If director Jaco van Dormael is to be believed, God is not some incorporeal being floating in the clouds, but a sadistic man living in an apartment in Brussels with his weak-willed wife and 10-year-old daughter Ea. Even worse, it's The Old Testament God full of fire and brimstone who spends his days creating new universal laws intended to annoy people. Ea is fed up, releases everyone's dates of death and flees to the real world to find new apostles and write her own brand new testament. Yet the film contains more than just a few laughs and ends up being quite profound in a delightfully non-patronizing way.
The film is basically split into several segments, each one devoted to one of the six new apostles Ea finds. Finding them seems to be the story's main drive, but in the end it becomes about each of their stories. They all represent certain recognizable facets of human behavior: there's the businessman who, after discovering when he'll die, realizes he's been living a lie.
The film's filled to the brim with visual flair: when Man is created and wandering the Earth, his groin is censored. The man notices this and tries to get rid of this black bar covering his manhood, but to no avail. There's also a beautiful scene involving a severed hand dancing on a table as one of the apostles, a woman with a prosthetic arm watches (trust me, it works).
There's great comedy strewn about this film, but some of the funniest bits involve God having trouble getting used to life on Earth. After spending so long creating sadistic rules, it's hilarious to see him get a taste of his own medicine. Funnier still is when he protests, stating that he's God which everyone dismisses as the ranting of a raving lunatic. When he's being manhandled, he hilariously says threatens that he'll give his attackers psoriasis, warts or inflict them with a permanent case of premature ejaculation.
Not every skit holds up: the ones involving a guy tempting fate by falling off of great heights to see if he'll survive or a romance involving a gorilla wear out their welcome, but hey, when you've got a beautiful shot of someone literally embracing his own reflection, I can easily forgive. In the end, it's the film's ability to subtly convey its poetic undertones that separate it from the pack.
The film is basically split into several segments, each one devoted to one of the six new apostles Ea finds. Finding them seems to be the story's main drive, but in the end it becomes about each of their stories. They all represent certain recognizable facets of human behavior: there's the businessman who, after discovering when he'll die, realizes he's been living a lie.
The film's filled to the brim with visual flair: when Man is created and wandering the Earth, his groin is censored. The man notices this and tries to get rid of this black bar covering his manhood, but to no avail. There's also a beautiful scene involving a severed hand dancing on a table as one of the apostles, a woman with a prosthetic arm watches (trust me, it works).
There's great comedy strewn about this film, but some of the funniest bits involve God having trouble getting used to life on Earth. After spending so long creating sadistic rules, it's hilarious to see him get a taste of his own medicine. Funnier still is when he protests, stating that he's God which everyone dismisses as the ranting of a raving lunatic. When he's being manhandled, he hilariously says threatens that he'll give his attackers psoriasis, warts or inflict them with a permanent case of premature ejaculation.
Not every skit holds up: the ones involving a guy tempting fate by falling off of great heights to see if he'll survive or a romance involving a gorilla wear out their welcome, but hey, when you've got a beautiful shot of someone literally embracing his own reflection, I can easily forgive. In the end, it's the film's ability to subtly convey its poetic undertones that separate it from the pack.