Unreality Companion: The Wasted Cinematic Potential of Easter

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

My Unreality article for last week (never mind that it was actually posted yesterday) got me to thinking about the notable deficit of Easter movies out there.  While there actually are fair number to work with, it hardly puts up the same numbers as other holidays, especially Christmas.  This seems like such a waste, since Easter is probably the next most filmable holiday out there.

Wrong bunny!

I mean, Easter and Christmas are basically the same thing when you stop to think about it.  Both have religious and secular aspects that are easily exploitable with the right audience.  Both have complicated non-secular mythologies that strongly appeal to young children.  Both of them even cross over with Jewish holidays, ensuring maximum audience coverage.

A movie that's inclined to appeal to the fundie crowd can pursue the Jesus narrative: his teachings, persecution and eventual execution.  Lord knows that there's enough spiritual movie-goers to fill a theater, when you stop to consider how mind-bogglingly well The Passion of the Christ did a few years ago, or how movies like Do You Believe? and God's Not Dead keep cropping up despite their lack of a genuinely mainstream audience.

Similarly, a movie can aggressively gun for families by forsaking the Jesus narrative for an Easter Bunny one.  But whereas Christmas movies are more firmly entrenched in established iconography, Easter is more loosely defined, leaving far more of itself open to creative interpretation.  Your protagonist can be anything from a saccharine hare pooping out Jelly Beans to a badass Rabbit from down under hurling boomerangs and egg-shaped bombs.

While this does mean that there's less social investment in the mainstream Easter narrative, there's a lot more room to experiment with it: a lot more angles to exploit and a lot more versions that are likely to find a niche audience.  Don't forget that Rise of the Guardians was primarily an Easter story, nor that movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Cool Hand Luke and Gran Torino feature obvious Christ stand-ins in obviously non-religious narratives.  Easter is so loosely defined (compared to the likes of Christmas and Thanksgiving) that it has a lot more freedom to explore these kinds of non-traditional narratives.

And don't forget that Easter double dips with Passover, bringing a whole slew of different stories into its seasonal fold.  The most obvious of these is, of course, the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, for which cinephiles already have several decades-spanning versions to choose from.  The problem is, though, that there isn't one that meets at that perfect cross-section of live action, contemporary and good.

The best of them, The Prince of Egypt, is an animated movie largely targeted towards children.  And while adults like myself - especially those that grew up with the Dreamworks film - continue to love it, it's painfully obvious that it's no longer meant for us.  There's a much darker, much more deeply political narrative underneath its secular dressings and emotional coatings.

Although The Ten Commandments is widely considered to be the best of the live action versions, its narrative was built around the spectacle of the Plagues.  Given the kinds of computer-generated marvels audiences today are used to, the film can't help but feel more than just a little antiquated and underwhelming.  Pair that by failing to measure up to The Prince of Egypt's emotional core, and it just isn't quite the movie that it used to be.

And then there's Exodus: Gods and Kings.  Although it nails the Plagues, the movie's all flash and no substance: failing to tap into the social, political or emotional underpinnings of its narrative.  And really, why bother when you have so many action-packed sequences and set pieces to work with?  (don't answer that, it was rhetorical).

So what do you want to see out of an Easter (or Passover) themed movie?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.