Christ at 24fps (Or: Everything I Know About the Gospels I Learned From Andrew Lloyd Webber)

In a recent game of cinephilic confessions, I admitted to an odd obsession with Jesus movies. I say odd because I'm not a Christian, nor do I buy into the whole son of what's-his-name thing. I realized, after a time, that the obsession began after seeing my first two JC films in 1973 — two musicals that took great liberties with the source material. I grew up in an unrelentingly secular household — with a Jewish mother and a Protestant father who figured it would be best to avoid the subject of religion altogether. Neither baptized nor bar mitzvahed, it was only for weddings and funerals that I entered a house of worship, and my knowledge of Christian morals was limited to what I learned on Davey and Goliath (which, as a child, seemed nothing more than a show about a boy and his talking dog). Needless to say, my soul is no doubt doomed to remain trapped wherever it is godless heathens wind up — assuming of course that the Judeo-Christian endgame goes as planned. It was repeated viewings of The Incredible Shrinking Man (on a 16mm print we had at home) that got me started on the big-ticket existential questions, and there's no doubt that Jack Arnold's film had an influence on my decision to become a card-carrying Buddhist in my late teens. But that another story. Arriving in 1973 at the tail end of the hippie and flower power movement, both Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar and David Greene's Godspell seem determined to reclaim Christ as the OG of the counterculture set, and both take a rather unconventional approach to the story of his final days. Set entirely to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera (which does indeed rock), Jesus Christ Superstar is premised on artificiality — as the film opens, a group of hippies are stepping off a bus somewhere in the middle of an Israeli desert. Anachronistic costumes and props are unloaded as this group of (perhaps) actors steps into their designated roles. Roman guards wear lilac wife-beaters and carry machine guns, rabbis wear tall black hats and bejeweled chest plates fastened with leather straps, while Pilate and Herod dress like glam rockers. (Only Jesus wears the traditional white robe.) The group soon disperses, and in gorgeous Todd-AO (the last film shot in this format), heads off to perform their rockin' passion play. Yet after the crucifixion (oops...spoilers!), all of the actors re-board the bus, with the exception of Jesus (Ted Neely) who remains hanging on the cross. Was it a case of thespian megalomania, or did life just simply imitate art? Either way, the film had quite an impact on the eight year-old Filmbrain, who had no idea Mary Magdalene wasn't in fact a Hawaiian beauty, or that King Herod didn't throw bagels at Jesus. (The casting of Carl Anderson as Judas was enough to outrage both Jewish and Black organizations, albeit for very different reasons.) But regardless of any inaccuracies or creative casting choices, Jesus Christ Superstar seemed incredibly cool, and the 2-LP soundtrack was at the top of my playlist for months. My impression of the film hasn't changed all that much over the years, and I've come to appreciate it's take on Christ as populist rebel who worries the powers that be. He's a media superstar at the "top of the poll" that has "no army, no fighting, no slogans", and who would have been even bigger if it wasn't for the fact that "Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication." There are moments of self-reflexivity throughout, but none better than the crowd member who tells Jesus that he'll "escape in the final reel." Ted Neely (who has a great set of pipes) makes for the perfect rebel-Christ, and though he's pissed off throughout most of the film (as if realizing the futility of his struggle), he's still incredibly cool. At the opposite end of cool lies Godspell, Stephen Schwartz's sunshine-pop take on the gospel of St. Matthew. In David Greene's filmed version of the Off-Broadway musical, a goofier, less intense group of hippies convene at Central Park's Bethesda Fountain and begin following a guy in a mock-Superman T-shirt (Victor Garber, looking like a proto-Mork). His disciples come across as a group of third-year clown and mime school dropouts, and the entire film finds them performing little skits, while singing and dancing all over a seemingly vacant New York City (including the roof of the then-unfinished World Trade Center.) Yet even though Godspell obfuscates the gospel and focuses more on the peace, love, and harmony aspects of Jesus' teachings, it still has a vague "Up With People!" feel to it. Still, the songs are infectious (try getting Day By Day out of your head) and Greene succeeds in filming New York City without once ever seeing another living soul (an impressive task).

