Everyone knows Handel's oratorio, "The Messiah." Here the nativity, passion and resurrection are evoked through contrasting images of religious fervor and secular violence. The piece is performed all across the world by great stars and by humble amateurs. The oratorio exalts both the grandeur and decadence of this century.
Synopsis
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Actors (4)
Production and distribution (4)
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About
William Klein's work apparently overlooks nothing of today's reality and society's multicolored patterns. The universal figure of Jesus shifts easily from classical icon to total clod, slipping through the busy streets tattooed onto leathery skin, transferred onto heavy-metal T-shirts, molded into silly plastic masks or personified in the theater (adjusting a crown before going on stage). With his usual humor and talent, Klein turns the world's atrocities and joys into a deathly ballet and a blessing, earthly bliss into good news, horror into passion, religious fervor and reconstructions into so many resurrections. The only questions is whether we should laugh or cry.
Marie Colmant – "Cosmopolitain," December 1999
Full credits (8)
Executive Producer :
Sound recordists :
Stéphane Reichart, Francis Bonfanti
Production managers :
Editor :
Assistant directors :
François Vantrou, Itaka Schlubach, Pierre Linhart
Directors of Photography :
Press Attachés (film) :
Marie-Anne Capdeville, Thierry Cussinel