Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Robe!

Theme: Black Bush - 16 Horsepower

The most entertaining film about the early Christians is Cecil B. DeMille's spectacular and batshit insane Sign of the Cross, which features an hilariously graphic battle to the death between women and dwarfs:

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But equally fascinating in an altogether different vein is 1953's The Robe. Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton, Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds) HAS IT ALL: political connections, devoted gf Diana (Jean Simmons, who is not that juggalo with the big tongue), and a real shot at hot twins:

In ancient Rome you could just buy hot twins.

BUT THEN he overplays his hand and finds himself shipped off to Jerusalem, courtesy of the jealous machinations of flaming pervert Caligula, whom the script preposterously expects us to believe has the hots for Diana, and not some dude in chaps with a handlebar moustache.

Bro does the same flamboyant twirl twice in the same take before sitting down fr no cap.

When in Jerusalem, however, Gallio is obligated to preside over the crucifixion of three condemned men. One is of course our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, though at the time Gallio is given only a vague overview of Who He is supposed to be. The actor playing Jesus is seen only at a distance, or from angles that obscure his face, placing the viewer in the position of a rando catching a glimpse behind a crowd. Yet Gallio's Greek slave Demetrius (Victor Mature) manages to make eye contact with the Christ, compelling his immediate allegiance.

Yeah, I know this would have been a gr8 poast for Holy Week but I drop Halloween and Christmas articles at all times of the year too so just enjoy the wild ride as the wheels come off.

Only upon that fateful Friday, when the world turned dark, does Gallio begin to realise a fraction of the awesome cosmic import of his actions. As he gambles for the Christ's possessions with the soldiers, Gallio wins the titular garment, onto which he projects all the burden of his tormented conscience. The film takes on an uniquely haunting atmosphere as Gallio is beset by fever nightmares to which we suspect we are only partly party. It's the best attempt by any film to portray the presence of God, reflecting not the undepictable Itself, but the way most of us experience It: as a haunting, maddening voice urging us against our best efforts to shut It out.

While Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ emphasised the physical brutalisation meted out to God incarnate by His unworthy creations, The Robe best captures an infinitesimally small impression of the sheer ineffable alienness of God. Despite what terminal modernity patients might assert with laughable confidence, there's actually nothing unrelatable nor baffling at all about an Alien (1979) that doesn't care about you and just wants to eat and rape you; that's just a bear, a shark, or a fast-tracked asylum seeker. The essence of alienness is that which seems to us most paradoxical: that God Himself, impossible to dream of apprehending in His supercosmic magnificence, cares about our wretched souls.

They don't call it a Mystery for nothing.

The rest of the film deals with the aftermath in which Gallio attempts to track down the Robe to destroy it, and learns of the Resurrection from the Christians, FORCING him to CHOOSE where his allegiance lies. It's all compelling enough, but it's those scenes of holy horror that remain wedged in the memory, whispering to us of the judgement that awaits us all.