Maestà

It may be a stretch to even call Andy Guerif's "Maesta, The Passion of the Christ" a film in any real sense of the term. It's probably more akin to theatre, playing out in real time, yet even then it's hardly theatre as we know it. Perhaps it's nothing more than a painting brought to life, at least to a degree. Guerif fills the screen with 14 tableaux, some split in half thus multiplying the images and within these 'screens' figures move about enacting scenes from the last hours of Jesus, beginning centre screen with the Crucifixion then seemingly moving in reverse to the events leading up to it, then moving forward again to the Crucifixion and so on as if on some kind of loop.

Scraps of dialogue are heard in French, (there are no English subtitles), and without some knowledge of the Biblical story of the Passion it would be impossible to tell what is going on. One image appears to show the Last Summer, another the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and so on. It's as if Guerif is attempting to bring religious painting or iconography to life, only in miniature. Since we are never allowed to get up close and personal we can't identify with the tiny figures on screen. The experience is akin to assembling a jigsaw without prior knowledge of what the finished product will look like. It lasts less than an hour but it feels like eternity.