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The King of Kings Awkwardly Wrings Cinematic Evangelism via Charles Dickens

I don’t make it a habit to see Christian movies, though they certainly get play around where I am. More often than not they tend to preach to the choir their moral dogma or conservative political values without any real interest in going beyond and making a good movie on its own merits that can be received amicably by anyone. They used to before the evangelicals took control, but that was a long time ago and a company like Angel Studios in particular, which has seemingly cornered that market since the dubious success of their QAnon-associated Sound of Freedom, has only ever received the side-eye from me.
But I had a morbid curiosity in seeing The King of Kings due to the bonkers nature of its premise intersecting with one great interest of mine. In the late 1840s, Charles Dickens wrote his own adaptation of the story of Jesus called The Life of Our Lord for his children. This was a private project for his family that he never intended on publishing, but after his death was, like everything he wrote, uncovered and exposed to the world. And of all things it is this that forms the framing device of Angel Studios’ very first children's film: a condensed version of the Jesus narrative told by English history’s most important author.
And I could have at it with this movie’s inaccuracies around the life and personality of Dickens; how we know he didn’t have his iconic beard at the time he would have written this, how only three of what would have then been his nine children make appearances, and how his wife Catherine is much too young, much too thin, and much too happy compared to her real counterpart. But that would presume the makers of this film care much about Dickens and that clearly is not the case -rather he is a convenient and curious enough excuse for the framing, and as a way to more naturalistically relate the story of Jesus to a young child -in this case Walter Dickens, whom they hope is an avatar for their audience.
Because Seong-ho Jang, the writer and director of this film, seems aware of the fact that the Jesus story on its own is not engaging enough to young viewers, and uses Charles and Walter as a means of grounding and breaking up the pace a little. Because Walter is obsessed with King Arthur, Charles approaches it as a story of a king -and it’s a lot of that kind of condescension you find through this retelling. What you don’t find though is very much of a Dickens character or voice, as there undoubtedly would be in his version of the tale; an emphasis placed on the chapters of charity and social welfare and empathy with the poor. Some moments of these do appear, but without his distinction of them. And in fact, while passages of the Bible are several times quoted verbatim, his own text never is -barring an opening sequence of the climax of A Christmas Carol, as he is giving a public reading.
Yet the film still relies on Charles, and more specifically Walter and his mischievous cat, who go from eager listeners to participants in the story -a folding of reality this movie isn't near sharp enough to pull off. The little tyke even influences in places the story he is being read for the first time. And while this is a decent showing of his broadening investment, more often the intrusions feel like cheap ways of getting children's attentions back -like a little manic chase through a crowd on Palm Sunday. The actual effect of these however is that it muddies up the pacing of the story that is supposed to be more important. On at least a couple occasions it is interrupted wholesale so Charles can give the cliff's notes version of a prior Biblical story for context, like the first Passover and even the basis of Original Sin. There are a couple diversions away from Jesus's own life into the den of Pharisees, and the inclusion of their leader as a contrived human villain for this narrative.
In spite of these efforts, the Jesus story for its own merits, never hooks you -and part of it comes down to Jang being too beholden to canonical fealty. He departs from it a tad in some instances, moving around episodes of the gospels chronologically, and on occasion giving a little touch of humour or personality to some of the disciples. But Jesus, as he is in Christianity writ large, is never tarnished. And thus the same issue that plagues many Jesus movies is present here too -the figure is such a beacon of perfection that he makes for a boring character to watch.
This inclination is reflected in the animation, which is often-times quite ugly. Taken in isolation, Walter is virtually indistinguishable from any child character in a modern Disney or DreamWorks film. But there is a lack of depth to much of the world, in both Victorian London and Judea -an immaculate design to some of the backdrops that flatten them, crowd scenes made up of husks responding in sync or just staring opaquely. All the while the significant characters are too fidgety -Charles gesticulates with his limbs entirely too much. And while most characters are drawn in typically exaggerated ways imitative of mainstream animation -with pronounced noses or jaws or (in freaky cases) hands, Jesus stands out as having no element of caricature at all -which by context actually makes him rather creepy-looking, especially with his proportionate-sized head to other characters perched on a pencil neck. And it should be no surprise that Jesus, more than any other Middle-Eastern character featured- is emphatically white.
Ironic, given he is voiced by Oscar Isaac, who would honestly make a pretty great live-action Jesus. His is a big name for this Christian movie to get for its title character. And he’s not the only one, with Forest Whitaker as Simon Peter, Ben Kingsley as the evil Pharisee, and Pierce Brosnan as Pontius Pilate in the Biblical sections; while the framing device features Uma Thurman as Catherine, Jojo Rabbit’s Roman Griffin Davis as Walter, and as Dickens himself, the grandiloquent intonations of Kenneth Branagh. A pretty star-studded affair that speaks to Angel Studios’ resources and their rising degree of clout surpassing any other religious film company. As far as the performances themselves go, Isaac does fine with the material he is given, and Branagh has some energetic bombast that could work in a stronger context.
But this isn’t a very strong context, and The King of Kings is as awkward as these religious products usually are to just about anyone but the fiercely devout. What seems to be the general approach of this studio is to Trojan Horse evangelism through the auspices of mainstream industry trends; The King of Kings is as much an imitation of a DreamWorks or Sony film as their series The Chosen is an approximation of big-budget prestige genre shows like Game of Thrones or Yellowstone. But the real goal of these projects is pretty transparent. The best religious film ever made in the animated space, The Prince of Egypt, succeeded because it put the needs of being a good movie ahead of any auspices of preaching. It doesn’t preach at all, and is unafraid to alter aspects of the story and dig deeper into its human elements to produce something that can both affirm the convictions of the faithful and resonate strongly with wider audiences too (this is also why The Last Temptation of Christ remains the best Jesus movie). There is one sequence of this film that suggests how it could have done the same -creatively using the medium of film to illustrate the personal component of what faith in Jesus looks like at the point of his crucifixion. But it is an anomaly. The film doesn’t and functionally can’t rise to that -I’m not convinced its makers even want it to. Not even Dickens can move them otherwise.

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