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Call it a hunch, but I’d be surprised if the suicide rate, and mortality numbers in general, doesn’t go down over the next few months as otherwise troubled and afflicted souls try to hang tough just out of curiosity to see how all this millennial brouhaha shakes out. The big software question aside, I know at least a few individuals, otherwise skeptical, reasonable folks, who until next January 1st have taken to wearing crosses and somber clothing, while quietly giving up such things as tequila shooters, Playboy, and video poker, in case The Almighty is recently paying closer attention prior making a final selection for his eternal starting lineup. Nevermind that, given what we now know about Christ’s birthdate, a strict numerological interpretation of the scriptures says He should have come back in 1991; there’s something about extra zeroes in a date that makes people nuts. We’ve seen the results for a generation as the fateful hour approaches, both in organized religion, with more professed belief in God and His established institutions (not that technology hasn’t spawned some modernization; even the Catholic Church has its own cable network, EWTN: Eternal Word TV Network; it’s like Vatican community access, “Wayne’s World” with a better sponsor), and in the traditionally reprobate entertainment arena. Filmmakers have attempted to capitalize on a freshly awakened desire among more wayward types to seek some sort of spiritual inside track at the last minute to compensate for lifelong bacchanalia, something to give them a leg up on the stairway to heaven. Something like what was called in Christopher Walken’s surprisingly moving apocalyptic B-movie The Prophecy, “the teacher’s edition to The Bible.”
That’s where Stigmata comes in. Directed with quasi-artful self-indulgence by Rupert Wainwright (best known for doing Michael Jackson’s “History” video), it gives us the sinfully proportioned Patricia Arquette as Frankie Paige, a Pittsburgh hairstylist whose life takes a major turn for the berzurb after getting a package in the mail from her mother playing tourista in Brazil. Unbeknownst to them the souvenir was taken from the coffin of a priest who was secretly working on translating an ancient scroll that, were its content made public, would completely realign the whole world’s concept of religion. None of which is any help to atheist Frankie as she begins falling into trances so violent she winds up hospitalized for life-threatening crucifixion wounds. The Vatican dispatches priest/scientist Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne), who’s having his own crisis of faith, to investigate; he works for an office of the church that travels the globe debunking bleeding statues and other supposedly miraculous phenomena, kind of God’s Internal Affairs Division (reminds me of the old Monty Python routine: “There’s a dead bishop on the landing! Call the church!” “Call the police!” “Call the church police!”). But upon witnessing firsthand Frankie’s transformation into a white-eyed, baritone-voiced wild thing that covers her apartment with indecipherable right-to-left graffiti, Father Kiernan un-loses his religion real quick, fearing the ever-more-violent manifestations will kill her (plus, you know that two such intriguing, statuesque screen figures will not be able to avoid each other’s phermones for long, whatever vows he may have taken). His boss, Cardinal Houseman (Jonathan Pryce), for understandable political reasons wants the entire matter quickly hushed up, however, setting the stage for an Exorcist-style confrontation.
Wainwright has assembled what is essentially Mass for MTV -- or at least VH1 -- complete with music by Billy Corgan and the ultimate sacrament, mondo body piercings. More over-stylized than stylish, it all too soon wears out its imagery, assaulting us with enough doves for a hundred formerly-Prince videos, lots of queasy bloodletting, and this upward-dripping water trick that was neat the first couple times but after the tenth or twelfth incarnation had me ready to stand up in my seat and yell, “Will somebody pick up a phone and call the damned plumber, already?” As for the easily iconoclastic admonition, buried in all these gory machinations, for a back-to-basics spirituality, it’s hard to say whether it’s genuinely thoughtful or just another way for the industry that gave us Natural-Born Killers to ease its conscience a little. C
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