Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary (1985)

I don't know when Jean-Luc Godard started filming everything static camera, but it's been at least 35 years. It works pretty well most of the time.

Hail Mary is the story of the Virgin Mary set in what was then present-day France. It didn't have much to say about it. It was condemned by the Catholic Church, by the Pope himself, because the Holy Virgin kept taking her clothes off.

I had rented the movie on VHS in the '80's. In those days, the box had the word BANNED blazoned across the cover. The film student working the counter said he wanted to see it and asked me to tell him what I thought of it, but I never did and he didn't ask again.

I should have read the box because I didn't even know what I was seeing. It turned out that the first part was a short film ("The Book of Mary") by Anne-Marie Mieville who worked in the same manner as Godard. It was all static camera except for one shot. It was about an 11-year-old girl named Mary whose parents are splitting up. I assume this was upsetting to the girl, but it didn't make that clear.

Then it got into Godard's film.

Mary works in a gas station owned by her father and has a boyfriend named Joseph but she's saving herself for marriage. She plays basketball at school. Joseph is a cab driver who brings a man and girl to the gas station. They tell Mary that she's going to get pregnant even though she's never known the touch of a man.

Mary's OB/GYN confirms that she's both pregnant and a virgin.

Joseph is rather distressed. Mary keeps taking her clothes off.

Roger Ebert didn't think the movie was very good but didn't think it was blasphemous.

Christ figures in film are a dime a dozen. I think Jerry Lewis might have qualified in at least one movie. I assume there are Madonna figures, too. The only one I can think of off hand is in an episode of The Rifleman where Mark is delirious with typhoid and keeps having visions of his late mother.

So what was this supposed to be? Was it a straight re-enactment of the New Testament story in modern dress? Was it an alternate universe where Christianity was the one true religion but Christ wasn't born until the 1980's? Or was it just some girl who happened to be named Mary with a boyfriend named Joseph who finds herself a pregnant virgin and everyone's too polite to point out the obvious parallels?

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