The case of Christ
Although the Oscars will be held on March 4 and there are a handful of films that are going to hit again with good reason (Dunkirk, Three ads in the suburbs, Coco, The invisible thread, The darkest moment, The Pentagon files...), this red carpet had better not bury two independent films from the day before yesterday: The case of Christ and the documentary Beat the Wind. Both films are based on real events and involve journalists, in front of or behind the cameras. They have quality and deal with appreciable dramas.
A real case
The Case for Christ refers to the life of Lee Strobela young investigative journalist from the Chicago Tribune in the late 1980s. He is married, they have a young daughter and another on the way. God does not matter to them. However, after a family event, the woman converts to Christianity (Baptist) and he rebels, because he feels he is losing her... Furious content, behind her back and behind the backs of the heads of the Tribunedecides to start an investigation into the resurrection of Jesus in order to dismantle the Christian faith.
The steps that the journalist is taking, in the screenplay by Brian Bird, are inspired by Strobel's own million-selling book. The pulse of the story is kept alive by the two simultaneous investigative plots (a police case and the case of Christ) and the ghosts of breakup that threaten the marriage. Mike Vogel and Erika Christensen play the strained couple well. Faye Dunaway and Robert Foster are fleeting. The director, Jon Gunn, leaves us with a good film about a leap into Christian faith catalyzed by the historical dimension of Jesus.
For its part, the documentary Beating the wind is by Anne-Dauphine Julliand, a Parisian journalist and mother of four who lost two of her children to a genetic disease when they were still children. She recounted these blows in a book whose title (I will fill your days with life) is also the background music for this documentary. But now he puts camera and microphones attached to the bodies of five children with different rare diseases, and lets them transmit their illusions, their taste for life and novelty, games and nature, as well as the contrast of pain, without drama. Julliand achieves a spectacular naturalness, with rhythm and contemplative metaphors, and suggests to fathers and mothers with such sick children a simple and difficult project: to devote themselves to these little lives in order to strengthen them, instead of instilling in them the doubts of adults in the face of death.
