Review: Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018)

A calamitous event leads the authorities to crack down on an unpopular minority. This pattern of tyrannical persecution has occurred throughout history. In Paul, Apostle of Christ, the calamity is the Great Fire of Rome, and the tyrant is the Emperor Nero. Christian legend and a few ancient Roman historians tell us that Nero, who many Romans suspected of burning down the capital in order to rebuild the city along a new plan and style, blamed the despised Christian community for the fire and enacted the most notorious persecution as supposed punishment. 

Paul, Apostle of Christ is not a life story of the most important Christian proselytizer, as the title might lead one to expect, but instead focuses on the final days of Paul (James Faulkner) in prison in Nero’s darkened Rome. Luke (Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ), a physician, Greek convert, and the writer of the gospel bearing his name, is equally the protagonist. Luke secretly arrives in Rome in order to meet with Paul and write a companion piece to his life of Christ—a book that would turn out to be the Acts of the Apostles. Although Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome, early Christian extra-biblical authorities describe Paul’s martyrdom by beheading under Nero’s orders.

The opening of Paul, Apostle of Christ is riveting: director Andrew Hyatt conjures an oppressive tenor of fear. Titles crisply explain the historical context and a few interspersed shots of Paul in prison show fresh stripes on his back and the apostle questioning God—the setting and tone are efficiently set. Then we get an excellent long-take shot, which depicts Luke stealthily navigating the crowded streets of Rome at night, avoiding the Roman soldiers while being unable to avoid seeing the “Roman candles,” the burning and charred bodies of Christian martyrs, used to light the city streets. The musical score, with a driving hand drum beat, thrumming strings, and deep throbbing low tones, builds and releases the audience’s tensions. 

After the title, the camera dollies backwards as Luke moves through a crowded Roman marketplace. Shots of Luke’s movement through the crowd are intercut with shots of the stalls around him in a manner that reminded me of Harrison Ford’s Deckard passing through the crowded streets of dystopian Los Angeles in Blade Runner (1982). We see food stalls and slaves at auction—the commerce and oppression forming the foundation of the Roman world-capital. The pressed mise-en-scène, Jim Caviezel’s melancholy face under a hood, and the moody nighttime lighting further build the connection to Blade Runner. Although clearly achieved on a modest budget, the portrayal of the ancient mega-city in Paul, Apostle of Christ is effective and owes something to the dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, screen versions of Gotham City, and Metropolis: all are corrupt metropolises with spatial layering that complements the stark social hierarchy. Hyatt and his production team shot on location in Malta and the film looks authentic. The allusion also helps to explain how director Andrew Hyatt is approaching Paul and the other subject matter in the film: the picture is less a conventional biopic and more a dystopian-tinged thriller/intimate drama about early Christian history. 

Hyatt’s influences for Paul, Apostle of Christ extend beyond Blade Runner, however, as his narrative draws on classic Hollywood sword-and-sandal sandal epics about early Christians in Rome, especially Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932) and the 1950s epic Quo Vadis (1951), in which Peter Ustinov’s Nero starts the Great Fire. However, Hyatt’s cinematography is highly atmospheric, with most scenes involving dark spaces pierced by beams of light of varying strength and tints, and so the visual palette of the film is far more like Ridley Scott’s work in Blade Runner and Gladiator (2000) than a classic Hollywood technicolour period piece. Framing this Paul story as a tale of resistance against a totalitarian government also recalls the shadowy conversations, prisons, and torture that dominate Jean-Pierre Melville’s great French Resistance drama, Army of Shadows (1969). While Paul, Apostle of Christ works and can be enjoyed on its own, recognizing Hyatt’s echoes of and divergences from earlier movie traditions reveals that his film is taking a somewhat novel approach to familiar subject matter, and one worth delving into.

While Paul, Apostle of Christ is far from a Passion of the Christ (2004) in terms of violence and body horror, it does focus, usually indirectly, on bodily persecution. In a startling scene, the blood that covers a weeping young woman is revealed to be her baby’s. We see bodies set on fire. Lashes are dolled out. I appreciate how most of the horror is communicated through suggestion more than spectacle, avoiding the luridness of DeMille-style epics, even if the approach is determined in part by budget constraints. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie does not match the powerful opening, although there are a few more very good scenes. While the acting and cinematography are strong, the problems lie more with Terence Berden’s and Andrew Hyatt’s screenplay. I don’t mind a movie that focuses on private dialogue between characters in confined spaces, and I didn’t need a gratuitous circus scene, but the plot lacks a strong and clear narrative throughline, especially considering the immense stakes being explored in the subject matter. 

