Corpus Christi: Oscar-nominated tale of a fake cleric who finds grace is the definition of 'face value'

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-plus

Is an actor’s face enough enough to elevate a movie from ordinary to memorable? That’s the case for Corpus Christi, a festival favorite (Venice, Cannes) and Oscar-nominated drama about crime and Catholicism in contemporary Poland.

The film features a young stage actor, Bartosz Bielenia, as a young criminal who impersonates a priest in a village still torn by grief after seven of its youth were killed in a car crash. 

Bartosz Bielenia is magnetic in the role of a clerical fraud in Corpus Christi

Bielenia’s face has the paradoxical quality of seeming strange yet familiar. With close-cropped hair, hollow-cheeks, intense eyes, and delicately androgynous features, Bielenia has a distinct resemblance to one of the most famous faces from the silent movie era, Maria Falconetti of Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (which, by the way, is showing at the Paradise on Bloor on Feb. 28). The casting is somewhat obvious (contrast Bruno Dumont’s 1997 film, La vie de Jésus, where the protagonist looked more thug than saint) but highly effective.

While clerical imposters aren’t rare in comedy (Sister Act, We’re No Angels) Corpus Christi, which is inspired by a real event, takes its questions of suffering, faith and complicated humanity, entirely seriously. 

The brutal opening, in a juvenile detention wood-working shop, sees 20-year-old Daniel (Bielenia) keeping watch while the other inmates assault another boy. A scene later, he’s leading the fellow prisoners in hymn singing at mass. On the verge of release, Daniel has a talk with the prison chaplain, Father Tomasz (Lukasz Simlat), who advises him that, despite Daniel’s belief in his religious calling, his criminal record means that he can’t attend a seminary. He advises him to take a sawmill job in a distant village.

On release, Daniel parties hard for an evening, then heads off to his new life in the sawmill, among other ex-cons, sawing planks for a living. 

Chance and coincidence go a little far in setting up the opportunities for Daniel’s change of direction. On an impulse, and in possession of a stolen priest’s collar, he persuades a local young woman, Marta (Eliza Rycembel) and her mother Lidia (Aleksandra Konieczna), the local priest’s caretaker, that he’s a recently ordained priest from Warsaw. By further chance, the parish priest, (Zdzislaw Wardejn) is old and ailing, and Daniel volunteers as his temporary substitute. 

Daniel, relying on his altar boy experience and his smart phone, manages to fake his way through mass and hearing confession. But the pretend priest is soon delivering the real goods, using his lessons from the streets and the inspiration of the prison pastor to help the town’s people heal. 

Daniel’s especially effective as  the cool priest with the town’s time-wasting young people, smoking and drinking beer and offering answers that emphasize compassion and hope more than censure. But he takes his sense of mission seriously: A key development sees him negotiating a proper funeral for the hated driver of the other car, a former town drunk whose widow (Barbara Kurzaj) has been ostracized by the congregation.

Of course, Daniel’s charade can’t last, and various elements from his past catch up with him, with considerable more force than you would imagine in a Hollywood version of a story.  Director Jan Komasa, working from a script by Mateusz Pacewicz, is consistent in communicating the idea that Daniel is something of a damaged conduit of goodness. 

Almost refreshingly old-fashioned, the movie emphasizes the doctrine that guilt and sin are universal, which becomes a starting point for a recognition of common humanity. There are enough raw shocks to keep it from becoming over-predictable, and, above all, the camera’s close-ups on Bielenia’s remarkable face, as he is tested and tempted, keep us believing in the moment.

Corpus Christi. Directed by Jan Komasa. Written by Mateusz Pacewicz. Starring: Bartosz Bielenia, Eliza Rycembel, Aleksandra Konieczna, Tomasz Zietek, Leszek Lichota, Lukasz Simlat, Zdislaw Wardejn and Barbara Kurzaj. Corpus Christi can be seen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.