The God Who Wasn't There
by Brian Flemming
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Dundes, Richard Carrier, Richard Dawkins, Robert M. Price, Sam HarrisDirector: Brian Flemming
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Digital Sound, Dolby, DVD, Full length, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 320 minutes
Published: 2005-06-06
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-23
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Beyond Belief Media
Movie Reviews of The God Who Wasn't There
Movie Review: The best filmmaking is focused, the best viewing objective, and the best reviewing fair and balanced.
Summary: 5 Stars
I must admit, I love reviewing books and films about what H.L. Mencken might have called "heaving dead cats into sanctuaries*." For one thing, one of Mencken's own horse-laughs almost always lies in wait at the bottom of their Amazon pages. The page for Brian Flemming's "The God Who Wasn't There" is no exception. This time around, it's what I like to call "shy evidence": It never fails to amuse this reviewer when Christians boast about a "massive body of evidence" regarding the existence of Jesus and yet never seem able to produce this massive body of evidence. There is a massive body of refuted evidence (apology, historicization, and propaganda) regarding the chronicity of the Jesus figure, to be sure, in the sense that the evidentiary data and arguments formed around it have failed to satisfy the basic tenets of academia as well as to pass logical muster---but a "massive body of [valid] evidence"? We're still waiting. Our minds are open. Produce your god, and we shall bow down to him; that's a promise.
But with each good horse-laugh often comes a twinge of annoyance. True to form, the first Christian review of this documentary I could find makes an ad hominem attack against an informational source in the narrative, but fails to even speak to the arguments of the narrative themselves, let alone refute them. Is anyone still buying this tack? (if person bad, person wrong) I would have thought card-carrying members of the Christian Apology Club would have retired it by now. In truth, for the documentary's limited scope, its points are quite succinct and well made; and while there is much more to be said regarding the evils of organized religion, this documentary provides a wonderful jumping off point for truth seekers.
Indeed, viewers will miss the entire point of the documentary if expecting an airtight comprehensive proof of Jesus Christ as fiction rather than fact that not even Pat Robertson could fail to laud; such would be beyond the scope of any documentary. In the same way that physicians once ran the gamut in medical knowledge and practice, but today need to specialize due to the exponentially increasing body of medical science and application; authors, pundits, and documentary filmmakers must wage their wars on one focused front at a time in the modern day, avoiding the temptation to speak to points beyond the scope of their project. Some reviewers of this documentary have claimed that this is a weakness. I say otherwise. After all, what better way to entice viewers to do further, hopefully objective research on their own than to only reference and locate topics such as the astrotheological roots of religion and the phenomenon of moderate Christianity, leaving the viewers' interest exquisitely piqued? Besides, how reasonable is it to expect a filmmaker to pack that kind of information into a single documentary? As viewers will miss the point if expecting an airtight comprehensive proof beyond all doubt, reviewers hold the filmmaker to an unreasonable standard if expecting the documentary to take the place of tens of thousands of pages of hardcore scholarship. The filmmaker correctly, even expertly limits his content to the scope of the project and, in so doing, relies on the integrity of his reviewers to limit their critiques to that scope.
What this documentary offers is the provocation of thought upon a limited few subtopics regarding the question of whether Jesus Christ ever actually existed, presented in a well-organized and -rounded fashion which, while making no bones about where the filmmaker stands, still gives the viewer plenty of room to call the evidence and arguments presented to the tribunal of her or his own intellectual discernment, reason, and good sense---bite-size pieces of "things that make you go, `hmmm...'" to act as a jumping off point from which the truth seeker may launch into further objective research, rather than engaging in the wholesale adoption of belief systems formulated by others. Thus, for example, a zoologist---well trained in critical thought and the inductions of the scientific method---being interviewed regarding his thoughts on the historicity of Jesus Christ should not raise a red flag in the viewer's mind at all. That there are indeed glaring historical inaccuracies surrounding the Jesus account is a fact that remains wholly unaffected by the nature of the scholarship of the person proclaiming such historical inaccuracies, for the modern layperson, child of the Information Age, is increasingly well equipped to affirm or deny these inaccuracies on her or his own. Verily, this reviewer says unto you, if this film with its interviewees provoked afterthought in the viewer, then it has frankly done its job. If it has inspired serious discussion on the film's subject matter, all the better. If it has transcended its subject matter, has tickled the cinephile, and stands as a representative piece of documentary film art**...well that's the icing on the cake, isn't it?---the cat's meow, as it were, as she is heaved by a wild-eyed and smiling Mencken into a solemn sanctuary full of nodding sheep, hiding secret doubt and holy fear. In this reviewer's opinion, Brian Flemming is 3 for 3.
These issues won't be dealt with overnight, and they won't be dealt with in a single documentary or book, nor even by a single filmmaker or author. Don't judge this documentary by what isn't there but by what is. Put simply, good social commentary is whatever opens dialogue and stimulates discussion, and this documentary does both, in spades. As we are all affected in one way or another by Christianity, this documentary is for everyone. No matter what you believe and no matter why you believe it, give "The God Who Wasn't There" an honest viewing with a truly open, objective mind. I dare you. If your beliefs are worthy of you, then they can surely stand up to the scrutiny.
* "The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe---that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." --H.L. Mencken
** Indeed, this documentary film won the Best Documentary award at the 2005 Grassroots Cinema Film Festival.
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