Review of Year One (2009) by Chads. — 19 Jun 2009

"Year One" is no "Life of Brian", but any film, especially a mainstream one, that dares to satirize(and even question) organized religion, has balls. Whereas "Monty Python's Life of Brian" was ideologically similar to Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumors"(both movie and song begrudgingly acknowledges the existence of God), "Year One" seems more in tune with XTC's "Dear God", in which Zed(Jack Black) no longer believes that the "junk is true"(paraphrased from the Andy Partridge lyric).

The music video for "Dear God"(directed by Nick Brandt) shows a small child at the base of a barren tree, conspicuously apple-free. The heretical image challenges the concept of original sin as nothing more than a prefabrication.

There's a tree in "Year One" too, akin to the Tree of Knowledge(from the Book of Genesis), where Zed takes a bite of the forbidden fruit with the expressed hope that its transgressive flesh will make him wiser.

At one point, although the film won't come out and say it, Zed thinks he's Jesus Christ. But then the "chosen one" has an epiphany, similar to a hypothetical Jesus losing his faith at the crucifixtion.

As the Sodom townsfolk gather rocks at his stoning(this is Zed's Passion), he realizes that nothing happened to him at the Holy of the Holies, so he loses faith and relinquishes his claim on being a savior.

Late in the film, he tells the people to "make your own destiny"(implying that they forego idolatry and practice free will), because there's "no pearly gates, no thorny crown".

In spite of its provocative subtext, "Year One" is sunk by its own puerility(the usual suspects: urine and poop make cameos). Too bad. Where Zed chooses the girl over being a religious icon, "Year One" plays like "The Last Temptation of Zed"(in which the Nikos Kazantzakis novel is rewritten when the Christ-like figure succumbs to earthly pleasures for good).