It is impossible to review "The Perfect Stranger" the way one might review "My Dinner with Andre" even though both have a similar idea: Two people discuss the Big Questions of Life over dinner at an upscale restaurant. There the similarity ends. "Andre" focuses on what the title character has to say, but it is still a dialogue between equals whose opinions are theirs alone and understandably heir to bias and error. It does not matter whether we agree with Andre or Wallace because they are mere mortals.
In the present film, the stakes are raised because one of the diners is supposed to be all-knowing and all-understanding, but can only be so to the extent that Jefferson Moore's script (or its source, the novel of the same title by David Gregory) is convincing. A play on film based on a hortatory dialogue needs a guru and a foil/votary. The guru is "The Perfect Stranger" of the title, a man who claims to be Jesus (Jefferson Moore), although he looks like he just got off work at Merrill Lynch as the foil in the piece, Nikki (Pamela Brumley), aptly describes him.
In his argument, Jesus first attacks as inadequate all systems alternative to his own (other religions, atheism); then he lays out a Christian theology; and, finally, he tells Nikki how this theology applies to her. Some of it, particularly the applied theology, is provocative, but the weakest part of the dialogue is the dismissal of other points of view, done so simplistically and unconvincingly that it does little to eliminate the competition. Other views are dispensed with through strawman arguments that Nikki is unable to see through. She is too much of a pushover to make this dialogue challenging for Jesus.
A better matched interlocutor would not have let Jesus get away with saying, for example, that Christianity, rather than Hinduism, fits better with the Big Bang Theory of modern physics. It is a weakness for any theology to gloat that science supports it. For its own good, religion should not concede dependence on science, which in any case changes when it acquires more evidence. Religion, if it is worth anything at all, must offer higher truths, independent of science. Indeed, some cosmologists have considered the possibility that the Big Bang is not THE beginning of everything but, rather, only the beginning of one iteration of an eternal universe. While science can know of no other iteration before this one, it is still possible that Hinduism's notion that the universe begins and ends over and over again is right. Thus, the jury is out on whether Hinduism's theory of the universe supersedes or contains Judeo-Christianity's. That cosmological point ought not to be granted as it implicitly is here.
Unable to argue this point, Nikki tries another tac. What about Islam, another Abrahamic religion? How do we know Mohammed didn't get it right? Doesn't Christianity, like Islam, simply depend "on whether or not God spoke to one guy?"
Jesus goes toe to toe with Mohammed, declaring, for example that the Prophet's claim that Jesus did not die on the cross is not only wrong because "I was there" but because "My crucifixion was historically documented by Christians and non-Christians." Actually, one non-Christian did, maybe. All other historians who affirm the historicity of the crucifixion rely on their own faith or else very indirect (if persuasive) evidence. And Christian accounts are not concerned with history at all but are faith narratives. This part of the dialogue is overloaded with disputed and disputable evidence.
Jesus finally argues that the Christian God provides people with the hope of being completely and perfectly loved, but "the Muslims never had that hope. They can't have a personal relationship with Allah. He's just someone to worship and serve from far away."
That is a distortion of the Muslim view. The Quran says, "We (Allah) have created man, and We know whatever thoughts his inner self develops, and We are closer to him than his own jugular vein." This is hardly distant. For the Sufi Muslim mystic Rabia Al-Adawiyya, Allah was not impersonal but was the love of her life: "...if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting beauty." Moreover, and to go back to Hinduism, that multifaceted faith recognizes something called "bhakti yoga" which is salvation through devotion to God as a personal being. Hinduism regards Krishna and-for that matter-Pure Land Buddhism regards Amitabha Buddha much as Christianity regards Jesus. Christianity hardly has a monopoly on the concept of a personal savior.
If Moore's version of Jesus knows half of nothing about other viewpoints, he does know Christianity well enough to give Nikki and us a provocative rendition of the tenet that one's faith is infinitely more salvific than one's deeds. No person can ever do enough good deeds. "There is great profit in obeying God," Moore's Jesus says, "it just won't get you into heaven." But what is the profit and where is heaven? Here, Jesus has to rely on language for terms that he must, at the same time, undermine. (Pay attention or the seeming contradictions will confuse you!)
Faith in the sacrifice of Jesus is at the heart of most Christians' belief, and it is the only way to salvation. Further, Jesus argues here that heaven is a misleading concept because what Christians have through faith is not a spot in The Good Place but Eternal Life. To accept the invitation to let Jesus into your life is to accept an indwelling-crassly speaking, a kind of possession, but presumably without losing one's individuality or free will. Christianity becomes "a force for good in the world" not because of rote rule-following but because of each Christian's asking him or herself not only "What would Jesus do?" but, pragmatically, "How can I do that now?"
This is a 90-minute-plus movie that is over before it's over in that the last twenty minutes combine credits with three interviews with cast and filmmakers (including Moore who is both). The look of the film is not too claustrophobic even though most of the movie is shot in a restaurant, at a table. There are shots of other patrons and interactions with the waitstaff. There is occasional humor, as when Nikki goes to the women's room and says out loud but to herself, "He thinks he's God!" Another woman comes out of a stall and says, "They all do. Just make sure he pays for dinner."
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