Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Religulous (2008)
April 10th 2009 07:32
* Please don’t take this to heart if you are religious. I am not against religion and do not want to create a hostile backlash. These were just the issues and reflections that I took from this movie.
“Religulous”, the documentary from Bill Maher, looks at faith in religion and how this blind following makes people feel certain in a world full of uncertainty. Science is supposed to be fact, although so much of this life is unknown. While he looks at some kind of faith as being good in small increments, he talks to people who see it as their whole life. When it becomes a look at religion and the state, that’s when the movie becomes really real for me. The quote early on, in a George W. Bush speech when he says “I believe that God wants everyone to be free. That’s what I believe. And that’s why it’s part of my foreign policy” is truly one of the scariest things I have ever heard. That a leader with the biggest nuclear arsenal the world has ever known thinks of a Christian god when dealing with foreign policy is a scary thought to me. The conversations with religious people are interesting, opening up several another angles looking at the different religions.
Doubt is the main thing in this movie. Bill says himself that religion is “just selling an invisible product. It’s too easy. These questions about what happens when you die, they so freak people out they will just make up any story and cling to it”. It’s like religion sells certainty and he’s there to give some doubt through questions. The people he is talking to won’t be persuaded. Those religious people follow religion blindly and with faith, but Bill just asks questions, observation based questions, which, if you see the movie without religious certainty, will raise some very good points. There were people who got straight up and couldn’t stand their faith being questioned at all. This is what I see as problem. Life is meant to be questioned. People are curious by nature and are supposed to ask questions.
Insanity prevails over sense in some cases. Cantheism is one of the religions he tests out. A religion where you smoke pot. I don’t really know the religious value of it but it appeared to be real. The man Bill interviewed didn’t seem to know anything about it. When he caught his own head on fire, that was enough for me to dismiss that religion. Most prominent in most religions were some people who exploit followers with corruption, looking for a cheap buck.
It uses clever editing in pointing out what people say to be false and uninformed. Several quotes from the religious people are placed next to the scientific researchers who say the opposite. It really does use the Larry Charles directing technique that we have seen in “Borat” and the episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. The shaky camera and great traditional style of shooting a straight documentary for the live bits along with the edited in bits from movies and TV shows and file footage, all make this movie more watchable. Mostly because it shows it is real people talking yet they are saying fairly ridiculous things or talking about things they have no knowledge of. Bill tries not to take the piss completely out of religion but he just can’t help himself at some points. But having seen some of his shows, he was trying his darndest to hold back and not make a mockery out of his interviews. He just let the interviewees take the mockery out of themselves.
Bill’s jokes are a bit hit and miss. He tries to push his point too hard in some points but it is all just part of the point he is trying to prove. But his political and social awareness are spot on. The ending of this film really makes you think. The whole tone changes in the last 10 minutes. Against the reasonably light hearted first 90 minutes, the ending is deadly serious and ultimately shows what Bill was attempting to convey to the audience. The Armageddon and Judgement Day talk is shocking. The absolute conviction most people have about their religion is realised is the extreme. The visuals are quite stunning. I found one visual of Jesus walking across the water particularly unsettling for some reason. Despite how chilling they were, I found myself nodding in agreement of Bill’s closing thoughts, which are as follows:
“The plain fact is religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists. By those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn’t learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says ‘I’m willing Lord, I’ll do whatever you want me to do’ except that there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people, with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas. And anyone that tells you they know what happens when you die, I promise you you don’t. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that’s the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble and that’s what man needs to be considering human history is just a litten of getting shit dead wrong.”
Personally, my philosophy is similar to Bill’s. I would like to believe in something else, like there is more to this life. A greater being that created us and everything around us. I really would like to have the faith that other people have sometimes. But the great mystery of our lives is that we just don’t know. I don’t know if there is anything else after this life. I don’t know what was before this life. I just know that I have this life. I mean, if there is a God, under any religion, would they really be as vain as to needing our constant prayer and acceptance? Wouldn’t they have put us here to live our lives rather than just worship and serve them? If we did just exist to worship and serve them, shouldn’t we know for certain that there is something else?
This is a necessary documentary. It is about time someone asked these questions of a church and of the followers of any religion now that the time of persecution by the state for going against the church is over. It is a brave thing Bill Maher did anyway. Nationalism and religion are intrinsically linked but shouldn’t be. It’s difficult to see American Congressmen and Senators talking about religion like they do. When religion and state are mixed, that’s when problems start. The only problem I have with this film is that he sometimes goes for the really easy target, such as Cantheism, the man who thought he was the second coming of Jesus and several other evangelicals who he makes fun of. But most of the time, he talks to regular, intelligent people who make fun of themselves using the questions that Bill asks. It is well done, especially the final 10 minutes which really makes you sit up in your chair and pay attention. I’d give it 4.5 out of 5
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