In 2021, writer-director Jeymes Samuel burst onto the scene with his debut, The Harder They Fall, a western that overcame its style-over-substance trapping thanks to an incredible cast and cooler action. This time over, he’s switched genres from the Western to the biblical epic with The Book of Clarence, and while it’s just as entertaining, there are still some issues that prevent it from reaching the holy land.
Set in Jerusalem 33 A.D., we’re introduced to the titular Clarence (Lakeith Stanfield): a petty criminal, atheist and twin brother to Jesus’ apostle Thomas (also played by Stanfield) who finds himself in a major predicament. After losing a chariot race to Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor) in the opening scene, he finds himself in major debt to Jedediah The Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), a loan shark whose sister Varinia (Anna Diop) Clarence happens to be infatuated with.
With few options and irritated with the popularity of Jesus, he hatches a scheme alongside his best friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) to become a fake Messiah and make enough money to pay off his debt. However, as the saying goes: More money, more problems. The scheme works, but as he begins to have a change of heart about the whole thing, he attracts even more unwanted attention in the form of Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy) and the Romans.
“Just like The Harder They Fall, The Book of Clarence displays a real love for the films that inspired it, namely the old religious epics like Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments.”
Just like The Harder They Fall, The Book of Clarence displays a real love for the films that inspired it, namely the old religious epics like Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments. Samuel has shown a goal of wanting to show underrepresented people in these mostly white-dominated genres, and the film does a great job at that with impressive production design, a banger of a soundtrack (also composed by Samuel) and a fantastic ensemble cast.
LaKeith Stanfield shows off both his lowkey comedic chops as the fast-talking Clarence, as well as some real dramatic weight in the scenes where he acts against himself. Omar Sy almost literally runs away with the film as Barbaras. Alfre Woodard does the same in even less time in her brief appearance as Jesus’ mother, Mary. The film is laugh-out-loud hilarious in its best moments; one scene involves a hilarious rant by David Oyelowo as John The Baptist, and another involves a cameo that is genuinely too good to spoil here; it’s worth discovering on your own.
My main problem is that the movie jumps back and forth between religious satire and playing it straight, but one half is a lot stronger than the other. The third act drops the comedy entirely, turning into a reinterpretation of The Passion, and it’s where the movie ended up more or less losing me. The film’s intentionally semi-anachronistic style is also hit or miss, mainly in the more heavy-handed moments where the movie draws obvious parallels to how Black people are treated by police. These moments felt less poignant and more like being lectured in Bible study.
Although I don’t love how it all came together in the end, there’s a lot to enjoy and respect about The Book of Clarence, and it is still definitely worth checking out. Jeymes Samuel is a versatile talent, and he has quickly become someone whose projects I would be intrigued to keep an eye on just to see what genre he would remix next.
