Cinema Science

The guys over at CHUD have revealed quite a few new details from the Harold Ramis film, Year One, in a fairly positive script review. Read this at your own risk though, it contains quite a bit of spoilers.

And here comes a zany Biblical satire that calls to mind Wholly Moses more than it does The Life of Brian.

Granted, it’s an awfully brainy Wholly Moses. Co-written with Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky from NBC’s The Office (Ramis directed several episodes for the intermittently great show), Ramis’s narrative begins with the creation of the universe and shoots right into its loopy rendition of the Adam and Eve tale. For Year One’s purposes, Adam and Eve are Zed and Maya, and they aren’t on their own for long; in fact, we soon learn that they’re members of a primitive tribe. Unfortunately for Zed, he’s a gatherer, not a hunter, which makes him undesirable to Maya and just about every other female around. The same goes for Zed’s pal Oh, who has a thing for the highly solicitous Eema.

When it’s discovered that Zed ate fruit from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he is swiftly exiled from the village for having violated the most sacred law of the land. (“Since the Great Turtle climbed from the sea with the Earth on his back, drank the ocean, pooped out the mountains and the first man fell from the stars.”) This, in a way, is fine by Zed; for years he’s been wondering what lies on the other side of the mountain range which, according to the villagers, represents the end of their world. Perhaps there’s more to life than hunting and gathering; perhaps, if he ventures out and makes something of himself, he’ll earn the respect of his people – and get in Maya’s loincloth.

Oh joins Zed on his quest out into the great unknown (and proceeds to get the worst of it from just about every obstacle that gets in their way), and this is where the narrative may confound. The first historical figures the boys encounter are Cain and Abel, who almost immediately get into their fatal dust-up. Having just witnessed Cain kill his brother without much remorse (he proposes to keep the very dead Abel warm by covering him in dirt), Zed and Oh accept the psychopath’s rather insistent invitation to have supper with his family. This almost works out splendidly for Zed, who is offered an evening with Adam’s daughter, Lilith. If you know your Old Testament lore, you probably have an idea as to how this would-be escapade ends. (Oh, on the other hand, shares a bed with Seth, who entertains his guest with a fart cantata.)

Before the boys can get too comfortable, Adam works out that Cain offed Abel, and soon they’re on the run. The next stop is a slave market, where Zed and Oh are briefly reunited with Maya and Eema, who are about to be sold into servitude. After a double cross by Cain, Zed and Oh are on their way to backbreaking, unremunerated labor as well.

Zed and Oh eventually escape from the slave caravan, which brings them to their next major historical run-in: Abraham and the fixin’-to-be-sacrificed Isaac. Our heroes actually prevent Abraham from offering up his son to God, and, after a near-miss on the circumcision, um, tip, they’re on their way to Sodom with the happy-to-be-alive Isaac.

The major failing of Year One is the Sodom passage, which occupies the entire second half of the narrative. Though the writing is still fairly sharp (aside from a dreaded “What happens in Sodom, stays in Sodom” utterance), the momentum of what was shaping up to be a Biblical “Road” movie is extinguished. And while Zed’s epiphany (after being enshrined as the “Chosen One”) is affecting, it’s not quite the finale of Groundhog Day. Or Bedazzled for that matter.

Or maybe it is. Reading Year One, I kept asking myself if I would’ve spotted Groundhog Day as a potential classic on the page. And then I remembered that I didn’t realize it was a masterpiece until the third or fourth time I caught it on cable.