These images of Christ as temperamental rock star, or foppish song and dance man lasted for years, but were eventually shattered when I came across the larger-than-life epics that set out to truly bring the gospels to the big screen. Films like DeMille's The King of Kings, and George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told. Suddenly the issues got more complex, and the story a bit nastier, but my fascination never waned. Both DeMille and Stevens are guilty of grandiosity, but both films can be tremendously entertaining if you don't get caught up in their zeal. The endless roster of cameo performances in The Greatest Story Ever Told makes it all worthwhile — from Charlton Heston's John the Baptist, to Shelley Winters as a blind woman healed, to John Wayne as the Roman centurion who, with just a single line, gives one of the worst deliveries in all of cinema's history — "Truly, this man was the son of ghaaad." As the years went by, the number of new and interesting Jesus movies declined tremendously. Of course there was the near-masterpiece that is The Last Temptation of Christ, but recent films do little more than play into the hands of a fundamentalist Christian right that is hell-bent on controlling not only this country, but a good chunk of the rest of the planet as well. Mel Gibson's atrocious Jesus-Snuff-Porno was the final straw for me. Fortunately there is DVD and the Internet, where one can track down such long forgotten gems as The Gospel Road (Johnny and June Carter Cash sing us the gospels), and I Saw Jesus Die, a Danish film that is perhaps the only entry in the Jesus-porno genre. Don't ask. Rather than compile a list of the best and worst, I'd love to hear from all of you — what are some of your favorite Jeezy Creezy movies?

Comments

[Chester Desmond]

Check out the IMDB page for the dude who played Peter in Jesus Christ Superstar. "Can we start again please...?" Actually, a riotously funny career arc for the apostle known as "the rock." Perhaps this "peter" spent a little too much time with Magdeline. Hmmm. I smell a sequel to The DaVinci Code...

[Filmbrain]

My favorite Tony line in Spartacus:

"Yonda lies the castle of my fadda.

As for Peter, I love the fact that he directed porn films under the name Judy Blue.

[James]

That's not from Spartacus, is it? I thought the line was from The Black Shield of Falworth. Still a great (read: awful) line reading.

[matteo]

I strongly second Pasolini and Ray. I also love Bruno Dumont's Jesus film.

[Filmbrain]

You're absolutely right James -- I wasn't thinking.

[DW]

About five years ago on PBS I saw a remake of “Jesus Christ Superstar” that had really cool sets and costumes. The setting was now something that vaguely resembled 1930s Berlin and even had a Cabaret scene with some S and M style costumes.

I was just thinking about this remake a week or so ago and was considering tracking it down. Anybody else see it? What did you think?

[David]

I also forget about Ordet, which is almost as absurd as the musicals (or Au Hasard Balthazar)--Jesus recast as a crazy brother in a small house in the countryside, his family evidently a bit irked to have to have Jesus perpetually hanging around their house. There's a great interview of Guy Maddin--talking to James Quandt, of all people--in which he argues somewhat convincingly for Ordet as one of the greatest comedies of all time, here: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_10_41/ai_103989792

[Cultural Snow]

There's an apocryphal story about John Wayne's aforementioned one-line masterclass in badness. Apparently, he wasn't putting much effort into it, so Stevens said: "Mr Wayne, could you give us a little more awe?"

To which ol' Marion inevitably responded: "Awwww, truly this man was the son of Gaaahhhhd."

[Noel Vera]

I was raised by Jesuits, so I feel a strong fascination for these movies.

On Scorsese's film--yes, much of it is self-indulgent and too reverend, especially the scenes that merely retell bible stories (but the bible as filmed by Scorsese is an irresistible draw, at least for me). But Judas in a red shock wig? Slapping Jesus around and telling him off at his deathbed? Suggesting that Jesus had the kind of fears and doubts and anger and sexual urges we all experience? Speculating he might have had an 'Incident at Owl Creek' experience? This goes way beyond De Mille, or Stevens, or even Ray, good as his film may be (most of the incidental humanity and drama has been shunted off into Rip's Judas Iscariot). Not to mention Scorsese's Christ film has the kind of historical and archeological research Gibson only claims to have done (Scorsese includes an extensive bibliography in the DVD's special features), and is ironically, for all its liberties with the traditional story, perhaps the most accurate of the Christ films.

It's a huge guilty favorite of mine among all of Scorsese's works, and, worse, something I actually prefer over Pasolini's undeniably beautiful but rather funless version.

