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Dir: Bruce Burgess
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By Jes Sipling
On the raggedy coat-tails of Dan Brown’s controversial thriller The DaVinci Code, and with a hand-held camera in tow, filmmaker Bruce Burgess heads to France to answer one question: Was Jesus Mary Magdalene’s baby-daddy? His brain-locked conclusion: Yes. My analysis: if this daft documentary is all he could come up with, he should have visited the Eiffel Tower and not wasted his time any further. Burgess sets up the story much like Brown’s novel: The Catholic Church has suppressed the secret of an ancient group called The Priory of Sion, allegedly murdering those who try to reveal Jesus had children with Mary Magdalene, leaving a bloodline that survives in France today. Burgess, sort of a poor man’s Michael Moore with less charisma and even fewer facts at his disposal, does some interviews with members of the Priory. The first of these is with General Secretary to the Grandmaster, Gino Sandri, who brings to mind Andy Warhol after a gasoline bender. Sandri informs us -- yet again -- this is a “dangerous “ subject, a bit of melodrama aided with accompanying thriller-movie piano while Burgess proving he barely knows how to use the zoom button, let alone compose a shot. Eventually, Burgess hooks up with Ben Hammott, a British explorer who unearths parchments allegedly written by Bérenger Saunière, a priest who learned this forbidden secret a century ago. These hundred-year-old relics -- which, for all their massive historical significance, are carried in a beat up cardboard box handled with bare hands -- lead the team to a mummy. DNA reveals the body is of Middle-Eastern decent but can’t determine if it were male or female or how old it is. Given nothing else to work with, Hammott blithely proclaims it to be Mary solely on the position of the mummy’s fingers, which match one existing painting in which her fingers are similarly entwined. Well, then. Case-closed. The point of this entire “secret”: to act as fodder for best-selling fiction and mediocre conspiracy documentaries. If you really want a thrill you’d do better to read Brown’s book, it’s more engaging and a hell of a lot more believable. Plus, you will be spared having to see Burgess’s heaving, naked torso in his “this-is-how-the-day-went” hotel room recaps.
Bonus features include deleted scenes, director/producer commentary, the inconclusive DNA report PDFs, and excerpts for the interview with Nicolas Haywood.
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