Dogma (1999)

 "Bethany, bless the sink!"

I watched, and enjoyed this film, many years ago but, as often happens as the decades pass- and I am not, you understand, in any way confessing to being middle aged- I remembered very litttle. Last night was pretty much a second first viewing.

And it's superb. As a comedy, it's bloody good, with a constant stream of laughs. Linda Fiorentino is perfect as the star. Chris Rock and Alan Rickman are both brilliant. George Carlin is perfect casting as a down-with-the-kids cardinal. Some dodgy angel wing CGI aside- and we can be forgiving, because it's 1999- there's not much wrong with this.

It is, of course, a very different beast from the very '90s slacker romantic comedies for which Kevin Smith had previously been known, although there's a fair bit of that sort of thing here. But the religious stuff is obviously going to come across as provocative, not least with Bethany working at an abortion clinic and (spoilers!) the plot requiring God's life support machine to be switched off. Casting Alanis Morissette as God is, of course, entirely uncontroversial.

And yet... I don't get this film to be mocking faith, or religion itself, in any way, but rather the reactionary and socially conservative structure that eventually inserts itself around every religion. I've never had any religious faith myself, I wasn't brought up with it and am simply unable to believe in something without empirical proof, but even I was moved by Bethany's drunken nostalgia for a time when she had a childlike, simple faith. But perhaps this film also hints at a deeper truth. Divine or not, this Jesus person seems to have been anything but conservative.