Review by Nia Edwards-Behi
I’ve almost no doubt that there are very few genre fans – particularly those who frequent this website – who haven’t heard of The Bunny Game. Adam Rehmeier’s first feature film was a collaboration with the performance artist Rodleen Getsic, a stark and brutal examination of suffering and of release. The film was banned in the UK by the BBFC for its extreme content, in what surely goes down as one of their stupider recent decisions.
Rehmeier now follows up The Bunny Game with something almost-but-not-quite completely different. If we have seen The Bunny Game then we have already met our titular character, very briefly, at the film’s close. Jonas is not so much a direct sequel as it is a thematic sequel; for me Bergman’s faith trilogy springs to mind as an apt comparison, though I’m sure some might balk at such a suggestion. Jonas can be watched with no prior experience of The Bunny Game, but I suspect that an experience of the former film does enrich the experience of watching the follow-up.
As much as The Bunny Game was a filmic rendition of performance art, Jonas is itself something of an experiment with the nature of film. Told in six separate verses, the film can be viewed as a sequential whole feature film (this is how I watched it), or it could be taken apart, seen piece by piece over time, out of order. Jonas is also a performance experiment, planned but improvised, using real people and real responses. As a result Jonas is as much a documentary as it is a fictional film.
The premise is simple. Eighteen months on from The Bunny Game, Jonas (Gregg Gilmore) has been washed up on a beach and is afforded another chance at life. Believing himself to be in communication with God, he has a mission: to seek out those God guides him to, to invite them to witness a message from God himself. In the film we follow Jonas over the course of a week, meeting a variety of different people he believes have spiritually called out to him; that God wants to save.
The first two verses of the film introduce us to Jonas. He is a sombre, grey man, precise in his ways and entirely plain. He wanders the city of Los Angeles and stays in nondescript motels. Is he lost or content? Is he praying for the city, or communicating with it? It’s never entirely clear, a wonderful sense of vagueness emerging from Gilmore’s mostly dead-pan performance. We see much of the mundanity of Jonas’s life throughout the film – he exercises in the morning, he washes his clothes in a hotel bathroom, he changes a plaster on his feet, and, most of all, we again and again see him sitting alone and eating. Testament to Gilmore’s presence and performance, this mundanity never becomes dull, and if anything it is these moments that allow us to feel most for Jonas.
The wide variety of people Jonas meets respond to him with varying degrees of credulity. Some believe in God differently to Jonas, some have no religion at all, but many agree to meet at the designated time to receive God’s message. It’s clear that several of the characters agree out of genuine, faithful interest, others out of curiosity, and others perhaps just to get rid of him. Then there are those who do not agree to attend, those Jonas believes might be ‘possessed’ or otherwise confused by the Devil. Regardless of the outcome of Jonas’s visits, the conversations he has with these people are personal to them, revealing beliefs about life, about love, about faith, about humanity.
It might all sound a bit dour and grim, but the film is not without its humour. Jonas has a series of spiritual gestures and affectations he employs when communicating with God, which at times look beautiful, but at others completely and utterly absurd. My favourite moment of humour is when Jonas tells God he is concerned about one of the young men he has spoken to, because “a young man with such a full beard must be hiding something.”
As much as we do come to root for Jonas, to sympathise for him, there are some truly sinister moments when we are reminded of the narrow-mindedness of his cause. Some of the characters he meets are particularly vulnerable – a middle-aged man who has lost his family, a young gay man – and Jonas incisively manipulates them. Even with those who are more open to his message are manipulated to a degree, or so it seems, as Jonas says his prayer and asks them, incessantly, “can you repeat that after me?” When repeating his prayer to the weeping gay man, whom he has broken down with his doctrine, he asks “Amen? Amen?” making an affirmation into a sinister tool of manipulation.
We do see some glances at Jonas’s own private life. We know that he was once a sinner (if we’ve seen The Bunny Game we might have greater insight into this), and we see some flashbacks to this life. In his past life Jonas wore a suit of white, but as a tool of God he wears nothing but black, as though his whole being was remade when he washed up on that beach. We get some brief insight into his estranged family too, and it is wonderfully never clear if the estrangement is due to his past crimes or due to his new dedication to God. We rarely see Jonas happy in his task – twice we see only hints of a smile on his face. Both times he is listening to expressions of faith from others – an older woman singing a gospel song, a young Christian rapper – but we can only see the side of his face. His happiness is obscured from us. It’s made very clear the Jonas is a broken man, desperately trying to mend the world around him as well as trying to mend himself.
When we do finally see a true smile from Jonas, near the end of the film, there’s something of the Norman Bates about it. It precedes his journey to Venice Beach to receive and share in God’s big message. What the message might be is left very much up to the viewer – I know what I think the message is, but I’m sure plenty of others will receive it differently. Regardless of that, it’s a powerful ending to a quiet and insightful film.
With Jonas, Rehmeier proves himself an incredibly skillful filmmaker once more. Whatever you might think of the content of his films, there is no doubting his ability to compose, shoot and edit beautiful and striking images. Working once again in collaboration, his film challenges our perceptions of storytelling and of filmmaking. Gilmore’s contribution should not be underplayed here (as with Getsic previously), his conceptualisation and performance of Jonas crucial to the film working at all.
The film is clearly personal to the filmmaker, the performer and the many people who took part. In an incredibly brave and creative move both Rehmeier and Gilmore decided that the film should be seen for free. The integrity the two men show in their creative process is really quite stunningly refreshing. In many ways, this unusual release strategy reflects the film itself – Jonas travels the city, giving the Bible for free to those in need. It doesn’t really matter that it’s the Bible, and it doesn’t really matter that Jonas is a Christian. It’s Jonas that matters and it’s the people he engages with that matter. The film could so easily have been dull and didactic in the wrong hands, but instead Jonas is a powerful, complex and provocative film.
Jonas will be FREE to watch in upcoming weeks via www.jonasmovie.com.