By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Oren Jacobs
Country: united_states
Year: 2008
Running time: 93
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0902270/
Bruce says: “CONSTANTINE’S SWORD is an adaptation of Boston Globe columnist James Carroll’s 2001 book Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews – A History, an examination of the roots of religious hatred and violence. Carroll, also a novelist and poet, co-wrote the script for the film with director Oren Jacobs. Carroll was an ordained priest from 1969-1974 the time during which he began writing on religious issues.
” The cross was never a popular icon of Christianity until Emperor Constantine used it as a symbol to wage war and conquer his enemies in 326 A.D. His enemies were the pagans and Jews. CONSTANTINE’S SWORD traces the anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church from that point onward. Much is said about efforts to eradicate Sephardic Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and how the Vatican was the first foreign power to align with Hitler. Intermixed with the story to the Catholic Church is a story of the Evangelical movement in the United States and the efforts by the religious right to blur the distinction between church and state. To illustrate the current religious landscape in the United States, Carroll and Jacobs tell the story of Mikey Weinstein, a young Jewish cadet at the U. S. Air Force Academy and the burgeoning anti-Semitism he experiences. One evening in July 2004 Cadet Weinstein was shocked to find promotional material for Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST under every dinner plate in the mess hall at the Air Force Academy. Much is said about the Evangelical Church and one of its great leaders, Ted Haggard, the founder of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Footage of Haggard and his church cover the periods before and after the scandal involving the long-term homosexual relationship with his masseur.
“The narrators of the film are Natasha Richardson, Eli Wallach, Live Schrieber and Philip Bosco. While most of the material covered in CONSTANTINE’S SWORD is fascinating stuff, I found the film meandered off its point too often by including segments on the keeper of a Jewish cemetery, Carroll’s strained relationship with his own father (a three star general), St. Helena of Germany, and Edith Stein, a Jew who converted to Catholicism and ultimately became a saint. The cuts back and forth through different historical periods were dizzying given the volumes of information to digest and place chronologically in one’s mind. 3 cats”