1999, dir. William Klein with Marc Minkowski, Charlotte Hellekant, Lynne Dawson 116 min, 35mm
Klein’s sharp eye for irony and his tendency toward satire are brought into high relief in this melange of images playing counterpoint to Handel’s famous oratorio about the life of Christ. Revolving around a celestial performance of the classical piece (conducted by Marc Minkowski), the film takes us all over the globe to investigate our collective strange, fervent relationship with the divine -- from a homeless shelter’s Christmas party to a demonstration by Bodybuilders for Christ, for starters -- mashing together the sacred with the profane, the sublime with the grotesque, and the poignant with the banal.