I also wrote extensively on Gibsion's snuff flick and on Christ films in general here:

Passion of the Christ 1

Passion of the Christ 2

Christ movies

[Yan]

Jesus Christ Superstar just freaking rocks. The music has such a great Electric Company meets 70's Serge Gainsbourg vibe. And the lyrics are hilarious: "Prove to me that you're no fool: walk across my swimming pool." "Could Mohammed move a mountain, or was that just PR?"

I also really like the way it makes Judas (rather than JC) the main character, a kind of tragic cog in a fatalistic, semi-senseless divine plan. Great stuff.

Oh and his final fringe-shirted number is the most divine thing since the final "Christmas in Heaven" number in Monty Python's Meaning of Life.

[Duncan]

Noel Vera, I don't mind Scorsese taking liberties with "the Christ story"; probably he should have taken even more. My objection is that the liberties he did take didn't produce an interesting film. I'm glad he did some historical research, but a list of references doesn't necessarily indicate or produce quality (Ann Coulter's books have references too).

Back when Last Temptation was just a gleam in Scorsese's eye, the religious right was already using it as a fundraiser: this movie, they warned America, would depict Jesus as a "swinging bisexual." (And Madalyn Murray O'Hair was trying to get the FCC to block all religious broadcasting! and the communist World Council of Churches had produced a World Bible, that the United Nations would force all churches to use, because it had all references to the saving blood of Jesus Christ removed!)

I was going to say that Scorsese just isn't a deep thinker. But neither was Andrey Tarkovsky (judging by his manifesto Sculpting in Time, which I've just read: ah, the healing power of a woman's pure love!), and he made some of the greatest, deepest films ever made.

[Duncan]

Filmbrain, re: editing, on Usenet there's something called Coren's Law, which holds that every post pointing out a grammatical or spelling error will itself contain a grammatical or spelling error. I still wince at the times I've fall afoul of Coren's Law, though I *think* I managed to evade it in that post. Everyone needs an editor, me as much as anyone else.

It has been a long time since I saw Last Temptation, so I probably can't give a good account of why it didn't work for me. Aside from Harvey Keitel's perm, that is. (Oh, and the Sermon on the Mount scene... laughable.) But as I recall, its picture of Jesus' humanity seemed to me sort of bad-boy rebel on Scorsese's part: you think Jesus had no sex life? Hah! I'll show him as Mary Magdalene's client! You think Jesus bravely went to the cross, carrying out his divine mission? (Of course, the canonical gospels also show Jesus having doubts and fears.) I'll show him having heavy doubts, dude! But in the end, I'll cop out, and Mission will be Accomplished! ... In short, I remember its revisionism as being reactive, rather than creative. Flouting pious fantasies about Jesus (or anyone else) doesn't by itself give a coherent picture of who he might really have been.

I don't really want to watch it again, though. There are a lot of other movies that seem more important to rewatch, and besides that, I'll soon be returning to the US from Korea with a big batch of Korean DVDs I haven't seen yet.

Yes, there are some similarities between some of Jesus' teachings, and some of the Buddha's. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on which teachings. But some of Jesus' most appealing teachings were part of the standard toolkit of preachers everywhere. "Do unto others" turns up in Hillel and Confucius. Returning good for evil, the repudiation of vengeance, is in the Dead Sea Scrolls (where, as with Jesus, it lies cheek-by-jowl with fantasies of big-time vengeance), and in Plato (in one of the dialogues, Socrates gets one of his disciples to agree that one should never return evil for evil). If Jesus taught such things, it was because everyone knew they were a good idea. So you have to look at the context, which in Jesus' case was hellfire and damnation, the end is near, become a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven, and sell all you have and give to the poor (i.e., Jesus).

I've read the Gospel of Thomas and some of the other "Gnostic" writings. I don't find them impressive, and I don't understand why other people do. Again, you should look at the context, and the "Gnostic" churches were every bit as regimented and puritanical as the Catholics -- sometimes more so.

