I am all for Jeymes Samuel’s crusade. For years, black people only had chances to play stereotypes if any roles at all in classic movie genres. Samuel righted that wrong for westerns with The Harder They Fall, regrettably now an ironic title. So he goes even bigger and bolder with The Book of Clarence, a black take on Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical epics. I can’t wait to see his screwball comedy, his Cassavetes movie, and his 1970’s whitesploitation film to mock white fragility, ending with his silent movie destruction of DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.
Even though Jesus (Nicholas Pinnock) is in this movie, The Book is really about Clarence (Lakeith Stanfield), a pretty ho hum hustler in Jerusalem. After losing a chariot race to Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor), Clarence owes money to the local power broker Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa). Desperate to survive and more importantly make something of himself, Clarence sees Jesus’s newfound celebrity as a chance for him to plagarize and ride the savior’s coattails. He enlists his buddies Elijah (RJ Cyler), Dirty Zeke (Caleb McLaughlin) and Barabbas (Omar Sy), to help him “spread Clarence’s miracles.” This turns Clarence into an overnight celebrity, which hopefully his crush Varinia (Anna Diop) will witness and decide Clarence is worthy of her love.
The stakes are higher with The Book of Clarence. Any misguided joke or something told in poor taste is going to draw ire and consternation from hardcore Christians. On the other side, anything brilliant is going to be exalted, because of Samuel’s fearlessness. The really good stuff, just like The Harder They Fall, is when Jeymes is filtering modern African-American culture in the US through the biblical epic prism. Jesus might be the savior yes, but to Clarence, Jesus is first and foremost a celebrity. His path shows Clarence an inroad to growing his personal popularity in the culture, so he can then make some solid money off of it. I laughed hardest when Clarence confronts Jesus’s disciples, or true believers like John the Baptist (David Oyelowo), who in turn mock/chastise Clarence for the phony endeavor he’s about to pursue. Dramatically, the movie’s big conceit is tackling organized religion itself: in black culture, are your religious beliefs performative? Or are you walking the walk by actually living a good life? But Samuel’s best detail is his soundtrack, here which he fuses modern hip hop with 1950s epic soundtracks to make this fascinating, exciting funkish sound that makes the move constantly feel important and new.
But Samuel still hasn’t quite mastered his tones. The writer/director wants to be funny and serious at the same time, but still struggles with the balancing act. Super serious satirical sequences sometimes end with these strange Clarence one offs commenting on the absurdity of what just happened instead of committing to the bit and just having Stanfield shoot a weird look. Each character feels like they’re in their own movie sometimes: Anna Diop’s Varinia is straight up in a romantic drama, Omar Sy’s Barabbas is in Gladiator, James McAvoy’s Pontius Pilate is in a screwball comedy, and poor Lakeith Stanfield (overall, he’s very good) struggling to hold them all together. The audience feels jerked around at times, tugged all over the place and a bit dizzy from tonal whiplash which drowns out some of the points Jeymes Samuel wants to make. There’s also a really strange cameoish character that flirts a little too liberally with the cringe line for my liking, to pay off with a pretty mediocre joke.
Mistakes aside, I was still excited watching The Book of Clarence. Jeymes Samuel isn’t afraid to boldly go where no director dared go before, and I hope he’s ready to do it again. And again. And again. Personally? I want him to make like a Jane Austen movie about rich people’s rules with an all black cast. That could go in so many fun, mean, badass Jeymes directions I can’t wait to see it!