Judgment Call

But for one misguided notion, the mad genius Paul Verhoeven—who hasn't made a great movie since Starship Troopers nine years ago, and who had to crawl back to the Netherlands to make his latest—could have finally had Hollywood, not to mention millions of Christians, at his feet. Case in point? This aside, from a 2000 Artforum interview:

VERHOEVEN: It's the same way I'm fascinated with religion. As you may know, I'm working on a movie about Jesus. And basically it asks, How can millions and millions of people, for two thousand years—year in, year out—how can they all believe this and have this, say, this "light psychosis"? It's taken me fifty years of studying even to figure out what I can say that's really different enough to be said. Not to antagonize people—it'll do that anyway—but to say something I believe is true. I mean, it's difficult to find the truth in this story. And, of course, to the postmodern mind truth isn't much of an existing particle anymore anyway. For me the question remains, What do I think really happened there, two thousand years ago? And that's the issue of the movie.

ARTFORUM: But it's not going to be in ancient Aramaic?

VERHOEVEN: No, that would be too truthful. [Laughs.] Then nobody would want to see it.

Comments

[Write Procrastinator]

This is a shame, the one director that could reach a mass audience with dark humor (though most of them didn't recognize it as such) and it looks like he doesn't have another good film in him.