Movie · 1989 · Drama, Comedy, Romance · 1h 59m · French
Curator score: 6.4/10 (12.6K ratings)
Overview
A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.4/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.67/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 71%
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Denys Arcand
Production
CNC, Téléfilm Canada, Max Films Productions, Gérard Mital Productions, ONF | NFB, Société Générale des Industries Culturelles du Québec (SOGIC)
Cast
Lothaire Bluteau, Catherine Wilkening, Johanne-Marie Tremblay, Rémy Girard, Robert Lepage, Gilles Pelletier, Yves Jacques, Cédric Noël, Pauline Martin, Véronique Le Flaguais, Jean-Louis Millette, Monique Miller, Christine-Ann Atallah, Claude Léveillée, Valérie Gagné, Paule Baillargeon, Boris Bergman, Gaston Lepage, Marc Messier, Marcel Sabourin
Where to watch
Philo
Curator Review
Verdict
A smart, layered satire of religion, art, and celebrity that gradually becomes genuinely moving. Its mix of theatricality, social critique, and spiritual ambiguity gives it lasting bite, even when the pacing is a little uneven.
Best for
Viewers who like cerebral, idea-driven dramas
Fans of films about theater, performance, and creative process
People interested in religious satire or modern Passion narratives
Anyone drawn to 1980s art-house cinema with a strong moral argument
Skip if
You want a straightforward faith-based story
You dislike meta-narratives and films that blur performance with real life
You prefer fast-moving plots over reflective, dialogue-heavy cinema
You’re looking for a purely reverent or devotional treatment of Jesus
Overview
Denys Arcand turns a Passion Play into a sly, humane, and sometimes caustic examination of how stories survive in modern culture. What begins as a theater project slowly expands into a meditation on faith, commerce, authorship, and the uneasy way institutions absorb or resist criticism. The film’s intelligence is obvious, but it never feels merely academic; it keeps finding new emotional pressure points.
Worth noting
The pleasure here is in the layering. The actors’ lives, the biblical material, and the city around them keep reflecting one another until the line between performance and lived experience starts to dissolve. That structure gives the film both its wit and its melancholy, especially as it asks what happens when a sincere artistic act collides with bureaucracy, marketing, and public appetite.
Bottom line
It can feel a little diffuse, and some viewers may find the performances more restrained than the material deserves. But the film’s ambition, and the way it builds toward a quietly devastating ending, make it one of the most memorable art-house films of its era. It’s provocative without being smug, and spiritual without pretending certainty.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Stephen M (5★) · 57 likes
My first Denys Arcand and such a great film. Why haven't I checked him out until now?. I found myself deeply moved by the end. A group of five actors (3 men and 2 women) stage a provocative and iconoclastic version of the traditional Passion Play and gradually their stories merge into a contemporary rendering of the disciples and Jesus in his final days.
This is not the gentle reverent Jesus but the angry radical Jesus who decried the social… more
Silent J (4★) · 50 likes
Just when I thought the films in my Film & Religion class were getting worse every week, we ended up viewing the second best movie of the semester.
Jesus of Montreal follows an acting troupe working on a play about the life of Jesus. The film not only works as a clever satire, but also a sharply brilliant commentary on religion, theater, and even advertising. Maybe it's because we studied this film intensively and that usually heightens a film for me,… more
ibra (4★) · 35 likes
1:46:26 we see the boom mic in the top of the frame... mtl filmmakers suck ass
Scarlett Worthington (3.5★) · 34 likes
A film with layers as it manages to provide one of the best portrayals of Jesus Christ ever in the form of a Passion Play being put on within the world of the film as well as a narrative rooted with palpable emotions and a social commentary. We kind of get a double narrative here, because while we watch the Passion Play unfold, you forget for a moment that you’re actually watching a film about the actors’ struggle and the… more A film with layers as it manages to provide one of the best portrayals of Jesus Christ ever in the form of a Passion Play being put on within the world of the film as well as a narrative rooted with palpable emotions and a social commentary. We kind of get a double narrative here, because while we watch the Passion Play unfold, you forget for a moment that you’re actually watching a film about the actors’ struggle and the… more
az93 (3.5★) · 32 likes
Incredibly smart stuff conceptually. A really thought-provoking piece on a number of levels, but the acting is a little stale, and that just knocks it down a peg.
Still, this modern re-contextualisation of the Bible is one of the most interesting I've seen - and thankfully is made to question, rather than consolidate scriptural hegemony.
1979 · Comedy · 1h 34m · R · Curator 8.2/10 (811.1K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, Peacock Premium, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, Peacock Premium Plus
If the appeal is irreverent religious satire, this is the essential comic counterpart.