New film clones Jesus

10 April 2012

Special effects can turn a movie into a spectacle. But if that's its main appeal, they can also suck the life out of the story. Such is unlikely to be the fate of Revelation.

Opening later this month, this British-made occult thriller has special effects by the tonne-load. But it also has an idea, perhaps the greatest idea in the world, if it ever came true: what if we could clone Christ?

"It would herald the crossover of science and religion in the new millennium," says its writer-director Stuart Urban.

Revelation, an impressive looking £6 million production, is the biggest film yet made by Urban, whose credits include the recent TV series Our Friends In The North and the award-winning Falklands drama An Ungentlemanly Act.

From opening credits to finale, its storyline spans two millennia. It opens in Roman Legionary times, then does a visually stunning fast-forward through some of the most violent eras of European history up to the present in pursuit of a sacred relic which has survived such vicissitudes as the Knights Templar heresies, chemical alchemy, sacred geometry and modern technology.

"What makes it rise above the narrow limits of the occult thriller genre - gives it edge - is its extension into genetic engineering which, after all, is a kind of updated magic," Urban says.

"Much of the storyline incorporates serious research into myths, religions, heresies, even offbeat aspects of great historical figures, such as Isaac Newton's secretive experiments with alchemy."

Shooting over 12 weeks took the unit to seldom-used baroque locations on Malta - where the opening Crucifixion sequence coincided with an alarming electric storm as the cameras were rolling - as well as the bizarre Village of Mysteries at Rennes-le-Chateau in Languedoc, home to the 12th-century Cathars, a gnostic sect that defied Rome and held Mary Magdalene to have been Christ's bride.

Freemasonry also drives the plot.

Its tentacles stretch from the Vatican to the US National Security Agency.

The cast - which includes Derek Jacobi, Heathcote Williams, Ron Moody, James D'Arcy, Udo Keir and newcomer Natasha Wightman - is headed by Terence Stamp, playing a present-day billionaire ennobled by the Queen who uses his fortune to guard genetic material from which he believes it is possible to regenerate Jesus Christ.

The film represents another kind of resurrection, however: the rebirth of Romulus, one of Britain's most successful independent filmmakers.

Under the brothers James and John Woolf, Romulus produced such time-defying entertainments as The African Queen, Room At The Top, Moulin Rouge and The L-Shaped Room.

On his brother's death, Sir John Woolf took over, producing the Oscar-winning musical Oliver! and The Day Of The Jackal.

On John's death in 1999, his son, Jonathan, a former investment banker whose grandfather, C M Woolf, helped J Arthur Rank found the Rank Organisation, resolved to revive the family filmmaking tradition.

"Stuart Urban opened out the film, a seminal concept, and gave it an extraordinary link with the possibilities of science today. But it's an unusual film in other ways, too: one of our leading characters dies; there's no mano a mano combat between good and evil; and the Christian basis for the finale is something no one else has dared do," he said.

In fact, when Woolf and his team saw the final cut, they felt they might have been a little too daring in the conceit of a cloned Christ: his mission on Earth. What would Rome's view be?

For a few queasy weeks, while consulting leading Roman Catholic opinion, they feared the Vatican's reaction. Perhaps a Papal bull might be sent their way. Then came the reply. Though discreetly couched, it brought welcome relief: nihil obstat.

Revelation opens on 12 April.

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