“The Book of Clarence” begins with a misdirect.
The sophomore feature of British musician-turned-filmmaker Jeymes Samuel, a biblical epic, opens with a crucifixion.
The camera sweeps across a sun-streaked landscape where a dozen men are nailed to crosses. At the center of the gruesome assembly hangs a white man with a full beard and long brown locks — that must be Jesus of Nazareth, right? Not so fast.
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The camera continues to move, pushing in closer and closer to the man until it suddenly swings right, resting on a Black man instead.
“I wanted to open the movie on the most striking image possible,” Samuel tells Variety. “You automatically assume that’s Jesus because of what we’ve been fed by Hollywood all our lives. It’s not in this movie, and it wasn’t in real life.”
Indeed, “The Book of Clarence’s” Jesus Christ is portrayed by Nicholas Pinnock — one of the few Black actors to have ever done so, underlining questions that have emerged in scholarly communities about the religious figure’s skin tone.
But, on a more macro level, Samuel aims to portray Black people in an era in which they existed but are rarely depicted in entertainment – the same way his 2021 debut “The Harder They Fall” was a Western fronted by an all-Black cast.
Of course, Jesus Christ is not the film’s protagonist. That’s Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield), a down-on-his-luck man who, after running afoul of a local gangster, decides to capitalize on the rise of Jesus Christ by claiming
to be a new Messiah. Samuel wrote, directed, produced and scored the satirical drama, conceiving the idea a decade ago before beginning to write the script in 2017. Samuel was inspired by biblical epics à la “Spartacus” and “Ben-Hur,” while also following the lineage of landmark “hood tales” and hang-out movies like “Do the Right Thing.”
“While I love those biblical epics, Black people are never in them. I see Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston. I love those actors, but they’re not Egyptian,” Samuel points out.
“It was super important to tell a story that was based on the environment that I grew up in. It’s a local story — anyone can relate to it.”
