Watch: A ten-minute clip from The Book of Clarence
In which Clarence faces a gangster, gets baptized, and is profiled by the Romans.
The Book of Clarence got a digital release this week, and, as often happens when Sony makes a film available to rent or own, the studio has released a ten-minute clip to whet potential viewers’ appetites.
The clip in question skips the film’s opening chariot race and goes straight to the opening credits, and the scenes that follow give you a sense of the movie’s dramatic, thematic, and tonal range, from the great establishing shots of Matera, Italy to the scene in which Clarence’s mom both teases him for masturbating and gives voice to one of the film’s more earnest themes (“Be the body, not the shadow”).
We also get glimpses of life in the hood, from the local gangster who threatens to kill Clarence if he doesn’t pay his debt, to the cops—er, Roman soldiers—who profile Clarence and his friend while looking for a thief. And, we get one of the film’s funnier scenes, in which Clarence gets slapped around a bit by John the Baptist.
You can watch the clip here:
Incidentally, I have to say that I’ve watched this clip a few times now, and, as amusing as I find the baptism scene, it still doesn’t make any narrative sense to me.
Apparently Clarence wants to be baptized because he thinks the gangster will be so impressed by his religious conversion that the gangster won’t want to kill him any more. But how does that follow? Are gangsters known for going easy on the faithful—especially when they’d have every reason to think the conversion was fake?
This is just one of a few elements in the film that don’t follow any sort of believable internal logic, and which seem to have been jammed into the script under the flimsiest of pretexts just because director Jeymes Samuel wanted them in there.
But I hope to be able to say more about that later. I was going to write up some comments on the film when it first arrived in theatres a few weeks ago, but I had to set that aside when an opportunity to attend The Chosen Season 4’s world premiere came along, and I’ve been riding that train ever since. Soon, though, soon.
In the meantime, I can’t resist noting that there is a precedent in classic Bible film for a humorous depiction of John the Baptist either forcing people into the water or, in Clarence’s case, forcing them to stay in the water longer than expected.
Witness this scene from 1965’s The Greatest Story Ever Told, in which Herod’s soldiers try to arrest John, who is played by none other than Charlton Heston:
Previous videos for The Book of Clarence:
The teaser trailer (August 29, 2023)
The BFI London Film Festival world premiere interviews (October 13, 2023)
The official trailer, the ‘Behind the Scenes’ featurette, and the ‘Hallelujah Heaven’ lyric video (November 28, 2023)
The ‘Hallelujah Heaven’ music video and the ‘Defy’ TV spot (December 22, 2023)
Other previous posts on The Book of Clarence:
‘Jeymes Samuel and LaKeith Stanfield are going to make a Bible movie’ (May 16, 2022)
‘The Book of Clarence gets a production company and a new co-star’ (October 22, 2022)
‘Pins and Needles (formerly The Book of Clarence) now filming in Italy’ (November 25, 2022)
‘The Book of Clarence: a lot of new actors, and a few new plot details’ (December 6, 2022)
‘The Book of Clarence gets a release date’ (March 4, 2023)
‘The Book of Clarence gets a test screening’ (June 5, 2023)
‘The Book of Clarence is now coming out in January’ (August 16, 2023)
‘October release-date news: The Book of Clarence gets a world premiere, Taylor Swift scares off Angels and demons’ (September 2, 2023)
‘The Book of Clarence — the world premiere round-up!’ (October 13, 2023)
‘Talking about The Book of Clarence’ (November 3, 2023)
‘The Book of Clarence gets new posters, sneak-peeks in Atlanta’ (December 19, 2023)
‘The Book of Clarence round-up: A few last soundbites and interviews’ (January 11, 2024)
‘Box office: Mean Girls breaks a record, The Book of Clarence barely cracks the top ten’ (January 15, 2024)
‘The Book of Clarence round-up: International release date news, and a few new interviews’ (January 22, 2024)