Conversations between characters dominate the film, and some are stronger than others. The plot introduces a Roman warden, Mauritius Gallas (Olivier Martinez), with a sick daughter and a despairing wife. Troubled non-Christian characters often show up in Christian films as a means to depict conversion. While the narrative thankfully avoids a character arc of the most simplistic kind for Mauritius, overall I found the Luke and Paul scenes more compelling.

Jim Caviezal as Luke and James Faulkner as Paul create a strong chemistry and sense of banter. Luke likes to call Paul “old man.” There’s a gruffness and dry humour to Faulkner’s Paul. In one standout conversational scene, Luke expresses his despair at the state of the world. Hyatt has Luke look into the camera, seemingly talking to us, perhaps mirroring the frustrations and rants of some we know, or even ourselves at times. Paul’s response about love being the only way has actual weight, as Hyatt portrays Paul’s understanding of the way of love as a stark contrast to an early period of Paul’s life, which embodied the way of hate, when we see flashbacks of Paul persecuting the early church as Saul of Tarsus. At times, Paul, with his traumatic flashbacks and grim expressions in dark rooms, plays almost like a Christopher Nolan-esque tortured male protagonist.

Priscilla (Joanne Whalley) and Aquila (John Lynch) are the standout supporting characters. Both are mentioned in the New Testament as first-century Christian missionaries and companions of Paul. They are a welcome portrayal of a married couple of faith. Priscilla and Aquila take different stances on how to navigate the path forward for their community. Berden and Hyatt’s screenplay nicely avoids the typical shouting match between husband and wife that most dramas depict in times of stress, while also not making them a fake, overly nice Flanders-like family. Instead, we see two thoughtful yet deeply feeling people having mature yet passionate conversations about how to act in the world.

At the end of Paul, Apostle of Christ, a title card states that the film is dedicated to all those persecuted for their faith. I agree with critics such as Steven Greydanus who read the film as making connections between Christianity’s early persecution and circumstances and events of today. Intense persecution of Christians does still take place in the 21st-century, such as the near elimination of some Middle Eastern Christians from their historic lands. The film’s emphasis on Paul’s beheading recalls the infamous, terrible beheading of Egyptian Coptic Christians by members of ISIS on a Libyan beach in 2015. More controversially, the film also seems to engage in the debate about Christian alienation and persecution in present-day North America. Whether Christian persecution in contemporary North America is a reality is not the issue I want to focus on here though; my point is that many people do believe this to be the case, and the film implicitly addresses the concerns of such audiences. 

Rather than injecting false relevance, this aspect of the film actually invites worthwhile reflection on the persecution of the early Christian community. In the film, there’s internal debate among the Christians of Rome about how to respond to Nero’s persecution, and the film comes down strongly for Christian anti-violence and solidarity with the other despised, namely the widows, orphans, and discarded babies of Rome. However, a small, fiery faction seeks revenge. Another faction, headed by Aquila, wants to flee the city and set up a community in a more welcoming environment. Priscilla emphasizes patient endurance and continued service for the needy, while others talk about siding with Roman patricians who resent Nero’s tyranny. 

Although the stakes are obviously not the same, it’s worth noting how similar conversations are active in the (especially conservative) Christian community of North America. It’s hard not to read the film, released in 2018, as responding to such intra-Christian debates as whether to take Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option and how to respond to the Caesarean presidencies of Trump and now Biden, etc.. It’s also significant that Hyatt’s approach to the sword-and-sandal film tradition as well as other films, such as Blade Runner, informs the film’s engagement with these present-day issues as much as the dialogue and narrative do.  

If you’re not engaged in these conversations, is this film worthwhile to watch? Actually, yes. Unlike many preachy and single-mindedly evangelistic Christian films, the purpose of Paul, Apostle of Christ is not to convert the audience. It also avoids opportunities to make non-Christian characters suddenly convert as a sort of win for the Christian audience (in this respect, it recalls another recent and solidly-made Christian historical drama, Risen). While Paul, Apostle of Christ seems to respond to present day Christian political and social debates, it also works for any viewer as an interesting, deeply felt, authentic drama set in the ancient Roman world, and the film’s probing of how any people should respond to persecution and oppression is insightful across confessional and partisan lines. 

7 out of 10

Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018, USA)

Directed by Andrew Hyatt; written by Terence Berden and Andrew Hyatt; starring Jim Caviezel, James Faulkner, Olivier Martinez, Joanne Whalley, John Lynch.

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