My own guess is that there was a connection between Jesus and the Baptist: Jesus' baptism by John is one of the few fairly solid historical facts we have about him, aside from the crucifixion. It embarrassed the Christians, which is why the gospels try to explain it away or get rid of it altogether, so it probably happened. But "PR stunt gone awry"? What was the PR stunt supposed to achieve? My guess is that Jesus didn't expect to die in Jerusalem, let alone be resurrected; he went there expecting the final cataclysm to occur, after which he'd be exalted to Yahweh's viceroy on earth. But the gospels are incredibly unreliable. I say "incredibly" because even a cynic like me is amazed that historical memory got lost so quickly. You can spin a lot of alternative stories out of this material. Another thing that surprises me is how little artists have done with it, preferring to fall back either on shock tactics or pandering to piety. But then, I still need to read Lawrence's The Man Who Died and Moore's The Brook Kerith.

There was a laughable article on the usually good Counterpunch.org site yesterday, by a liberal minister who declared that the early Christians deliberate invented the resurrection and a divine rather than human Jesus in order to maintain their control of the church and mollify the Romans. Just about as dumb as The Da Vinci Code, or The Passover Plot. It's possible, of course, but I think it's more interesting to presume the early Christians' sincerity and go from there.

Which reminds me, there was a 1976 film based on The Passover Plot; I just checked on IMDB. I haven't seen it, has anyone else?

[Noel Vera]

No, Scorsese's not a deep thinker. I disagree about the film not being interesting tho; it's every bit a New York movie as anything he's done.

[Noel Vera]

Uh--cogs slipped. I didn't mean Rip Torn's Judas in King of Kings, I meant Harry Guardino's Barabbas--his cell scene is the single most interesting one in the film. Most traditional Christ pics have a lifeless statue front and center, and Ray solves this by concentrating as much on Barabbas as on Christ (you might call it King and Rebel instead).

Few more points on Last Temptation; of course research doesn't make a good film; I'm reacting to Gibson's claim that his production is the most accurate (my ass).

"I remember its revisionism as being reactive, rather than creative"

Agreed for a good chunk of the picture, as I've noted before; much of it is hugely self-indulgent, though compared to Kazantzakis' bloated novel (you can clearly see he's remaking Jesus in a more humanist cast, pious fanasies and all), I'd say Schrader cleared out a lot (if not all) of the crap in his screenplay.

But that 'Incident at Owl Creek' fantasy, which Kazantzakis dreamed up but which Schrader's script veers away from as much as it borrows--it's a lot more subversive than you might think. This Christ comes face-to-face with the revisionism that the later church figures will introduce to his teachings (thanks to Harry Dean Stanton), will accept (without question!) Satan's sexism ("women have only one face"), will chop at--what, God? The world? His foot, if he's not careful?--and will live on to see the Jews dispersed despite everything he promised and said.

I don't think it's so much a pious portrait at this point as it is a kind of reworking of the genre--take your traditional Christ actor, put him through the paces, see how far you can go (films like Jesus of Montreal and Godard's Hail Mary, of course, start from the opposite direction--begin with an indie-film sensibility and see what potshots connect with traditional Catholic theology).

The accents, that Method acting Dafoe does, could be seen as part of the subversion--Scorsese turning Jerusalem into his familiar mean streets, with Keitel in a fright wig instead of De Niro in 50 pounds of fat. It's a nuttiness that, well, can certainly be taken as self-indulgent, of course, but seen another way can be taken as Scorsese's way of claiming the New Testament as his own. Not a bad goal, if you can pull it off, and I think he succeeds, somewhat.

"I'll soon be returning to the US from Korea with a big batch of Korean DVDs I haven't seen yet."

I'll assume you've gone through most of Hong Sang-Soo's works--he seems to be a critical favorite nowadays, though many of his works are still unavailable on DVD in the US. I need to see them again, myself; for some reason they didn't impress me the first time around (but I was young! I didn't know any better!). Have you seen anything by Ji Woo Chung?

[Duncan]

Well, it's a matter of taste, I guess. For me Jesus just isn't that interesting a figure to begin with. The notion of later "revisionism" doesn't much concern me much, because we have no idea, really, what Jesus actually taught. If, as the gospels say, he taught that the Last Judgment would come within a generation, of course his followers had to do some revision. All end-of-the-world cults do. Have you ever heard of "When Prophecy Fails," a 1950s sociological study of the adjustments such cults must make when their prophesies are falsified by events? Have you ever heard of the Sabbatians, a 16th-century Jewish sect that had some 'splainin' to do when their Messiah figure, a Kabbalist named Sabbatai Zvi, abruptly converted to Islam? As I've indicated, I suspect that the revision began when Jesus was arrested and crucified -- I don't think he'd been expecting it, and his followers had to scramble.

