Stigmata
Directed by Rupert Wainwright
Starring: Patricia Arquette,
Gabriel Byrne, and Jonathan Pryce.
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Stigmata is the latest Hollywood movie to mix spiritual, Christian metaphors with spooky special effects in the hopes of attracting a large audience. Inevitably, some moviegoers will flock to this flick, but they may get a bit more than they bargained for in this movie with a muffled message.
The phrase "stigmata" refers to a person's marks or scars that correspond to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus, and those blessed souls who receive such wounds are referred to as stigmatic. The most famous modern-day stigmatic was Padre Pio, and by all accounts he was a truly faithful, beloved Catholic saint of saints who lived with the wounds of Christ on his own body until his death in his Eighties--despite losing as much as a pint of blood per day. With only a partial theological and historical understanding of this mysterious phenomenon, the movie offers up a very different but intriguing example of a stigmatic.
Patricia Arquette compellingly plays Frankie Paige, a self-declared atheist hairdresser who begins receiving the wounds of Christ after briefly touching a rosary that belonged to a Brazilian priest. (Catholics who see the stigmata as a sign of God's grace wish it were only that easy.) Commonly, only believers of extraordinary piety are stigmatic, but Paige proves to be a curious exception. After a gruesome scene where Paige begins to bleed abundantly while in a bathtub, she is hospitalized for identical gouging wounds in both wrists and suspected of attempted suicide. On a subway later on, after absurdly assaulting a priest and a pair of nuns, Paige's back appears to be scourged (ala Pilate's guardsmen inflicting thirty-nine lashes) by an invisible but effective force. She has now received two of Jesus's five historical wounds, but this time she has a train full of witnesses.
Freshly dispatched from the Vatican, Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) arrives on a mission to either uncover Paige as a stigmatic hoaxster or resolve the enigmatic appearance of her wounds. As both a priest and a scientist, he's been in the business of debunking before. Yet he is surprised to learn that she is not only not Catholic but an atheist devoid of faith, and so her motives for a ruse are unclear and the advent of her Christ-like wounds takes on an air of mystery. Historical precedent is set, however, by Saint Francis of Assisi, who largely came to faith after his stigmatic experience. Sufficiently fascinated, Father Kiernan begins to investigate, befriending Paige, following her around, and witnessing her receive more wounds: the crown of thorns and the piercing of the feet. According to the movie, nobody gets all five wounds and lives, so Paige's very life may be at stake, too.
What follows is a series of baffling scenes where Paige speaks in demonic voices, is progressively afflicted by her abrasions, and goes on various strange rampages. A series of questions result: If she is an atheist, why does she readily accept that God may be visiting these wounds on her and what would be His reasons for doing so? Is she afflicted by God, the Devil, or someone else entirely? Why is she writing on her wall in Aramaic (the language of Jesus's time), and what does the text mean? Is the Church trying to hide something that she has been possessed by some spirit to uncover? And why do the filmmakers have such a beef with the Catholic Church?
In the midst of all this mystery, Paige and Father Kiernan also take a liking to each other that transcends platonic love, but the relationship is seemingly doomed, given his vows of chastity. These vows prove to be little hindrance to Paige, however, when she is seemingly possessed. One of the film's most powerful scenes takes place soon after as Kiernan thwarts her advances and she beats the snot out of him with surprisingly unlady-like power. After her violent rant, she throws herself onto her bed only to have it whisked away right out from under her, leaving her levitating over it. Still suspended in the air, she then rises in a visual depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus to further drive the comparison home (I suppose). Whatever the motivation, it is a dynamic scene. Although it doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of what is happening, the image is riveting and lingering. A rare thrill in an otherwise troubled film.
It would be best to avoid this film if bountiful blood bothers you. The gory, bloodbath scenes in which Paige receives new wounds are quite chaotic cinemagraphically, splicing together her shocking experiences with flashbacks to Christ himself and various stills of icons and religious artistry. The montage of footage is appropriately assaulting enough to the viewer, but unfortunately the abrasive music composed mostly by Smashing Pumpkin's Billy Corgan creates a truly incongruous experience, like a poorly filmed Madonna video in bad taste. Although the scenes themselves are not blasphemous per se, they graphically depict what it might be like for someone to become a stigmatic, but only if they lived in an MTV video.
One only wishes that it were otherwise, because this movie is an interesting story that could have powerfully depicted Christ and his sufferings in a remarkably faith-inspiring way. That it fails has less to do with its clamorous style than its plot development, which involves a secret gospel said to be the very words of Christ that will shake the foundation of the Catholic Church. In the end, the worldview that is espoused is completely and disappointing gnostic in orientation and hinges on a clearly heretical text. It is surprising that Patricia Arquette, an actress who claims that the most important relationship in her life is the one she has with God, would select a movie that espouses something that the Apostle Paul vehemently denounced in his letters. Many unwary movie-goers will find further fuel for Catholic-bashing from this piece, where a Cardinal of the Church who stands against heresy is vilified, and denounced texts like the Gospel of St. Thomas are given undue authority.
On the other hand, in its convoluted and theologically bereft fashion, Stigmata ultimately champions faith in a way. Although true faith that stems from the actual gospels of Jesus Christ is given short shrift, God is still real and faith still counts. At the very least, viewers might be reminded of these words from Isaiah that get to the crux of the real matter:
Surely
he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows
yet we
considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted
But he
was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities
the punishment
that brought us peace
was upon him
and by
his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53: 4-5
Steven Stuart Baldwin
9/22/99
