An abortion clinic worker with a special heritage is called upon to save the existence of humanity from being negated by two renegade angels trying to exploit a loophole and reenter Heaven.
There’s a great joke early in “Dogma,” now re-released after its filmmakers’ and a new studio’s reacquisition following years in distribution limbo, that establishes concisely what we are to expect of the movie, its ideas, and its sense of humor. Just as the heroine of the piece, a woman named Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), has given up all hope of attending her local Catholic Church as more than an obligation, a heavenly visitor arrives in the form of Metatron (Alan Rickman), who is the voice of God Himself. The initial nature of the arrival recalls the story of Moses in the “Book of Exodus,” when the same voice visited the Hebrew prophet through a burning bush, but writer/director Kevin Smith introduces a new wrinkle in the plan: What if Moses had been given access to a fire extinguisher?
The conversation that follows, as a miffed Metatron and a befuddled Bethany discuss her true destiny on this planet, is an intelligent and probing one about religion, philosophy, the nature of God, and the banality of the Christian heaven from the perspective of a being that lives there. It’s also a confrontation between a sardonic angel, who is bored after an eternity of having to field questions from his boss, and a cynical human, whose infertility due to a pesky human disease has left her with little faith in anything or anyone. As we learn later, her lack of faith is most curious within the context of her lineage, which is to say that she’s the niece—removed, of course, by several hundred generations, of Jesus Christ himself.
Upon its initial release in 1999, the film sparked controversy from several faith groups, most notably the Catholic League, an American Catholic organization whose stated purpose is to advocate for the rights of its members to live without discrimination. Funnily enough, the actual church—or Church—to which it ostensibly belongs was silent on the matter of the film’s supposed blasphemy, peppered as it is by Smith’s typically profane witticisms and banter. The late Roger Ebert, the great film critic who was born and raised in the Catholic Church, posited in his review that he could imagine the Christian (or Catholic) God would approve, overall, of the film’s message and demeanor, if not all of its content—the demon made of feces, for example, or the mission of a pair of angels at the center of a major subplot.
Those angels are Loki and Bartleby, played in a pair of tongue-in-cheek performances by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (fresh from their shared Academy Award victory), who have discovered a loophole to get back into Heaven after banishment to the mortal realm for insubordination and desertion. The logistics of the plan are fairly inside-baseball in the Catholic sense, but basically, a nearby church’s rededication (George Carlin, in a fun bit of ironic casting, plays the priest, who has replaced the traditional image of Jesus on the cross with a winking Jesus throwing up the A-OK signal) will allow for the remitting of all sins, and if they follow a certain guideline as fallen angels, then God will have no choice but to accept them back. Bethany’s purpose is to find and stop Loki and Bartleby from achieving this goal, which would essentially nullify the universe.
It’s a surprisingly loaded movie for all its jokes and general nonsense, especially because Smith’s screenplay turns the endeavor into a sort of double-sided road movie. On one side, we have the fallen angels, who take turns damning sinful souls to Hell with a rather massive pistol and spend the film arguing the utility of their mission and the holiness of their old boss. On the other side, we have Bethany, who is eventually joined by a company of four—Jason Mewes and the director as Jay and Silent Bob, Chris Rock as the unknown 13th apostle Rufus who definitely knows Jesus (“owes me 12 bucks,” he says), and Salma Hayek as the Muse of creative inspiration Serendipity, who works in the mortal realm as an exotic dancer.
They’re all in pursuit of Loki and Bartleby, and in pursuit of the foursome is Azrael (Jason Lee), a demon directly answering to an unseen Lucifer, who obviously wants to upend Bethany’s mission. In the silliest subplot, Azrael sends a demon made of human excrement after them, although perhaps it’s not that important to take things seriously in a movie where the whereabouts of God depends on whether he (or she) has decided to assume a human form for his weekly game of skee ball. It’s a movie of deep questions and complex theology, but it’s also one where, ultimately, the existence of God is a bit of a joke.
That’s because God is a woman here, played by Alanis Morissette in a performance that amplifies the deity’s mysterious, surprisingly playful, and ultimately graceful nature. The disarming thing about “Dogma,” even now more than 25 years later, is how unexpectedly touching and genuinely human it is. It’s one of the best films from a great, one-of-a-kind filmmaker, bursting with ingenuity and ideas and, yes, a whole boatload of laughs, and we didn’t even broach the topic of how great Rickman is in this thing.
“Dogma” opens in Select Theaters for its 25th Anniversary on Thursday, June 5th
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