I watched the movie “Constantine” movie last night. Since the original version is not screened here in Rome, I watched the Italian-dubbed edition of the film. The character of Keanu Reeves introduced himself in an 007-like fashion, saying, “Sono John. John Constantine. Stronzo!” or something to that effect.
From a Christian standpoint, suicide is immoral, unacceptable and unlawful. This is essentially based on the principle that life is sacred, thus taking one’s own life is an infringement on God’s territory. But what if a person attempts suicide to save another person?
Although the movie Constantine is not a moral discussion on suicide but the main character’s slashing of his own wrists is a pivotal scene in the film. Constantine attempted suicide to save Angela (and eventually to spare the world from Satan’s son). Later on in the film we would learn that the suicide attempt was actually a self-sacrifice on the part of Constantine – he shed his blood to save the world from evil .
The film is loaded with Christian symbols – heaven, hell, angels, Satan, God’s Son, the bible, the names of the characters (John Constantine, Gabriel, Isabel, etc), and countless others. In fact the very first things the viewers see when the film begins are two crosses. The presentation of the Christian symbols were mostly cliché, although some were not stereotyped – Lucifer wears matching white outfit, angel Gabriel is androgynous, etc.
I particularly liked the use of extreme close-ups (that of the cigarette, for example) because it never fails to give me an impression that the subject up close is of prime importance to the scene. I also like it when a character’s reaction is first shown before the actual scene is revealed – like when we first see the mother’s horrified look before the camera moves to show her daughter crawling on the ceiling. The use of subliminal jokes was also something that caught my attention. When Constantine was coughing blood, it was intercut with a billboard that says “Your Time is Running Out” and when the Mexican antagonist was about to attack a helpless driver, a billboard behind him asked, “Got Faith?”.
My most favorite scene was Constantine’s incomplete ascension. As he levitated, he made a funny effort to show the dirty finger to Lucifer. I could not help but smile that on his way to heaven a person would still do something like that. The worst scene for me was hell. I mean, can’t the scriptwriters think of another image of hell aside from eternal fire? Can’t they conceive something as creative as the Hades in Vincent Ward’s “What Dreams May Come”?
The most oft-repeated line in the film is that God has a plan for each person. If this is the underlying theme of the film then Constantine’s suicide attempt must also be understood from that perspective – that God, being all wise and powerful, would use even the shedding of blood and pain and suffering for a higher purpose.
I did also wonder about the eternal fire version of hell. But having seen the cars and buildings that were clearly 20th – 21st century I couldn’t help specualting that maybe hell is different for each person who sees it and perhaps the version Constantine saw was the one he believed existed. We didn’t get to see Angela’s vision of hell and so we cannot be sure that it was like the one Constantine saw. It would be hard to imagine the Devil updating hell to keep up with the times