CORPUS CHRISTI

Name: CORPUS CHRISTI
Item: CORPUS CHRISTI
Author: Tess Farrand

"Faith Story Marred by Excessive Obscenities"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

CORPUS CHRISTI is a unique drama from Poland. The story follows a young man named Daniel as he’s getting out of a juvenile detention center. While serving time, Daniel had a spiritual awakening and dreams of going to seminary to become a priest. However, Daniel is informed that seminaries will not accept him because if his conviction and, instead, he’s assigned to work at a sawmill on parole. When Daniel arrives at the mill, he decides to skip work and instead visits the local church where he convinces them he’s a priest and fills in for the local priest who’s sick.

CORPUS CHRISTI tells a powerful story, with an incredible performance by the lead actor. It has a strong Christian, biblical, moral worldview with scenes set in church and people praying and singing worship songs. Also, the protagonist often expresses kindness, compassion and understanding toward others. However, the movie is marred by more than 100 obscenities, strong lewd content in a couple scenes and brief drug use. Also, the protagonist lies about his real identity. So, MOVIEGUIDE® deems CORPUS CHRISTI excessive.

Content:

(CC, BB, Pa, LLL, VV, SS, NN, AA, DD, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong Christian, biblical, moral worldview as mass and prayer depicted and characters worship song, with moral and biblical elements as kindness, compassion and understanding are shown, mixed with some pagan content where a character looks out for his own interests

Foul Language:

More than 100 obscenities (about 77 “f” words) and some potty humor

Violence:

Male character sexually harasses another man in juvenile detention center, man throws plate at another man, mother confesses she hit her son, two men grab one another, but no physical harm occurs, and two men throw punches in a fight, and one headbutts the other, with some blood depicted

Sex:

Depicted fornication in two scenes

Nudity:

Upper female nudity, rear male and female nudity, and upper male nudity

Alcohol Use:

Alcohol use and some drunkenness

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Smoking, two instances of a man snorting cocaine, and one instance of talking about getting high; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Lying, blackmail, bad role model if other characters knew who the priest really was.

More Detail:

CORPUS CHRISTI is a Polish movie about a young convict on parole who’s become a Christian and poses as a priest and helps the people in a small town. Featuring an amazing performance by the lead actor, CORPUS CHRISTI tells a powerful story, but the ending is open ended and unsatisfying, and the movie has more than 100 obscenities, strong lewd content in two scenes and brief drug use that seriously undercut the movie’s Christian, moral worldview.

CORPUS CHRISTI follows a young man in Juvie named Daniel. Daniel has paid his dues in the detention center, and while there has had a spiritual awakening. Viewers see Daniel at mass volunteering and seems to have a close relationship with the priest who leads them. Daniel’s dream when he leaves the center is to go to seminary, however, the crime he committed was too harsh, and the priest informs him that no seminary will accept him.

Daniel finds out he has been placed at a sawmill for his place of work while on parole. Before he heads to the new town where he will be working, he has a crazy night of partying with old friends. When he arrives to the mill the next day, he sees a small town just past it and decides to skip work and go to the local church.

Upon entering, he finds a young woman. Daniel and the woman, names Eliza, talk for a minute while he tries to convince her that he is a priest. Eliza doesn’t believe him and says he’s here to work at the mill to complete his parole. Daniel knows she’s right, but pulls out his priest robes he took from the detention center in a last ditch effort to change her mind. This convinces her, and she immediately goes to inform the priests wife that a new priest is in town.

The woman takes Daniel to meet her husband at their home. When Daniel meets the priest, he finds out he’s sick. The priest asks Daniel to fill in for him for a short while as he gets his treatments outside of town.

Daniel starts to freak out a bit when he realizes he now has to really be a priest with no instruction on how to do so. Daniel leads his first mass the following day and recites the same sermon as his priest’s sermon in the detention center shown at the beginning of the movie. The people attending the service think Daniel is brilliant, but the priest’s wife isn’t convinced.

Daniel soon finds out he arrived in town right after a tragedy where seven people were killed in a car accident. The small town has a board of photos of the victims, except they left out the driver whom they all believed killed the young people in the other car. Daniel makes it his mission to find out what really happened and try to bring peace to the town.

In the midst of all this, the sawmill’s owner and mayor of the town visits Daniel. When Daniel finds out who he is, he starts to sweat thinking he’s been caught. However, the mayor just wanted Daniel to be at the opening of a new wing of the mill to bless it. Daniel agrees, but there’s tension between them because of Daniel decision to investigate the accident.

One day, while Daniel is holding confession hours, he is visited by a man who is quietly telling Daniel all of his sins. The longer the man talks, the more Daniel realizes the man on the other side of the confessional booth is someone who was in the detention center with him. The man was confessing Daniels sins to him and threatens to out Daniel to the town if he doesn’t give him what he wants. Will Daniel take the deal to keep his identity a secret, or will he be caught and sent back to the detention center?

CORPUS CHRISTI is a powerful, sometimes funny drama of a young man who wants to be able to start over after the crimes he committed and paid for while being in a juvenile detention center. The movie contains positive messages behind a lot of foul language. The storyline is pretty unbelievable as a young man gets away with pretending to be a priest, but the way it’s told really makes the audience believe it could happen. Also, the actor playing the ex-convict is incredible. That said, the movie’s ending is open ended and unsatisfying. The story ends too abruptly.

COPRUS CHRISTI has a strong Christian worldview. Church services and prayers are depicted. The main character is seen comforting those in need and trying to bring peace to the people in the town. However, the story is marred by an extensive amount of foul language, some lewd situations and brief drug use. The protagonist is also seen lying about his identity. MOVIEGUIDE® deems CORPUS CHRISTI excessive.