If you’re going to see one movie that prowls the religious landscape, asking difficult questions and taking potshots at crackpots, see Bill Maher’s “Religulous.” Maher is no theologian, and even his grasp of international relations isn’t always firm, but this documentary, directed by Larry Charles, mixes the timing of a Chaplin short with the acidity of a stand-up act. In other words, you’ll laugh a lot. You’ll laugh despite yourself, no matter what you believe.
This feat is ever the more remarkable since in the past few years documentarians and satirists have worn ruts in the some of driveways where the intrepid Maher leads his camera crew. We meet an “ex-gay” Christian who helps tortured homosexuals take up a heterosexual lifestyle. Maher whips up a bunch of worrisomely overweight truckers gathered in a truckstop chapel. He strolls the Temple Mount with an unctuous imam and finds in the hills of the Hudson Valley a ultra-Orthodox rabbi who believes Israel has no right to exist.
After each interview, we watch, and listen, as Maher decompresses in the van. He despairs about the nonsense his subjects spout, compares their beliefs with his own–a rack of doubt still festooned with the remnants of a half-baked Catholic upbringing. (Maher’s Jewish mother never explained why she didn’t go with the rest of the family to church, which his father quit anyway when the priests started preaching against birth control.) Some of Maher’s fulmination is sharp, but the lapsed Catholic confessionalism we’ve heard before, not any fresher or funnier, but no different either.
The real fulcrum of the movie’s humor is Maher’s reproachful face, with its active brow over a firm, armored jaw. As his interlocutors twist themselves into knots of absurdity, overcompensation and religious cant, his disbelief flickers through his eyes, forces a tic and causes the whole to sway uneasily before Maher explodes in outrage. At other times, the features freeze in a mask of dull fear while his eyes seem to implore the interviewee to follow misplaced metaphysical rhetoric with some shred of sense.
Maher’s exasperation works in tandem with Larry Charles’s elastic editing, which is part Woody Allen and part “60 Minutes.” The subtitles that pop up to diffuse disinformation being perpetrated onscreen owe a debt to Allen’s “Annie Hall”, but some of the funniest gags come when Charles ducks away from one subject to flash to another, who contradicts the first. It’s a documentary version of pulling Marshall McLuhan from behind the potted palm to refute the loudmouth on the movie line.
The best, but most disturbing moments, in “Religulous” come during an interview with Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who makes the mistake of not taking Maher sufficiently seriously. Pinned between his Bible belt constituents and Maher’s increasingly alarmed questioning, Pryor finally jocularly admits that his disavowal of evolution doesn’t disqualify him from holding a seat in Congress. “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to get elected to the Senate,” scoffs Pryor. With a mordantly executed freeze frame, Maher and Charles play Pryor’s cheekiness as a gotcha moment.
There are some other visibly tweaked spots in “Religulous” that, given the lawsuits that came out of Charles’s previous feature, “Borat,” cause you to wonder whether some of those who agreed to be interviewed dug their holes as deep as the film suggests.
Francis Collins, the scientist who headed the Genome Project that mapped human DNA, looks helpless to explain the textual contradictions of the four Gospels; we can imagine as deep a thinker as Collins making sense of this fairly uncomplicated point if he weren’t being relentlessly soundbited by Charles’s cuts.
There are other frustrations, even for viewers who fully support Maher’s line and method of inquiry. Of all the believers we see, the only two who seem to measure up to Maher’s standards of benevolence and reasonableness are two Catholic priests. One, the former Vatican astronomer Father George Coyne, explains why Roman Catholic teaching doesn’t require scientific accuracy from Scripture. (The film doesn’t allude to Coyne’s recent departure from the Vatican observatory over his disagreement with Benedict XVI on the origins of the universe.) The other, a Vatican employee he encounters on St. Peter’s Square, delights Maher by shrugging off the doctrine of hell as antiquated and the intervention of saints as superstition.
How these two fit into Maher’s conclusions about religion as a threat to civilization is never made clear. Nor does the film include anyone else who grounds their faith with reason. The film portrays almost all religious thought as if it were stuck in the Middle Ages. As the Vatican official says to Maher, “You don’t keep up with things.”
Maher, who lost his primary platform, the ABC talk show “Politically Incorrect,” in 2001 due to some untoward thoughts about 9/11, has a reputation as a renegade comedian whose B.S. meter is wired too directly to his mouth. “Religulous” will enhance that profile, and perhaps anger some of his opponents afresh, especially in the film’s last minutes, in which Maher pronounces the moral of the movie. (“Religion must die if the world is to survive,” he intones, against a backdrop of mushroom clouds.)
But so late in a film so ripe with laugh–what they call “garbage time” in NFL games–it’s easy to forgive Maher his sermon. When it comes to faith, we’re all bound to get a little religulous.
posted October 1, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Fact Check: His show Politically Incorrect was canceled while on ABC not HBO in January 2002.
posted October 2, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Another recent assault upon God. Maher’s Religulous, Sherry Jones’”The
Jewel of Medina” and particularly thekickasspress’ “Sex with THE Virgin Mary” {Where a Boston wantabe firefighter get indicted for fraud for selling the right to deflower the Blessed Mother to the hightest bidder} are all part of the new blaphemous movement. Heads will roll and Hell will be full.
posted October 4, 2008 at 12:40 am
jonathan,
O but think about who will be there. It seems better all the time. Pious sorts give me gas and a case of the heebee-jeebees.
posted October 4, 2008 at 9:08 am
Jestrfyl, your comment reminds me of a song lyric: I want to go to heaven for the weather, hell for the company.
