Movie Journal: Dogma

Probably my least favorite of Kevin Smith’s movies probably because it stretches just a little farther than Smith can reach it’s still a pretty good flick.

What works best for me is Smith’s vision of religion. While the movie was blasted by various Catholic groups its not God he takes to task. It’s the humans who have setup organized religion and who feel that because those groups – in whatever form they may exist – claim to represent God on earth. By making that claim they feel their every action is condoned by the Almighty and beyond reproach.

In actuality their actions are subject to the same pitfalls the rest of humanity falls into. This is an imperfect world and everything that exists in it is imperfect because of a single decision made in a garden all those millennia ago. No one here can claim to speak for God because His thoughts are so outside our capacity to fathom it is a fruitless and pointless excercise.

So its not actually that the protesters were attacking Smith because he made a film questioning God. He didn’t. The movie is very reverential toward God and never questions His actions let alone His existence. Smith made a film attacking small minded people who, to paraphrase Chris Rock’s Apostle, took a good idea and built a series of faulty belief structures around it. Those who hold their beliefs to be infallible are only highlighting their own ignorance.

–Chris

(Buy the Dogma Special Edition DVD at Amazon)