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Gospel Road
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Year: |
1973
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Director: |
Robert Elfstrom
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Stars: |
Johnny Cash, Robert Elfstrom, June Carter Cash, Larry Lee, Paul L. Smith, Alan Dater, Gelles LeBlanc, Terrence Winston Mannock, Thomas Leventhal, John Paul Kay, Sean Armstrong, Lyle Nicholson, Steven Chernoff, Stuart Stark, Ulf Pollack, Jonathan Sanders
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Genre: |
Historical, Music |
Rating: |
5 (from 1 vote) |
Review: |
Here is country and western superstar Johnny Cash to take us through the life of Jesus Christ, a tale he has set to music. He begins when Christ (Robert Elfstrom) was just starting his ministry, as he approached John the Baptist (Larry Lee) to ask him to baptise him, and although John was initially reluctant, he was quickly persuaded, thereby giving Jesus God's blessing to spread His word. But first he had to be tempted in the wilderness for forty days and nights, as Satan showed him all the earthly riches that he could have if he chose to follow him - naturally, Jesus turned him down...
And a lot of people turned down Cash's pet project, which was swiftly relegated to showings at Sunday schools, Bible classes, and other such Christian gatherings, bypassing the consciousness of most moviegoers altogether. It seemed that the biggest objection in its potential audience of churchgoers was that Jesus and his pals looked too much like hippies, which may have appealed to the less conservative members of the religion, especially the younger generation, but for the larger majority they preferred a Christ who looked as if he took a bath more than once a month. The connotations of a counterculture Christ were not ones to be embraced, in their view.
Not helping was the casting of the film's director Robert Elfstrom in the main role; he had been an associate of Cash's for a while, having directed a documentary on him a few years before, in addition to carving out a successful career as a cinematographer. But he appeared to be filling the role because he had a beard, as otherwise his Scandinavian looks did not fit the common perception of a Middle Eastern Jew - not to worry, though, as Max von Sydow had suffered the same criticism about ten years before, so he was in good company. However, as a cinematographer Elfstrom was no actor, so it's not surprising that Cash chose to voice much of this himself, speaking Christ's lines straight from the scripture.
This was also a showcase for the songs, not all of them written or sung by Cash (Kris Kristofferson makes a vocal appearance, as does the missus June Carter Cash as Mary Magdelene), and in the long run the soundtrack album proved a bigger seller than the film it hailed from, probably because it was easy to divorce from the misty-eyed imagery that turned a lot of viewers off. In truth, the music is not the best that the legend ever recorded, but as with the rest of the production it was at least painfully sincere and not out of place, and besides, there are worse pieces to listen to than Johnny Cash crooning his Bible songs. More problematic was that he, as co-writer (of the script, not the Bible), chose to leave out quite a bit of the original text, so there was no sign of the Nativity (too expensive to stage), and the rest of Jesus' life was somewhat skipped over.
Mostly in favour of idyllic, Israeli-filmed scenes of the Lord hanging out with his disciples, who are often referred to as children; in case we have not caught on to this analogy between Christ and his followers, there's one particularly embarrassing sequence where Elfstrom plays with a group of actual children by the shores of the sea, making him more of a kindergarten teacher than the Son of Man. Then again, we do see some of the disciples make to throw one of their number over a cliff (!), all in good fun that Jesus indulgently dissuades them from doing. At the time Gospel Road was seen in some quarters as an antidote to such fashionable amongst the kids Christian musicals as Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell, but where those have endured to some extent, Cash's dream production, the result of his own deeply held and on this evidence, sweetly benevolent beliefs, has dwindled into obscurity. He apparently took this failure very hard, but must have been cheered by the inclusion of clips of this in his classic Hurt video towards the end of his life.
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Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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