"L'ora di religione" (The religion class) is an awful third rate movie whose main purpose is to ridicule the acts of canonization in an apodictic tone, even with a blasphemous curse uttered in the name of the art of cinema. Aiming at showing the evidence of huge turnovers hidden behind the canonization projects with the connivance of Vatican, the movie supports the thesis of religious conversions due to mere spirit of opportunism to open new prospects of eternal life insurance. In other words, we are in the presence of a religious choice made on grounds of expediency and not intended as a profession of faith renewed day by day without listening to bewitching sirens echoing secular songs of existential desolation.
This movie desecrates and tramples upon all the true and good ideals of life professed by the Catholic Church, laying the blame on the religion, accusing it to disturb the peace of the families, to upset the conscience of children, as if the religion class were responsible of a series of existential damages in our time. As if one could find behind the facade of the Catholicism a good deal of hidden hypocrisy. And if Ettore, Ernesto's son, in his childish obsession manages to talk directly with GOD against his own will, there he his, the "deus ex machina", his omniscient father in his capacity as a fictitious but miraculous therapist, ready to obviate the drawback with the clear and strict enunciation of a suggestive cause-effect relation about the desire for eternal life: believing in SCIENCE is tantamount to believing in IMMORTALITY (thank to the power of face lifting!), ignoring that only a wholesome family education in conformity with the spirit of Catholicism can constitute the basis of an adequate comprehension of the religious doctrine. On the other hand, how can a child not to take too literally the (unhealthy?!) catechism lessons from a necessarily ugly and frigid religion teacher (because a religion teacher can't be a nice woman, in accordance with the script) if his parents are unable to give him a right support to make him understand that six billion human beings can be easily controlled by GOD thank to His almightiness? It's obvious that Ernesto, the father, anxious to formulate hypothesis and thesis to reach the truth one way only, namely in accordance with his personal idea of basic beliefs of atheism, can't even dream of pondering about his inability to enable his son to understand this simple truth. He never looks at himself, examining his own conscience to look into the matter of his own infallibility. He hasn't any doubts about the INADEQUACY of the religion teacher and about the ADEQUACY of his twopenny halfpenny dialectics because what really matters, according to the script, is to strike blindly at everything concerning the religious element, especially at the issue of sainthood, without any pause for breath, without any alternative voice, profiting by every occasion to deny the existence of life after death.
It's really remarkable how the truth can be misrepresented here. There isn't any will to direct the attention to those mischievous aspects of the modern society that have smoothed the way for cynical and opportunist people ready to profit from every occasion to reach their own purposes, taking advantage of the good faith of the Ecclesiastic Authority (an hypothesis never contemplated in the movie) to acquire dignity, prestige and perpetuate privilege positions, especially through the safest way, that is to say the sanctification of a frail, poor wretch with the only fault of having given birth to five heartless sons. On the other hand, "the eternity is a sure investment, an absolute value that outlives every changes for the worse, like the banks" as states cynically Filippo Argenti (not that frenzied Florentine spirit among the wrathful in the river Styx that turned on himself his own biting teeth, as written in Alighieri's Divine Comedy), as if to give value to the religious conversions may suffice a simple formal act of obedience to the Church and to the Pope, described as an "absolute monarch who reigns over the consciences of all Italian people." And according to the thesis of the movie, a human being converted to Christ can enjoy his life a little more and find a lover for himself without playing the moralist and without caring about breaking up his family. A miracle of the so-called authorial cinema!!!
This movie desecrates and tramples upon all the true and good ideals of life professed by the Catholic Church, laying the blame on the religion, accusing it to disturb the peace of the families, to upset the conscience of children, as if the religion class were responsible of a series of existential damages in our time. As if one could find behind the facade of the Catholicism a good deal of hidden hypocrisy. And if Ettore, Ernesto's son, in his childish obsession manages to talk directly with GOD against his own will, there he his, the "deus ex machina", his omniscient father in his capacity as a fictitious but miraculous therapist, ready to obviate the drawback with the clear and strict enunciation of a suggestive cause-effect relation about the desire for eternal life: believing in SCIENCE is tantamount to believing in IMMORTALITY (thank to the power of face lifting!), ignoring that only a wholesome family education in conformity with the spirit of Catholicism can constitute the basis of an adequate comprehension of the religious doctrine. On the other hand, how can a child not to take too literally the (unhealthy?!) catechism lessons from a necessarily ugly and frigid religion teacher (because a religion teacher can't be a nice woman, in accordance with the script) if his parents are unable to give him a right support to make him understand that six billion human beings can be easily controlled by GOD thank to His almightiness? It's obvious that Ernesto, the father, anxious to formulate hypothesis and thesis to reach the truth one way only, namely in accordance with his personal idea of basic beliefs of atheism, can't even dream of pondering about his inability to enable his son to understand this simple truth. He never looks at himself, examining his own conscience to look into the matter of his own infallibility. He hasn't any doubts about the INADEQUACY of the religion teacher and about the ADEQUACY of his twopenny halfpenny dialectics because what really matters, according to the script, is to strike blindly at everything concerning the religious element, especially at the issue of sainthood, without any pause for breath, without any alternative voice, profiting by every occasion to deny the existence of life after death.
It's really remarkable how the truth can be misrepresented here. There isn't any will to direct the attention to those mischievous aspects of the modern society that have smoothed the way for cynical and opportunist people ready to profit from every occasion to reach their own purposes, taking advantage of the good faith of the Ecclesiastic Authority (an hypothesis never contemplated in the movie) to acquire dignity, prestige and perpetuate privilege positions, especially through the safest way, that is to say the sanctification of a frail, poor wretch with the only fault of having given birth to five heartless sons. On the other hand, "the eternity is a sure investment, an absolute value that outlives every changes for the worse, like the banks" as states cynically Filippo Argenti (not that frenzied Florentine spirit among the wrathful in the river Styx that turned on himself his own biting teeth, as written in Alighieri's Divine Comedy), as if to give value to the religious conversions may suffice a simple formal act of obedience to the Church and to the Pope, described as an "absolute monarch who reigns over the consciences of all Italian people." And according to the thesis of the movie, a human being converted to Christ can enjoy his life a little more and find a lover for himself without playing the moralist and without caring about breaking up his family. A miracle of the so-called authorial cinema!!!