The Seventh Sign

- Jürgen Prochnow as Jesus

The Gospel reading for today (Lk 17:26-37) is kind of apocalyptic ...

Jesus said to his disciples: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, someone who is on the housetop and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and likewise one in the field must not return to what was left behind. Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left.” They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”

... yikes! I don't really understand what's meant. Is "the day the Son of Man is revealed" the same end-time scenario as is written of in Revelation? There are many interpretations of the end-time, some fairly positive like the one in this article from America magazine - Apocalypse When? - and many much less so, like that in the Left Behind books. For the most part, I try not to think about it too much, but every once in a while a movie comes along and I find myself watching despite my better judgement.

One such movie is The Seventh Sign. I wish I could say it's a sequel to Bergman's The Seventh Seal but it's nowhere near as profound nor well done - it falls rather into the guilty pleasure category, the guilty part being its questionable theology, the pleasure part being twofold: Michael Biehn has a part in it :-) and even better, Jesus actually shows up, which is unusual in this kind of movie.

The movie, made in 1988 and starring Jürgen Prochnow of Das Boot fame as Jesus, Demi Moore, and Michael Biehn, tells the tale of the day of judgement, when Jesus returns to the earth with seven seals, breaking them one after the other, causing a number of natural disturbances. Jesus takes his time with the breaking of the seals, and while he's in LA, he rents a room over the garage of the home of Abby (Moore) and her husband (Biehn). As Abby gets acquainted with her strange lodger, she tries to figure out what the weird natural occurrences mean. A Catholic priest is also paying attention to the signs, and for good reason - he is actually a Roman Centurion who struck Jesus before the crucifixion, and who's been doomed to walk the earth undying until the second coming ..... a combination (according to wikipedia) of the legends of the Wandering Jew and of St. Longinus.

Here's a little of Roger Ebert's review of the movie ...

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"The Seventh Sign" begins with portents of the apocalypse. The rivers run with blood, the sea boils, the desert freezes, the birds fall from the sky, the earth shakes, and things are not so hot out on the beach in California, either. A strange man with burning eyes has just rented the little apartment over the garage in the backyard of Demi Moore's house, and she finds ancient Hebrew manuscripts in his desk - in a secret code .....

Moore has the central role, as a woman who has lost one child during pregnancy and is now fearful of losing another. The story begins in the last two months of her pregnancy, with her husband (Michael Biehn) lending moral support ..... She provides a strong center to the film, but the rest of it, alas, is all over the map. I am not even sure I completely understood all of the details. What connection was there, for example, between the Hebrew code letters with their wax seals and the dread events that followed every time one was opened? What were those flashbacks to Roman times? Who was that strange priest who traveled around the globe, checking out the frozen deserts and bloody rivers? And on whose side was the boarder over the garage? By the end of the movie, I was fairly certain of the answers to most of those questions, but the body of the film seemed almost deliberately confused and obscure, to no purpose. Why not explain the priest's actual mission, instead of saving it for a denouement at the last minute? Wouldn't that have been more interesting? And why is it that only the characters in the movie seem to be aware that things are going to hell and the apocalypse is at hand? .....

And then there is the problem of the ending of the movie ....

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I can't tell you about the end of the movie - don't want to spoil it for anyone - and neither can I tell you about the end of the world ..... your best bet is to turn back to the Gospel reading above, and good luck with that :-)