Quebecor Denys Arcand got the idea for this film during auditions for his Decline of the American Empire (1986), when he met an actor who, along with the usual TV commercial work, was playing Jesus in a passion play. Jesus of Montreal features a small theatrical troupe who are asked to "freshen up" a traditional Passion Play held annually at a local shrine. As in Kazantzakis's The Greek Passion, the Gospel story blurs into their daily lives, as the actors become echoes of the characters they play. Their leader, Daniel, gathers them like disciples: Constance, serving in a soup kitchen; Martin, doing overdubs for a porn film (in a hilariously ribald scene where he ends up playing two parts in a group sex dialog); Réne, who narrates the history of the cosmos for a documentary; and the beautiful Mireille, who has been doing sleazy TV commercials.

The troupe forms a little community that recalls 1960s Gospels, not only Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell, but Hair, a band of radicals rejecting the world in favor of a higher vision, reminding us why those so-minded are always drawn to the Jesus story. Mind you, the correspondence with the original is not one-to-one here: Constance is Mary Magdelene, but more in life than the play: fact and fiction overlap loosely to form a sort of dreamscape in which the whole Gospel, not just the Passion, are expressed.

Mireille is associated with the Virgin Mary, first by a jerk ex-boyfriend director who jeers her when she leaves him and her day job prostituting her body to sell products. Most poignantly, she finds a reborn purity in the new community. The turning point comes when Daniel accompanies to her an audition for another sleazy beer commercial directed by her ex, who insists she bare her breasts for the clients. She's wearily willing, but Daniel bolts forward and angrily flips over the tables, TV monitors and cameras — one of the the most heart-felt "clearing of the temple" scene you'll find in any Jesus movie. (Of course, director Arcand feels obligated to give the audience a peek at the actress's breast, so it could be argued that this film takes its place with Cecil B. DeMille in moralizing Gospel films that try to have it both ways.)

Lothaire Bluteau, playing Daniel/Jesus, like most screen Christs, has incredibly striking eyes — not the usual, feminine mystical, but hard and serious, an otherworldly gravity, that even when he's smiling and laughing, comes across as either infinite patience and acceptance or piercing judgment. Director Arcand maintains a piercing judgment for the Catholic Church, which he grew up in and later rejected. The Pharisee and hypocrite in this story is Father LeClerc, the Priest in charge of the shrine. The conflict climaxes along with the Passion when the troupe's "freshening up" of the material crosses the bounds of orthodoxy. It is true that Daniel's Gospel features a "truth is within you" Christ, one paradoxically skeptical of the Biblical account yet quite literal when it comes to depicting the miracles — though the Resurrection comes off a bit hazy and unsatisfying.

It's also true that anybody can turn their personal conflicts into a persecution and martyrdom, so the conflict between priests and players over the historicity of the Biblical account here is less effective than the less literal resonances with the Gospel itself, making it come to life within the play and without. With the breathtaking temple clearing, there's a brilliant temptation sequence with a high-powered media lawyer, and a riff on Pilate's "What is Truth?" discourse that makes a brilliant extrapolation of the character. The film has much to say about the Imperial rule of contemporary Media, and the director's very personal struggle with institutionalized religion (note the recurring references to Hamlet, a play performed before a wicked "father" to expose his sins.)

Yet Arcand struggles on: his new film, The Barbarian Invasions, a decade-plus later sequel to Decline, brings back in cameo both Father LeClerc — still a cynical hypocrite -but also Constance, who apparently went on to become a nun, and argues with the film's central character about the need to "embrace the mystery."