Stigmata (Film Review)

1999 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
Directed by: Rupert Wainwright; Written by: Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage
Starring: Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Pryce, Nia Long, Portia de Rossi, and Rade Šerbedžija
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time:103 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 4/10

Frankie is a 1999 woman with quirky 1999 hair and shiny 1999 threads, working at a downtown Pittsburgh hair salon in 1999. She has no use for religion, until she's suddenly bleeding from her wrists from phantom nail wounds, bleeding from her head from phantom crown of thorns wounds, and getting possessed by demons. Now she needs religion very badly. Enter Father Kiernan. The young, hip priest investigates miracles for the Catholic Church, almost always finding the miracles to be frauds. However, Frankie is a miracle he can't deny. As Frankie starts scribbling what is apparently a new Gospel, supposedly Jesus' exact words, the Church decides it can deny her...and it can even have her murdered...
Stigmata is stupid. It's a ridiculous movie, an overlong commercial for a non-canonical list of sayings that were declared heretical 1800 years ago! That non-canonical Gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, is presented in this film as if it's a brand new thing that no one has ever heard of before. The delivery system for the GOT in the film is as goofy as hell. With that said, if Stigmata was just about Patricia Arquette's Frankie being given a new Gospel to share with the world, and the film didn't literally end with an onscreen text message informing the audience about The Gospel of Thomas, Stigmata would still be a ridiculous, stupid movie. Most of its scenes are clunkily and goofily shot and edited, the pacing is strange, and the film feels unfocused and nonsensical. However, it is not without its merits.

Patricia Arquette, as the scared, confused, but determined Frankie gives one of the better performances of her career. Likewise, Gabriel Byrne, playing a priest for a second time this year, is better than he was in End of Days, though that movie, which pits Arnold Schwarzenegger against Satan, is better than this one. Byrne and Arquette have fantastic chemistry. Billy Corgan--yes, that Bill Corgan!--provides a strange musical score for the film. The rainy atmosphere is also enjoyable, as is the absolute 1999ness of the film. Those things can't outweigh the movie's flaws, but they at least make it watchable...and take it from a cinematic heresy, to at least a deuterocanonical experience.