I'm really bugged when people try to cast the early Christians as heavies in this respect; it's very common to blame the apostle Paul for turning Jesus' pure and simple teachings into a teaching about Jesus, for turning Jesus' radical teachings back to legalistic Judaism, and so on. Generally they have no idea of the difficulty (impossibility) of establishing what Jesus' original teachings were, but they're sure that he must have been the good guy. I am not so sure. Take a look at E. P. Sanders's "The Historical Figure of Jesus" sometime, it's a good introduction to the whole mess. It sounds as if you may agree with me that Scorcese was basically trying to create a Jesus he could relate to; well, he's welcome to him.

Yep, I've seen everything by Hong Sang-soo except Tale of Cinema, which is one of the DVDs I'll be lugging back to the States with me. I find him very interesting, and unlike many people I *enjoy* movies where nothing much seems to be happening in conventional plot terms. I can see why a lot of people find him difficult and boring, though.

The only Jung Ji Woo film I've seen was Happy End, and I need to watch it again. I may pick up a copy of Sarangni while I'm here. I liked Happy End, but my take on it was (needless to say) very different from that of a victim-masculist like Kim Kyung Hyun. I'm not so concerned with critical favorites, though, as with seeing a lot more Korean movies, especially older ones. I'll be getting more of the Im Kwon Taek movies that were recently released on DVD, Jang Sun Woo's Road to the Race Track, and some others. The movies I'm happiest to find, though, are recent melodramas like Lost in Love (I love me some Sol Gyeong Gu!), The Most Beautiful Week in My Life, Sad Movie, You Are my Sunshine, and the biopic Blue Swallow. I've watched some of them already. My first reaction was how glad I was to see some good Korean movies where no one's head explodes. The second was how twisted, even transgressive they are by American standards.

[Filmbrain]

Duncan --

As someone who has absolutely no connection with Christianity, I found Last Temptation to be utterly compelling, for I really felt I was witnessing Scorsese's own struggle with his religion.

I agree with Noel in that it's very much a New York film, and as a result I had no problem with Keitel's "Yo Jesus" dialect.

Then again, I really did enjoy Kazantzakis' book, and the transition from page to screen was spot on, in my opinion. I've not yet read the Lawrence book, but have had it for ages.

As for the Korean films you mentioned, I loved Happy End (my review here), and Hong is my favorite director by far.

I'll be curious to hear your thoughts on the films you are bringing home. I couldn't even make it through You Are My Sunshine, and Sad Movie was indeed pretty sad. Did you watch King and The Clown yet? I saw it over the weekend and absolutely loved it. I should have my review of it up later this week.

[Noel Vera]

Well, Jesus' message not being authentic and the whole thing turning around after his death, I've heard all that before, and it's interesting enough; Scorsese's film turns on the possibilty that we do know his message, and that it was all sincere (but not exactly the way we thought it to be). Accept that, and everything follows; don't accept it, and I suppose it's silly hairsplitting.

On bursting heads--I suppose you're not a big fan of Oldboy?

Good review of Happy End, Filmbrain, by the way.

[Duncan]

Filmbrain --

I can sympathize with people who struggle with their religion. I've known a lot of people who know better on one level, but can't shake their childhood indoctrination. (Gay Christians are among the saddest of these, though many of them have no wish to know better.) Since I, thankfully (thank you, Chthulu! thank you!), had no religious upbringing, I can only say "Get ovuh yaselves awreddy!"

I have no objection to Keitel's accent. Scorsese should've cast *him* as Jesus. If he wanted to make a New York film, he should have updated the whole thing, set it in 1980s Brooklyn, with Jesus played by Keitel, DeNiro playing Peter, and so on. Now, that I'd be interested to see. To each his own.

It occurred to me that no one seems to have mentioned another Christ-figure movie: E.T. the Extraterrestrial. It's about a figure who's stuck on earth though he belongs in the heavens, and after being persecuted by the princes of this world he dies, rises again, and ascends to his heavenly home -- but not before telling his chief disciple that he will dwell always within his heart.

