Dogma

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1999

Dogma
Kevin Smith
USA, 1999
125 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: View Askew
Producer: Scott Mosier
Screenplay: Kevin Smith
Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
Editors: Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier
Production Designer: Robert “Ratface” Holtzman
Sound: Richard Hymns
Music: Howard Shore
Principal Cast: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Jason Lee, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock
Production: View Askew

“All along, I’ve thought how seriously can you take a movie that has a rubber poop monster in it?”—Kevin Smith

Like most crass attempts at mass censorship, the fire-and-brimstone sermons raining down from Catholic pulpits on Dogma point to a bitter irony. Kevin Smith’s new film is not only a highly imaginative and cleverly written comedy, but also an impressively sincere and elegantly conceived treatise on the nature of faith itself. If those old guys in the robes had any sense, they would realize that they couldn’t find a better advertisement for spiritual faith and the power of religious metaphor.

Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) are two dopey (if cute) angels suffering everlasting exile in Wisconsin for an ancient trespass against the Lord. But they have discovered a loophole that can get them back to Heaven. In a “Catholicism Now!” campaign geared towards making the Church more accessible, no-questions-asked absolutions are being granted to the first people to walk under the arch of a newly sanctified church in New Jersey. But not only will this send the two fallen angels back upstairs, it will also prove God’s fallibility and, in so doing, bring the world to an end.

Metatron (Alan Rickman), the Lord’s jaded messenger, comes to Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), a distant descendant of Jesus Christ, to save the day. A Catholic abortion clinic worker, she was suffering a crisis of faith even before the dude with wings entered her life. Soon she sets out on her mission and, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, gathers some strange creatures to help her out. They include Rufus (Chris Rock), the 13th Apostle, cut out of the Bible because he was black; celestial muse and stripper Serendipity (Salma Hayek); and the lascivious Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith himself, the continuing Greek chorus from his earlier films).

Obviously, madness (and lots of great jokes) ensue.
—Noah Cowan