Review of Audience of One (2007) by Edith N — 17 Apr 2010

A documentary that can be best be described as "American Movie" meets "Jesus Camp," "Audience of One" is a parade of delusions.

I find that when it comes to bad acting, bad writing, and amateur production value, the growing trend of Christian films reaches new lows (and I've spent months watching independent Italian zombie movies from the 70's, so that's really saying something.).

Emboldened by the financial success of Mel GIbson's "The Passion of the Christ," Christians (primarily Evangelicals) have begun cranking out custom-made programming, so saturated in Christian sentiment as to be completely inaccessible (if not downright silly) to mainstream audiences.

There's a hostility toward Hollywood in the Christian world, and thus a hostility toward the "way Hollywood does it ..." which, unfortunately for the films, means eliminating "bells and whistles" like coherent plot points, realistic character development, and basically competent production.

The result is films that the filmmakers, and their intended audience, actually believed are "touched" by god; and that are designed to "touch" people who view them and somehow "carry god" - virally, it seems - into the viewer.

In "Audience of One," Pentecostal Pastor Richard Gazowsky declares that he has been given a directive by god to create a film studio - the "Rolls Royce" of film studios - to create the ultimate biblical epic and reclaim cinema for Jesus. The movie is called "Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph," which is pitched as "Star Wars" meets "The Ten Commandments.".

His congregation blindly turns over the money, the budget inflates to hundreds of thousands of dollars; mysterious German investors want to push it into the multi-millions, and it looks like they're off to the races. The latest and greatest equipment is purchased, they're off to Italy to begin production ...

But there's one problem. None of them know anything about making movies. Worse, because they believe that "God already made this movie" and they're just acting as his Production Assistants, each major production hurdle is handled with a prayer circle instead of, well, problem solving.

God, it turns out, functions like a low level talent agent. He commissions the work, promises the world, disappears, and leaves the fledgling production flapping in the wind. And just when it couldn't get worse, he stops returning phone calls.

It's funny, and they're easy targets to be sure - the documentary wisely avoids weighing in on the proceedings and just sits back and watches it all go to hell. The assurance that Faith will make the movie somehow magically come together leads to some of the most bizarre delusional behavior I've ever seen in documentary, including a sequence in which the congregation is authentically confused about why they're being evicted from their studio space after failing to pay rent for four months, and a delightful conspiracy theory about Satan interfering with their electricity to stop the movie from being completed.

Through it all, Gazowsky's faith is unshakable. And even at the end, he unveils new aspects of his ambition ... that are, frankly, symptoms of undeniable insanity, and we can't help but notice how many more empty seats he's preaching to than at the beginning.

After years of production and hundreds of thousands of dollars, only TWO SHOTS of "Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph" were ever completed. Gazowsky is still at it to this very day, convinced that Jesus has a very real plan in place to finish the sci-fi Biblical epic (though his efforts would be better spent in Haiti, or Africa, but whatever.).

To the believer, there is nothing that faith can't overcome. This movie is a funny, sad reminder that faith doesn't stand a chance against one very persuasive opponent: Reality.