The goals of Religulous, the comedic documentary starring comedian Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles (Borat) are simple. The film aims to expose religious institutions as corrupt and hypocritical, religious texts as inconsistent, anachronistic, and mostly fabricated, and suggest that religious zealotry leads to bigotry, irrationality, closed-mindedness, and violence. Maher tours the holy lands and the Bible belt to prove his point, including several places in which the very fact that they exist is evidence enough to disprove a merciful God (like a Creationist history museum).
Maher goes after a lot of worthy targets. He visits a gay correctional centre, run by a “reformed homosexual.” He verbally demolishes a bling-happy fundamentalist preacher who is unfamiliar with Jesus’ quote, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
But there are other scenes where he acts like a bully, insulting anyone with differing views.
I voiced these concerns to Maher and Larry Charles directly at the press junket for Religulous at the Toronto International Film Festival. Maher responded, “[People] want to be able to say that [there’s a way to] be religious [without] looking stupid. There isn’t. You’re defending indefensible, primitive, mythic thinking. If you’re an adult and you still believe this stuff…I’m sorry, you can’t have it both ways. You’re a rube. There’s just no two ways about it.”
His answer inadvertently points to the movie’s central flaw. According to the film, religion is definitively bad. While I’m as skeptical as the next liberal arts student, Maher doesn’t acknowledge that a world without the rigid moral guidelines of religion could be a very scary place. Maher’s “rube” dismissal doesn’t hold up, either. Was Thomas Aquinas a rube? How about Thomas More, or C.S. Lewis? How can two atheists like Maher and Charles be such absolutists?
Maher interviews a lot of people in Religulous, but he uses his subjects as comic stooges rather than partners in a debate. Taking a page from the Michael Moore handbook, Larry Charles inserts sardonic captions and stock footage for comic effect until the interviews feel so pared down it’s hardly a fair fight.
When Maher takes on a semi-powerful Latin preacher who claims to be the second coming of Christ, the filmmakers are right to take him down a peg. But the film should’ve featured less dim wits and radicals, and more of the reasonable religious scholars.
Maher and Charles would claim that such people don’t exist. Take for instance, a scene in which Maher grills a Vatican priest who cheerfully admits that most of the Bible stories are untrue. This could have been an opportunity for Maher and Charles to investigate how modern priests approach their faith. Instead, I was disappointed to hear Charles say at the junket, “He’s at a point in his life where he doesn’t have anything to hide, he’s totally comfortable with himself, and he felt very comfortable saying, ‘I’m a priest, I work at the Vatican, but this is all bullshit.’”
I told Charles that I thought he was deliberately misrepresenting the priest’s comments, and pointed out that Catholics are not all Biblical literalists. Maher responded, “When you hear the term ‘moderate religion,’ what a moderate means is, ‘We ignore a lot of stuff.’ And you have to. The Bible says if your child comes home and says he’s going to convert to another religion, kill him. It says, if you find out your neighbour is working on Sunday, kill him. Well, you just have to ignore that.”
Religulous excels at making this kind of absolute argument. Yes, radical ideas are old news, but they’re still troubling. Isn’t it disturbing that so many people take “the talking snake” literally? Isn’t it immoral to live a good life just to get into Heaven? Isn’t it arbitrary to have to keep separating the “good” parts of religious scripture from the bad parts? Isn’t it frightening that the man who said, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone,” could somehow inspire certain unsavory groups to proclaim, “God hates fags?”
Religulous is an unapologetically partisan piece of filmmaking. I would have preferred something more even-handed, but Maher and Charles aren’t pretending to be unbiased. They’re arguing for atheism, and the result is substantial, funny, and challenging. On that basis, it is a success. And in an election year where three Republican candidates denied belief in evolution, and a potential Vice President thinks Creationism should be taught in schools, the film is relevant. When asked about said political leaders, Charles commented, “Do we really want people running our government who believe the Earth is five thousand years old at this point in the twenty-first century?”
God help us.
Rating: VVV
Religulous opens on October 3.