I've never read Kazantzakis. It seems to me that I did read Lawrence's The Man Who Died, maybe 30 years ago, but I can't remember anything about it, so I'd better give it a(nother) try.

I'll try to rewatch Happy End when I get home, and then I'll reread your review. I'm saving The King and the Clown for then too. But some of the movies I bought, I saw already. One of my hosts recommended and rented them, and we watched them together. I liked You Are My Sunshine quite a bit: great performances by the leads (did you recognize Hwang Jeong-min from "Road Movie"?), take-no-prisoners melodrama with no pretensions to subtlety whatever, and I didn't mind being manipulated at all. Sad Movie was just plain weird, the way it plunged into horror at the end. Again, I didn't mind the emotion, it just took me by surprise the way it violated genre expectations: it lulled me into thinking that things could turn out to be all right in a movie sort of way, and then they didn't. (The Most Beautiful Week of My Life is similar, an ensemble piece that tweaks the heartstrings, but pulls back from the abyss at the last minute. And Hwang Jeong-min, who's a total babe, is in it as well, playing a totally different kind of character from Road Movie or Sunshine.)

Noel Vera --

I'm not sure I follow that first paragraph, but I don't remember what Jesus' message, according to Scorsese, was supposed to be.

You're right. I agree with Manohla Dargis about OldBoy. Though I disagree with her about Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which she called "repugnant" -- it is, but I liked it anyway. I also disagree with her blaming its popularity on "postmodernism"; the people who loved it weren't that sophisticated. I had been wary of watching OldBoy because I had the impression it would be even more disturbing than Mr. V, and was relieved to find that it wasn't. I thought it was a pointless exercise, with nothing to say about whatever its subject was. Nor did I read any review that managed to articulate what I'd missed: the one that came the closest was Stephanie Zecharek's at Salon.com, which made it clear that she found the movie very moving, but nothing she said changed my mind about it. (Reviews have changed my opinion of movies in the past, too.) I suspect that in a few years, everyone's going to wonder what the fuss was about. The fanboys who defended it seemed to think they were helping Korea defend its national honor against Western ethnocentrism -- though they themselves were overwhelmingly Westerners, and not notably culturally sensitive.

By the way, today a friend took me to an island off the west coast of Korea, the kind you get to by ferry. We had lunch in a small family-run place (I think the men catch the fish, and the women cook it), and as we were leaving a man pulled up who was a dead ringer for Kim Ki-Duk. When he talked to the women inside, he even sounded like Kim -- that same high-pitched voice. I'm afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself, because I couldn't take my eyes off the guy. My friend was very amused.

[Grug]

The best Jeezus movie I've seen is the most casual of the lot: Luis Bunuel's La voie lactee (The Milky Way), written by Bunuel with Jean-Claude Carriere. Bernard Verley as Jesus is just perfect: smiling, laughing, engaging--but then the movie ends with his sudden admonition to the disciples - a grim prophecy of all the dogmatic conflicts, the tortures & murders, etc. which are the substance of the film and have preceded this moment - taken from Matthew, "Think not that I have come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace, but a sword, etc." This one's a remarkable picaresque kind of quilted out of all sorts of historical Xtian apostasies (and this one feels somewhat more human & open-hearted, I think, than Pasolini's picaresques).

I would also nominate the venerable "Search For Historic Jesus" - I just LUV the idea of draping fables with the mantle of such quasi-scientific terms as "historic"! (Remember the film version of "Chariot of the Gods"? Man, that was the shit!)

[Noel Vera]

My first paragraph referred to King of Kings. Filmbrain mentioned Torn's Judas as stealing the show; I thought it was Guardino's Barabbas that was the real, if not equal, focus of Ray's movie.

If he wanted to make a New York film, he should have updated the whole thing, set it in 1980s Brooklyn, with Jesus played by Keitel, DeNiro playing Peter, and so on.

Which is what Jesus of Montreal was, and the earlier Hail Mary. I liked it that Scorsese did a low-budget version of the traditional Christ epics, and subverted them--I do think there's artistic validity in turning things upside-down from the inside. But yes, to each his own.

I loathed Oldboy--not because it was too disturbing, but because it was too silly. What's the fuss, indeed.