'Dogma' joins gripes of Brooklyn Museum

Newsday

In "Stigmata,'' Patricia Arquette is plagued by Christ-like, blood-oozing wounds. The Catholic Church's existence is challenged, without irony or humor. A cardinal is shown trying to strangle Arquette. Protest against this ugly, sodden rip-off of "The Exorcist'' came mostly from critics offended by its crimes against taste and imagination. Otherwise, it's about to disappear into home-video purgatory with barely a murmur from the religious Thought Police.

In "Dogma,'' Linda Fiorentino is a lapsed Catholic working in an abortion clinic who is beckoned by God's sardonic mouthpiece (Alan Rickman) to stop two rogue angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from entering the portals of a New Jersey church and, thus, ending Life As We Know It. Though religious mythology and propriety are kicked around like so many soccer balls (a cardinal, played by George Carlin, is shown putting golf balls into a sacramental cup), this goofy, exuberant movie ends up embracing faith, with a capital F, in God - revealed here to look very much like Alanis Morrisette.

Nevertheless, writer-director Kevin Smith, the lapsed comic-book artist and practicing Catholic best known for his ribald, slacker comedies-of-manners "Clerks'' (1993) and "Chasing Amy'' (1996), has gotten a taste of what may lay in store when "Dogma'' opens nationwide Nov. 12. Its screening at the recent New York Film Festival prompted demonstrations by Christian fundamentalists whose only knowledge of the film is what they've read about it.

Smith, however, recognizes it was somewhat fortunate that this screening was all but obscured by the noisier ideological brushfire over the recent opening of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's "Sensation'' exhibit.

"I feel bad for the museum. I feel bad for the artists. I feel bad for the people of New York,'' Smith said the afternoon before "Dogma's'' first of two festival screenings. "At the same time, it took a little heat off me, and I'm all for a break. I've been dealing with the Catholic League for months now, and if they've turned their attention away to something else, it's a relief, you know?''

The original idea was to avoid conflict in the first place. Disney-owned Miramax produced "Dogma'' as it had Smith's previous films. Recognizing the hot-potato potential of a movie that mixes theology with masturbation and poo-poo jokes, Miramax honchos Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought "Dogma'' out of their own pockets and sold it to Lions Gate Films, the distributor behind such hot potatoes as "Buffalo '66'' and "Gods and Monsters.''

Nice save, fellas. But talk about stigma - the word is, as they say, out on "Dogma.'' And while its hip, high-powered cast - which also includes Chris Rock as the "13th apostle,'' Salma Hayek as Serendipity the Muse and Smith and Jason Mewes reprising their "Clerks'' and "Chasing Amy'' roles as slackmeisters Jay and Silent Bob - would be enough to guarantee zeitgeist interest, the movie's box office can only be helped by the controversy.

"The Catholic Church isn't taking a stance on it all,'' Smith said. "No. 1, because movies are kinda evil, I suppose. But the Church is smart enough to know that if you don't want to call attention to something, you don't point at it, screeching, 'Don't look at this!' The Catholic League, on the other hand, has been going after Disney for years, and if calling attention to the movie means calling attention to itself, so be it. 'Stigmata' practically gets a pass because it's not a Disney film, and I'm sure that if Lions Gate had this film from the get-go, there would have been no brouhaha over it at all.''

Meanwhile, even critics who like "Dogma'' have thus far lodged their usual complaints against Smith's movies: that it's overloaded with comic-book dynamics, it's visually inept and everybody talks too damn much! Smith pleads guilty on all counts.

To the first, he says, "There's a bit of 'Justice League of America' to the way this quest-battle is devised. But if you're going to do a movie like this, where you see ideas portrayed in the form of angels and muses and visions, it helps to have this play out as if it were a graphic novel.''

As for the last two complaints (which, upon reflection, really add up to one complaint), Smith shrugs, "What can I say? In other movies, they don't have to talk too much. In mine, unfortunately, they do because I'm not a gifted filmmaker. No one thinks of well-directed visual movies when they think of mine. I'm a writer who has to direct his own stuff. And yeah, it's because I'm in love with language. But in this instance, you need a lot more exposition and dialogue because you can't presuppose that everybody knows about Catholicism. So they talk a lot. It's what I do.''

10-20-99