Having Faith in ‘Dogma’

It’s no problem finding Harvey Weinstein at this or any other film festival. He’s the turbulent center of an unruly crowd of journalists, holding an impromptu news conference about whatever new Miramax film he’s most passionate about.

The crowd formed on Friday afternoon outside a theater on the Rue d’Antibes, but the film in question, “Dogma,” was a Miramax possession no longer. And therein lies a tale.

The potentially controversial new work from writer-director Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy”), “Dogma” rudely shook up a somnolent festival that was becoming a set for “The Night of the Living Dead” like a raucous, profane and very funny tornado.

A lively, if uneven, film of ideas that combines a breezy and brazen save-the-world comic fantasy with crude adolescent humor and a sincere exploration of questions of religious faith, “Dogma” is a one-of-a-kind effort looking for a home. That’s because Weinstein and his brother and Miramax co-chairman Bob, seeking to save their parent company Disney from potential embarrassment, bought the film back from Miramax for a price variously reported as between $10 million and $14 million and are hoping to settle on another U.S. distributor for it before the festival ends.

“I paid for the movie, I wrote my check, I stood up for what I believe in,” Weinstein said in between making wisecracks (“I’m having a party for myself in purgatory”) and soliciting uniformly favorable opinions from the civilians in the crowd. “These are real human beings, I lost that status a long time ago,” he said, gesturing genially toward the crowd of scribes and adding, “and so did these people.”

What the U.S. distributors (including rumored front-runner Artisan, which distributed “Pi” last year) will see at their 12:15 a.m. Saturday screening is a wacky, irreverent (and overly long) epic about a pair of fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) who’ve been sentenced to spend eternity in Wisconsin but who discover a loophole in church dogma that they think can get them back to heaven.

But since a side effect of their taking that route will be the end of existence as we know it, a ragtag group of humans and heavenly folk attempts to stop them. These include Alan Rickman as the angel known as the voice of God, Salma Hayek as a former Muse, Linda Fiorentino as a mere human with a mysterious lineage and Chris Rock as Rufus, the Thirteenth Apostle, unfairly written out of the Bible because “a black man can steal your stereo but a black man can’t lead you to salvation.”

Even this brief a description of a verbally dense film (French words took up a big chunk of space in subtitled screenings) underlines how involved and challenged by theological matters the writer-director is. In fact, Smith, 28 and expecting a child, remains a practicing Catholic who goes to church every Sunday.

“I’m a Catholic like I’m an American,” Smith explains, waiting for the film’s photo call at the Palais du Festival and talking as fast as his characters do on screen. “I don’t agree with everything this country does or says, but I don’t want to be an expat. This is not a Catholic-bashing movie. Why would I bash an institution I’m a part of?”

Given that, and given how he sees a film that takes the existence of God as an indisputable starting point, Smith looks on the “controversial” label that has attached itself to “Dogma” as “irritating” at the very least. (Months before “Dogma’s” first showing, some Catholic groups had threatened to protest the film.)

“ ‘Dogma’ is nothing more than a kick-back, two-hour commercial for Catholic belief, this is a recruitment film for the Catholic Church,” he says with fervor. “This is a pro-faith movie. If one person walks out of the movie and goes back to the church, I’ll have done my job--though that would make the person the most expensive convert ever.”

This inability to resist a joke no matter what the situation is one of “Dogma’s” trademarks, and Smith feels the humor is essential for reaching the young people he’d like to see thinking about questions of belief.

“People dig on the dirty jokes, they’re a spoonful of sugar for an audience the church can’t minister to, an audience that doesn’t want to think about religion, faith or spirituality in the least,” he explains. “If I got on a soapbox, that audience would tune out.”

The idea for “Dogma” has been with Smith since the days he made “Clerks,” which was released in 1994. “It came from a period when I was feeling a bit disenfranchised, wondering why am I a Catholic, for heaven’s sake,” the filmmaker says. “I’d go to church and I’d wonder, ‘Does anyone believe in what they’re saying anymore or is it just a dirge of lip-service prayers?’ There was a sense of obligation, not celebration.”

A trip to confession, and a priest who told him as you get older it takes more faith to fill you up (a thought that is part of Smith’s script) convinced him that belief is a job each person has to do for himself.

Despite how he sees his own film, Smith is enough of a realist to understand why the Weinsteins bought the film from Miramax. “That was a no-brainer; Disney is a family company and an easy target,” he says. “I didn’t want ‘Dogma’ to be a tool, an easy way for organizations that have those kinds of agendas.”

In looking for a company to distribute “Dogma,” Smith would prefer one that “gets behind the film hard-core, that will understand wanting to have a benefit premiere and give the money to the Catholic League.” He’d also like a company that “would let Harvey in the door to do what he does best. Because the dude is nothing if not a brilliant marketer.”

The parents who raised their son Catholic still haven’t seen “Dogma,” and Smith is confident of their approval when they do, but, he reports, they are a bit worried. “My mother asked me if we’re going to get excommunicated,” he says, “and I told her, ‘Not if the world is run by intelligent folks.’ ”

A perfectly timed pause. “Maybe we’re in trouble.”