It is a simple but effective film. In spite of the fact that it is a rewriting of the Book of Job, the film conveys interesting questions. We totally have to forget about who is torturing the poor minister, God or Satan. That's not the question. The question is that his attitude is determined by what he believes. He believes he is being tortured by the devil and that is enough to justify the final miracle of the end of his cancer with a single gunshot. What is important is that, no matter what he believes, he follows a road of truthfulness and he brings comfort to extreme cases of a-social people. The apple tree then becomes a cross between the Book of Genesis in which the apple tree is the tree of knowledge and wisdom but absolutely out of reach due to one of God's ukases and that Book of Job I was citing before. The newcomer being called Adam the allusion is obvious. That tree is God's tree. Then all the attacks he suffers can only come from the snake, Satan, the devil. The point is that the plagues that tree suffers are quite reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt. That's where we meet with Job. God is not only planning the future ahead but he is also testing his servants by torturing them and the plagues come from God and the silly mortals around that tree have to make penance because they are punished by God and tested by God and they have to go away or keep their faith. And they just do so. Adam will make a small apple pie with the last scavenged apple of the tree and he will share that apple pie with the minister Ivan, a direct allusion that has to be designed so to Adam and Eve, or here Adam and Ivan. But after that episode they are not rejected by the parish, they can come back to their little piece of Christian paradise in a world of squalor, the two of them and yet they won't make many children but they will welcome the lost errant children of god. And guess what: they welcome two men together coming from some prison, Abel and Cain of course, and the world can go on turning. Bad of course, but turning all the same.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID