Gabriel

Mark Hadley | 18 November 2007

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Gabriel
Sony
Rated M

Gabriel means ‘strength of God’ but the strongest impression left by this new Australian film is not of a benevolent creator, but confusion and contradiction in the afterlife.

This is not the first production to base a mythical tale on Heaven’s denizens – Angel Heart, City of Angels, Constantine, Nightwatch have all walked this road before, with varying degrees of success. As a Christian reviewer, I generally set my expectations to ‘low’ because if a profound point is made then it is usually going to be an aside. The primary motivation, after all, is drama not accuracy. Ten minutes of watching Gabriel though showed me my expectations were just not low enough.

The producers of Gabriel have emphasized throughout the film’s pre-publicity the minuscule budget they had to work with, but alongside that their joy at creating a feature with commercial appeal for international audiences as well as the domestic market. For ‘commercial appeal’ read ‘pointless violence’; for ‘international audiences’ read ‘lovers of unconvincing accents’. Whatever the spend, more time could have been devoted to a flawed script.

The writers of Gabriel have assembled a smattering of angelic references, presumably from the Apocrypha’s book of Enoch, and meshed them with various Catholic traditions to create an unlikely tale that is as difficult to understand as it is to watch. The art direction draws too much on the dark and rainy stylings of The Matrix, Dark City and the Underworld series – and it looks tired as a result. The only points of difference appear to be a strange array of 80s hairstyles and some nifty eye effects. Even the dialogue is filled with a similar range of seemingly significant philosophical statements that amount to nonsense. What, for instance, does “Sacrifice is what victory is measured upon” actually mean?

The director clearly had it in his head that the only way to convey emotion on the big screen was to shoot in extreme close up or instruct his performers to speak with laboured gravitas. As a result, the pace is plodding, the performances wooden or overwrought. Consequently the ‘surprise’ ending of the film comes not so much as a shock but a welcome relief.

But these are not the film’s greatest failings, at least not for a science fantasy…

Filmmakers who create a fantasy world enter into a covenant with their viewers. We don’t mind believing in the universe of the Jedi or the Matrix, so long as they are internally consistent. The more the scriptwriter strays from the rules they set down at the outset, the more likely the audience’s suspended disbelief threatens to come crashing down on their heads. And no amount of action, special effects or Herculean performances from actors can rescue a production from this point on.

Gabriel begins with the assertion that souls are sent to one of two places when a person dies – a paradise or a place of punishment – except for those who are awaiting judgment; they wait in Purgatory. Presumably God’s courts are as backed up as the Australian judicial system. However the very next statement is that Purgatory is the battle-ground of seven demons and seven angels, who strive to win the territory for their masters. Now, how can this be if we’ve just been told it’s the virtual waiting room for judgment day? That aside, we discover that the powers of light and darkness can only send a champion in ‘once a cycle’. So, clearly there’s someone else in charge that makes the rules for both God and the Devil? Is God the judge or isn’t he? Certainly His angelic servants hold Him responsible…

Gabriel, played by Andy Whitfield, arrives dedicated to the purpose of defeating the demons who hold sway over Purgatory. His resolve is somewhat shaken by the angels sent previously who are all in various states of defeat. As the champion of light he appears to have a severe ‘mercy deficit’ and spends just as much time beating up on the good guys as the bad. However he soldiers on regardless, even though his powers are diminishing with use. Apparently Heaven is so detached from this world he cannot effectively ‘recharge’; strangely the Devil’s crew suffer no such limitations.

The direction of the plot from this point is fairly obvious: kill the minor bad guys with as much violence as possible until you work your way up to the arch villain. When he finally appears to be on the edge of becoming the very thing he despises, thankfully a fallen angel turns up to re-inspire him with… you guessed it, a quick role in the hay. Gabriel’s inevitable confrontation with the chief demon is bizarrely wrapped up with a plot device stolen straight from George Lucas, but painfully elongated. And the inconsistencies in behaviour that emerge because of this strange turn of events are unsatisfactorily explained away by the villain saying the equivalent of ‘Oh, that wasn’t me.’

The real tragedy behind Gabriel is that the writers chose to tinker with a good story to produce a worse one. The accusation throughout the film is that Heaven / God / whoever it is ‘up there’ is distant and unconcerned with the struggle between angels, humans and devils alike. Gabriel tells one of his companions that a shroud of darkness covers Purgatory. “The light has no idea what’s going on down here,” he tells his ally. “You can’t blame them.” But by the end of the film he seems to have changed his mind. Jade, his love interest says, “When you go back, tell them what went on down here.” “It won’t matter,” he replies. “They never remember anyway.” Gabriel finally rejects God because His complicity in allowing such pain to exist proves His capricious and unworthy nature. The archangel’s final act of rebellion is presented as his first step towards freedom. “Now the voice I hear inside my head is my own.”

This is of course all well and good, so long as God neither acts nor cares. But the story available to the producers in almost every language on earth is one of a creator so concerned for His suffering and doomed creation, that He places his own feet on the planet. Rather than send an angel in His stead, God takes on human form to suffer everything humans have borne so that he can earn both their fealty and their freedom. And talk about plot twists – just when it looks like the Devil has won, His death turns out to be the key to humanity’s greatest deliverance. Now that is a story worth telling.