Oh My God
Dir: Peter Rodger
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Mitropoulos Films
98 Minutes
Throughout his new film, director Peter Rodger asks a simply phrased question: “What is God?” Posing this most basic but infinitely nuanced question to a sweeping array of humanity, from Roman (and Irish and Mexican) Catholic priests to Muslim Imams, to Masai tribesman, Texan business owners and British royalty, to celebrities and children in cancer wards, Rodger clearly does not lack ambition- in addition to directing, he also wrote and co-produced Oh My God, which was filmed over the course of over two years in 23 countries. Unfortunately, no matter how ambitious a filmmaker is, a topic that has perplexed the whole of humanity for recorded history can’t quite be covered in 98 minutes.
Rodgers begins the film with a lengthy, silent introduction of scattered images, ranging from sunlit pastorals to neon cityscapes at night, eventually focusing down to individual crowds, then people. All the while, a murmuring litany of voices poses the kind of vague question that occupies Oh My God: “What is God?” Stylistically, the preamble encompasses the entirety of the film, which is dominated by shaky, rapid cuts, echoed dialogue bleeding from one scene to another and Rodger himself occasionally popping into the frame to describe his amazement at the answers he’s received. There’s an even more unfortunate tendency to undercut scenes of ecstatic worship with a generic techno beat, and images of contemplation with deep, reverb-heavy guitars. If that seems like it could grow slightly tiresome, well, it does.
Fortunately, the people he interviews and their statements range from the maddening to the mystifying- the sheer enormity of contradiction between answers could fascinate on its own. One Imam reiterates to excess his belief that Jews and Christians will reside in Hell forever (although when the director presses him to produce a relevant quote from the Qur’an, the cheesy music and time lapse photography as he searches seem cheap at best), while the director of a Muslim institute in Southern California just as strongly argues that no one is guaranteed such inferno. A Balinese priest admits that he does not “know God,” but he knows his own imagination and a Masai man seems to feel no contradiction in his prayers to Jesus and the onscreen ritual sacrifice of a goat to the “god of the bush.” Even more telling is the sequence devoted to Israel’s myriad religious problems; a man wearing tefillin in the desert describes how God does not reveal himself in people, but through the space between people. He later reiterates this with an Arab cleric as they walk hand in hand- it could seem cloying, it could seemed staged, but the simple sincerity of scenes like these never do.
It’s actually quite a pity that Rodger allowed his aesthetic sensibilities (he has an extensive history as maker of commercial advertisements) to so frequently overwhelm his subjects, who are fascinating more often than not. It’s perhaps most telling of the division between intention and execution of the film that his celebrity interviews pop up so often- while they may has much validity as the next speaker, their appearances jar, just as his overbearing beats and jump cuts do. In other words, while the typically snide Bob Geldof may question that an entire culture can be built around a “not very successful Jewish carpenter,” I have to question why it’s so important to hear from the singer of the Boomtown Rats in a bad beret.
by Nathan Kamal
