One of the most famous religious satires of the past few decades will be back in theaters June 6 as part of a limited release for its 25th anniversary restoration.
When Kevin Smith’s Dogma was released in November 1999, it was met with one of the largest religious backlashes since Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ a decade prior. The low-budget comedy aroused accusations of blasphemy for its irreverent religious satire, sexual content, language, crudity and heavy-handed commentary about Christianity.
In celebration of its anniversary, the film recently was converted to 4K, which has brought the film back to the forefront of discussion. As Smith’s fourth film following Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy, it remains a fascinating and frustrating time capsule of Gen-X malaise and Smith’s own lapsed-Catholic anxieties.
Kevin Smith is not a religious man and seems in recent decades to have come to some peace with death after a 2018 heart attack nearly ended his life. Regardless, nobody ever truly stops being a Roman Catholic in the colloquial sense. Every cradle Catholic carries their religious tendencies with them long after they apostatize. Dogma is very much about that lingering guilt that comes from lapsed Catholics grappling with their anxieties, told through the lens of a raunchy fantasy-comedy.
The film follows a strange pilgrimage across the United States when a New Jersey cardinal decides to update the Catholic Church’s image, accidentally creating a legal loophole that could destroy the universe by undoing one of God’s unbreakable dogmas. Faced with this terrible reality, the angel Metatron (Alan Rickman) appears to an unlikely savior in the form of a lapsed Catholic abortionist from rural Illinois, asking her to travel to New Jersey to save the world, with the help of Jay and Silent Bob from Clerks, the mysterious 13th apostle, and a muse-turned-stripper.
George Carlin in “Dogma” (Image via IMDB)
On its face, Dogma is a coarse and vulgar work of cinema, filled with crass language, poop jokes, frequent discussions of sex, Reddit-tier atheist moralizing, and irreverence toward organized religion. Any film that casts George Carlin as a Catholic cardinal certainly isn’t unaware of the taboos it stomps on, regardless of the film’s opening title card claiming it isn’t trying to offend anyone.
The film feels very dated, with characters casually talking about graphic sex or using uncomfortable slurs. Its commentary also feels trite and groan-worthy at its worst moments. Even so, Dogma is a deeply conflicted film with moments of sincerity that point to a reluctance to interrogate religion to the point of breaking it.
Beyond the long lectures about how the Bible is racist and sexist, vague universalist statements about all religions being paths to God, or how it claims the Catholic Church fetishizes mourning and authority over love and faith, the movie’s anxieties are pedestrian. Its protagonist, Bethany, has anxieties rooted in loss and spiritual dryness, having lost her marriage to her infertility. It captures the emotional troubles that come from feeling spiritually lost and broken after tragic life circumstances. She’s a character who wants to believe despite the world she sees around her, and she tries to power through her unbelief, even as the film gives her more and more reasons to resent God.
Chris Rock in “Dogma” (Image via IMDB)
Despite the film’s irreverence and crudity, it remains peppered with little moments of self-reflection and sweetness. Maybe the film’s most quietly profound scene comes as Bethany is given the chance to ask God why she exists, and God responds by affectionately bonking her on the nose — a joke God won’t or can’t directly answer, but also giving a loving, indirect answer that God loves her.
Despite the film’s controversial decision to cast God as a woman, this is in line with the character of the God we see in the Book of Job, indirect but just, albeit with the energy of a manic pixie.
The movie operates on several levels of irony, indulging in the idea that its caravan of morons echoes the flaws of the apostles and the pilgrimage they made to follow Christ. If tax collectors and prostitutes can learn to follow Christ, then so can a divorced abortionist and a stripper.
Matt Damon in “Dogma” (Image via IMDB)
In its best moments, the film just lets its characters speak through their emotions. Bethany’s soliloquy to Ben Affleck, wishing she could find her childhood faith again, hits hardest, capturing the conflict at the heart of the story. There’s an authenticity that speaks to Smith’s anxieties that the implications of religion are simply “too big” and undesirable. They’re the most honest moments in a film that’s otherwise trying to laugh its way through its insincerity.
Unfortunately, every viewer’s ability to grapple with the messy nuances of Dogma will come with their ability to tolerate or not tolerate its otherwise coarse and disagreeable content. This is hardly Bergman-esque religious satire. It’s a 1990s slacker comedy with poop jokes and gore. Its irreverence is going to be a stumbling block to even the most open-minded religious viewer who holds these subjects with reverence.
It’s a film too sincere for the most dedicated of anti-theists and too uncomfortable for the most welcoming of Christians, but it remains interesting to those who are willing to hold their noses — and laugh or perhaps cry.
Tyler Hummel is a Wisconsin-based freelance critic and journalist, a member of the Music City Film Critics Association, a regular film and literature contributor at Geeks Under Grace, and was the 2021 College Fix Fellow at Main Street Nashville.