuel’s life in London has been transposed to ancient Jerusalem. ‘When Clarence gets ambushed by Gypsies, that is [based on] a true story. Every single second happened to me on Latimer Road, including the dart to the neck! Apart from the chariot, it was BMXs.’ Much as Jerusalem is taken over by (all-white) occupying forces led by James McAvoy’s dastardly Pontius Pilate, Samuel sees his neighbourhood fight for survival. ‘You dehumanise and pretend like these are not Black areas, it happened to Notting Hill. It’s like the western, we erase people from their own history.’ Samuel bucks up against that erasure, and points out that his ‘favourite part’ of Clarence is the opening credits ‘because it’s about my neighbourhood. They’re riding on the chariot through Jerusalem, and it says “Kilburn Lane Productions”. My heart literally jumps out of my chest.’
‘The cross they carry is what we all have to bear as people of colour in Western civilisation’
JEYMES SAMUEL
Just as Kilburn runs the gamut of all London has to offer, The Book of Clarence fluctuates between deliciously fun and heart-stoppingly bleak. The most dramatic swing of the pendulum sees a musical number followed by a lynching, in quick succession. But for Samuel, ‘That’s life! Twenty seconds before drive-bys, people are just chilling.’
While the parallels with today’s police brutality, urban warfare and killings are obvious, the crucifixions that bookend the film are impossible to un-see. But for Samuel, showing beloved actors enact such atrocities was more than just historically accurate. ‘I found it striking to have people of colour on crucifixes and show immediately how they crucified people en masse.’ But even though the film starts by showing characters nailed to a cross before flashing back to a month earlier, Samuel believes: ‘Everyone knows how Titanic ends, and in Clarence it’s not what happens in the end, it’s how they get there. The cross they carry is what we all have to bear as people of colour in Western civilisation. Metaphorically, it’s the unjust punishments and prejudices we face.’
While particular cruelties remain the same, it is hard to compare The Book of Clarence, or Jeymes Samuel as a filmmaker, to anything before him. He marches to the beat of a drum that he describes as a ‘cacophony of circumstance’ but is gleefully proud of what his team created together. ‘It’s exactly the movie that was in my head,’ the director nods. ‘From one minute to the next, smiling and then tearful. You suffer, and then you fall in love. Clarence captures the madness of real life, and it’s perfect.’
THE BOOK OF CLARENCE OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 19 JANUARY 2024.