The Book of Clarence is the story of the 13th apostle. If that sentence was a bit jarring, you are experiencing a small bit of what it was like to see the trailer this summer. In a world of constant reboots and remakes, someone is adding brand new chapters to the Bible? Is it sincere or satire? Most of the actors and actresses are black? Did John the Baptist just slap Clarence across the face? I had to see it.
I went on Friday evening, opening night. I decided in advance that I didn’t want to know anything about the intentions of the director and writer, Jeymes Samuel, or any of the people behind the project. My review is written entirely on what was presented on screen.
Clarence, played by LaKeith Stanfield, is a loser. He is the neighborhood weed dealer. When we first meet him, he is street racing a chariot that he borrowed from the local gangster, Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa). He loses, putting him enormously in debt, and is mugged by some street kids. He angrily steals a beggar’s cloak and stomps back home … to his mom’s house.
Clarence has a twin brother, Thomas (also played by LaKeith Stanfield), one of the 12 disciples. Like so many sets of Biblical brothers, the twins can’t stand each other. Thomas looks down on his brother’s petty criminality, while Clarence insists that Thomas abandoned their mother to follow Jesus (Nicholas Pinnock). Clarence makes it loudly clear that he doesn’t believe in the messiah. “God doesn’t exist,” he says, “I believe in life itself.”
Despite all of this, Clarence and the people who know him believe that he could be a better person. His crush, Varinia (Anna Diop), who works at the ancient hair salon, keeps him at a distance. She cares about him, but makes it clear he needs to grow up. Clarence’s mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) loves him, but she has her critiques. She jokes that one of her goals is to make sure he doesn’t die a virgin. Clarence himself believes he is capable of greatness and plans to get his life in order, just as soon as he’s done with this smoke.
With just 30 days to pay back his debt to Jedediah, and the disappointment of his community ringing in his ears, Clarence inhales deeply and hatches a plan to solve all of his problems: become the 13th apostle. He thinks that being in Jesus’s inner circle will give him money, immunity, and prestige. The real apostles laugh in his face. His twin brother piously tells him, “you will never be one of us, Clarence.” He decides to take his scheme even further, and begins roaming the countryside as a false messiah.
The Book of Clarence is funny. I laughed out loud in the theater more than once.. The characters mostly talk as if they are in a Hollywood Bible epic, but then Mary (Alfre Woodard) tells Clarence that she was just “minding her own virgin business” when an angel named Gabriel showed up. Clarence, looking dramatically over a vast ancient landscape, says to Elijah that the task before them is going to “require massive testicular fortitude.” When the setting and plot are as well known as the Bible’s, there are so many ways to sidestep the expected in order to create a punchline.
There are so many other types of jokes in this movie. There is visual comedy, like when Clarence is high and he levitates off the ground. There are pointed references to the modern world, such as when the only white characters, the Roman soldiers, pull over the cart that Clarence is riding in and ask everyone for their papers – it’s a traffic stop, in 33 AD. And there are puns, like when Pontius Pilot (James McAvoy) says that he’s been ordered to deal with all of the messiahs, “mess being the operative word.” In my favorite moment, Clarence is trying to become the 13th apostle, but he gives the game away immediately by continually pronouncing the “t” in the word apostle.
All of these jokes work because they are unexpected breaks from the movie’s seriousness about Jesus and the Bible. Jesus is shown to be God incarnate. The basic events of the Bible are shown to be straightforwardly historical. Mary says to Clarence that “If you ever saw him [Jesus] at any point in his life you would know that he is the messiah.” The exception to this accuracy is a brief apocryphal scene showing Jesus bringing clay birds to life. It’s an odd moment, but I need to finish this review before learning more about why this was included.
In addition to the movie’s humor, I appreciated its style. The music is fantastic. There’s a dance number to “Nights Over Egypt” by the Jones Girls. There are a number of moments when the basic plot of the Biblical story is conveyed in dramatic superhuman fashion. Barabas (Omar Sy) is reimagined as an Achilles-like immortal gladiator. Jesus’s own powers are flashier than what we are told in the Bible. He saves an accused adultress from stoning by stopping the deadly rocks in mid-air, then he delivers his well-known line “let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). It’s more dramatic than what the original tells us, but the essential story is there.
I also enjoyed The Book of Clarence because (spoiler alert) I thought the plot was going to graft Clarence fully into the story of Jesus’s death on the cross. The opening sequence made me think that Clarence would end up being the penitent thief, crucified next to Jesus. I have always found the thieves to be moving characters. I also love stories that creatively work within the limits of a well-known classic, such as how Wicked seamlessly adds to The Wizard of Oz. The Book of Clarence does not wrap things up this neatly. I think the director played a trick on me, cleverly using my assumptions about what Jesus is supposedly supposed to look like. The film is funny, stylized and clever, but where it really shines is its creative, ultimately accurate depiction of how Jesus, the son of God, transforms lives. Clarence is a changed man by the end of the movie. His humanistic false preaching — “knowledge is stronger than belief” — is so hollow compared to the real words of Jesus. “The one who believes in me will live even though he dies,” he says to Clarence. These are the essential words of the Gospel and they come through clearly and sincerely in this retelling.
Now about those clay birds…
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3 responses to “The Untold Story of an Unlikely Apostle”
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What a fantastic review! I’m am really excited to see this one. Word has it, the director is the brother of…. Seal. Wild.
RE: the clay birds. Sounds like an incident out of the Gospel of Thomas.
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