Jesus Christ Saviour

Saturday night was time for an evening with Klaus Kinski. Jesus Christ Saviour was filmed during a tour of Kinski's one man performance about the life of Jesus in 1971. I missed whether the film was shot at a single performance, or over several troubled nights and then amalgamated, but it's a remarkable show.

The performance was to comprise Kinski on stage giving a monologue about Jesus. The audience start heckling him and he storms off. He gets persuaded back out, the show continues, and so does the heckling, to the extent that members of the audience get up on stage and try to take the microphone off him. Kinski's explosive reactions to his detractors are a show unto themselves.

Kinski's performance both mirrors and contradicts the subject matter of his monologue. People howl him down as he tries to talk about how people tried to silence Jesus. Then on the flipside he yells at people to shut up and listen to him denouncing authoritarianism. Having set himself up as a Jesus figure, he becomes at least half Pharisee himself.

At the same time as the performance reflects its own story, the film reflects the performance. A couple of people in the MIFF audience leave, unable to deal with it. Others get out mobile phones and twiddle on them during Kinski's longer rants. When the show ends, cancelled unfinished by the despondent Kinski, and the credits roll, most people leave. The audience leaves on screen, and the other audience leave the cinema, but the show's not over. Those who want to hear stay and after the theatre has all but emptied, after the credits, Klaus finally returns to do the show properly...

From a simple proposition - one man, one show, a camera that virtually never leaves the theatre - director Peter Geyer has created a surprisingly layered film, a study of the relationship between performer and audience and a fitting tribute to the elemental force that was Klaus Kinski.