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[Miles Quaritch]

Looks bigger budget than I was expecting.

 

[waypoetic]

Well, me and a friend have decided to watch religious movies just to torment ourselves so i guess this should go on the list as well.

 

[The Incarnation]

Solomon was a prophet.

Nah, just a wise man with a high sex drive.

 

[The Incarnation]

Jesus in the Gnostic Gospels isn't boring. He kills a guy when he's like twelve, throwing curses and blinding people!

I especially like the story of him killing some kid who happened to bump into him while running.

 

[Hyperactivity]

Nah, just a wise man with a high sex drive.

Depends on the religion

Islam considers him to be a prophet, hence Rusty's post

 

[JoeInky]

I guess we will have to wait until the second film to see him go Super Saiyan:

Hopefully he'll be going even further beyond in the final part of the trilogy.

 

[neorej]

“The actor who plays this role may later play a criminal, and viewers may associate these characters with criminality,” said Abdel Dayyem Nosair, adviser to Al-Azhar head Ahmed al-Tayyeb.

Just how the western audience was waiting for Sherlock Holmes to get JARVIS on the line and send him his armor...

 

[Principate]

Depends on the religion

Islam considers him to be a prophet, hence Rusty's post

How does that work out is his story a tragedy/warning that even the wisest can succumb heavily to the basest of sins, I mean he allowed altars of other gods to be built and did his stuff under them.

Doesn't exactly sound like someone you want to be praising as a prophet.

 

[Principate]

Just how the western audience was waiting for Sherlock Holmes to get JARVIS on the line and send him his armor...

You can't deny that interpretation of the character was heavily inspired by the Tony Stark character, it was the marketing's whole shtick.

So a very poor example.

 

[Hyperactivity]

How does that work out is his story a tragedy/warning that even the wisest can succumb heavily to the basest of sins, I mean he allowed altars of other gods to be built and did his stuff under them.

Doesn't exactly sound like someone you want to be praising as a prophet.

Many parts are similar between the Bible and the Qu'ran, but many things are also very different

I've never read the biblical version, so I have never heard of that before

 

[Matt_]

It sounds interesting, will give it a watch, Don't really know much about the stories of the islamic faith

Hope it is received well for the sake of all involved though

 

[Stinkles]

I assume some dumbass extremists will kill someone at a protest riot over this.

"Can't make a movie depicting Mohammed, even without showing his face"

"Can behead someone and show it on Facebook."

 

[Principate]

Many parts are similar between the Bible and the Qu'ran, but many things are also very different

I've never read the biblical version, so I have never heard of that before

How the fuck do you omit that, it's part of the reason why Israel split into Israel and Judea according to the bible at least.

 

[Gnilres]

For everyone who is interested in this movie, I highly recommend the 1977 film The Message starring Anthony Quinn (as Muhammad's uncle. Like in this movie, Muhammed isn't depicted).

 

[LaserBuddha]

They should just constantly contrive ways to block his face in the shot with fruit and stuff, like that nude scene in Austin Powers.

 

[RustyNails]

Guardian review: 4/5

This is the only western review so far.

Majid Majidi’s origin tale of the prophet Muhammad chronicles the birth and rise of Islam, rich with gestural flair and images of bracing beauty

This is not the first time the prophet of Islam has hit the big screen, but Moustapha Akkad’s 1977 film The Message chose to relay Qu’ranic history only from Muhammad’s point of view. Majid Majidi’s Muhammad: Messenger of God, on the other hand, takes the representation plunge.

But Majidi’s lavish $40m film is nothing if not well-intentioned, and what we do see – courtesy of Apocalypse Now DoP Vittorio Storaro, always verges on the symbolic.

We first glimpse Muhammad as an adult from behind, shrouded totally in white, then there are snatches of romping baby legs, or Steadicam shots shadowing the boy prophet’s keffiyeh-swathed head, never without a faint Jedi aura.

We do hear him speak – although as first lines go, “The weather smells pleasant here” is no “Shit, I’m still only in Saigon.”

But it would be a distortion to get too hung up on the representation question, given what an evocative and engrossing account of Islam’s gestation Majidi has mustered: in effect, Muhammad’s origin story.

Framing events around a decade after his initial revelation, with his nascent band of followers under threat of eradication from pagan Meccans, most of the film is an extended flashback to the prophet’s childhood and early adolescence – revolving around his mother Aminah (Mina Sadati), grandfather Adbul-Muttalib (Alireza Shoja Nouri) and uncle Abu Talib (Mehdi Pakdel).

A sequence of extraordinary events – beginning with a vast flock of birds driving off a horde of elephant-riding Abyssinians just prior to his birth – suggest that far from a very naughty boy, this might be the messiah they have on their hands.

Majidi chronicles the first ripples of this revolutionary wave in a handsome, pre-CGI-era epic style. His “personal free comprehension” of events that are mostly skimmed over by the Qu’ran itself – there’s a blur of perpetually squabbling tribesmen – will be demanding viewing for anyone not versed in Islamic history.

The insistence on stately shot-making occasionally impedes Muhammad when it has to make a leap to the transcendental – Majidi never finds the equivalent of Darren Aronofsky’s ecstatic, pseudo stop-motion for the fallen angels in Noah.

But it feels like a far less erratic and more thoroughly immersed treatment of religious subject matter, with the kind of gestural flair the director made his name with in the late 80s producing many images of bracing beauty and metaphysical weight: such as when teenage goatherd Muhammad snags his robes on a briar, and unleashes a flood of airborne seeds.

That kind of thing speaks far more eloquently than the bouts of sermonising that Muhammad is occasionally prone to, especially when the film really wants to loudhail its own tolerance, and has the local Christians slightly implausibly applauding the newcomer.

In some ways, perhaps the film’s most radical message lies in its impeccably rich re-creation of the seventh-century Hejaz – for which massive credit should go to production designer Miljen Kreka Kljakovic and costume designer Michael O’Connor. It’s a fraught, heaving world, a polytheistic marketplace full of arbitrary violence and idolatrous come-ons; Majidi’s understanding of the pagan chasm out of which Islam emerged is in direct contravention of the Isis blockheads trying to dump it into a void outside of history.

His film is intellectually honest, committed and poetic, but let’s hope we never need to call it “brave”.

 

[brisk tacos]

Guardian review: 4/5

This is the only western review so far.

That review reminded me how bizarre Akkad's career path went. From making movies about Muhammad to the Halloween series. And he championed the shit out of that series all the way to his death.

 

[Currygan]

that poster, and I don't mean it as an insult to whoever might find it offensive, scares the living hell out of me

 

[Baibars]

Ironically this movie wont be seen by majority of muslim countries. Depicting prophets and their companions is a big no no in sunni islam. But i suppose the shiites of iran couldnt care less.

In a way this movie will widen that schism

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Ironically this movie wont be seen by majority of muslim countries. Depicting prophets and their companions is a big no no in sunni islam. But i suppose the shiites of iran couldnt care less.

In a way this movie will widen that schism

But he is not depicted in the film.

 

[nynt9]

But he is not depicted in the film.

I think that's a real stretch, just because we don't see his face doesn't mean he's not depicted. We see his body, hear him speak etc.

The whole point of the depiction rule is to prevent people from idolizing the man, and making a movie about him kinda goes against that.