The group that sings it? The “Lost Prophets,” of course!
posted October 6, 2008 at 8:51 pm
why is bill maher bashing christians and not muslims?
posted October 7, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Saw the movie this weekend. Liked it a lot, and agree with Bill Maher’s point that many of the things that religions teach are, on the face of it, absurd. If you’re a Christian, Mormon doctrine is absurd. If you’re a Muslim, Christian Doctrine is absurd. If you’re a Scientologist, all of the above are absurd, and so on. (BTW, the movie did not just dwell on Christianity, as “confused” seems to think.)
Imagine a great big sheet of paper. Draw a circle for each of these belief systems and write in their fundamental doctrines, cosmologies, and ethical teachings (some of these circles will overlap–but I think Scientology will occupy a place all on its own, out there in left field).
Now step back. I wonder if your experience will be like mine: when we leave our particular circle and see things from a larger perspective, we can see the equal absurdity of each religion.
When we see nations being ruled by people whose fundamental beliefs are not just absurd but also predicated upon a “glorious” and immanent end of the world, we feel, rightfully, afraid. We suspect that reason is far superior to, and safer than, religion. Which is Maher’s point at the end of the film.
And what is the “whole sheet of paper”–it’s a metaphor, of course, for that which you are seeking, if you are religious. The irony is that as long as you are in one of the circles (that is, a member of a religion), you’re very unlikely to ever see the big picture. As St. Paul said, work out your salvation with fear and trembling—and what is never preached from the pulpit is that this means leaving your religion–no matter what your religion is–to find out what is true, to go beyond the familiar into the unknown and the untaught; which requires facing your fear, a wild, radical commitment to honesty and inquiry, and high tolerance of ambiguity and confusion. Or, as the Zen teachers say, great faith, great doubt, and great effort. The best teachers are not those who corral you into their world view, but pull the rug out, over and over again, until no world-view stands between you and the world-as-it-is.
My history: raised mormon. Saw the absurdity. Studied with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Saw the absurdity. Became a born-again evangelical and worked in missions for several years (membership trajectory: Calvary Chapel–Covenant–Lutheran–Episcopalian). Saw the absurdity. Drifted. Learned about buddhism and was drawn to its reason-based, rational approaches. Studied Zen for 19 years, had Kensho. Now I’m free from religion and understand Jesus better than ever.
What did I learn? Well, since you asked…
You hang on to this,
and hold on to that;
you’re like a monkey with a fist
in a coconut trap.
All the things that you fear
and try to control,
they’re just bars in a prison
that you build for you soul.
Let it go…
posted October 12, 2008 at 4:43 pm
But the conclusion Maher draws is too simplistic, and how he got there is never explained. Yes, it was fun too watch people cling to a faith they are unable to defend. But the two priests did an excellent job and knocking some of that down. We don’t live in the Middle Ages, and, surprise, neither does the church. There are a lot of thinking Christians (http://blogs.pioneerlocal.com/religion) out there who aren’t afraid to challenge their faith, who at times doubt, but who usually do good for humanity. That’s the point Maher misses with his easy shots.
posted October 14, 2008 at 11:22 am
I saw Religulous this weekend. I have to say that I personally am greatful that someone had the guts to finally speak out about this taboo subject! He did a superb job making his point ,and not to mention keeping it light hearted and funny. I am dying to see anyone actually blog any sensical responses on the questions he has raised in many of our minds. Religion IS dangerous. It will undoubtedly cause an end to mankind, the only question is when. Personally I no longer “believe” in religion. I do believe in God and love. Religion seperates us, and causes hatred worldwide. Do you all REALLY believe that is what our Creator intended? Of course not! God is ALL love, and loves ALL. He doesn’t have favorites. And I am sure He is not happy with what was done to His image in the name of religion. As for me, I will pray at home, in my car, or where ever I please. He is with me and within me, so I see no need to go to any church to pay to have him see/hear me. The fact that I believe is all that really matters, where I go to believe should not.
posted February 20, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I thought the film was brilliant, especially the interview with Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor.
Any film that would include all the major religions would run too long. I was a little disappointed that Hinduism and Buddhism was left out, but Maher seemed to focus on the major religions in the US.
He seemed to poke holes equally in all, and if you didn’t sense that, watch the film again. The most frightening thing about organized religions is that they are all based on the same dogma: this belief system is true and right, and all others are wrong (and the rest of you will suffer some terrible fate because you don’t believe the truth that I do). There is no peaceful solution to that. Ever.
posted March 1, 2009 at 2:06 pm
To MJ, so what? Are you saying that God ‘cacelled’ his show? That doesn’t make it any less factual. He’s still alive isn’t he? He talked trash about God and is still talking trash about God. No bolts of lightning yet! Add Bill to my list of heroes, right up there with George Carlin, who also trashed God and lived to age 69 I believe, trashing him all the way to the grave.
posted February 3, 2010 at 1:15 am
why hi didnt talk about jehovas whitnesses
posted July 16, 2010 at 4:21 am
well,that is wonderful thank you for your post,worth reading