Friday, June 5, 2020

OPEKA (2020) Brooklyn 2020

Portrait of priest Pedro Opeka who is rallying the poor of Madagascar to band together to build a functioning  society since their corrupt leaders won't or can't.

This film about the second coming of Christ in the form of Father Opeka  gets on your nerves early and often. This is a combination of polemical ranting about the plight of the poor where Opeka sermonizes about the troubles in the world in an orgasmic PR love piece that is so ridiculously over the top that it makes the term hagiography look weak. I don't think a high end PR firm with all the money in the world could do as good a job as this film does in making Opeka look this godlike.

High volume ranting in your face aside, and allowing that Opeka is from Argentina the film borders perilously close to being the story of a great white savior going to save lots of brown people. While there are numerous films that take a similar tact, OPEKA somehow manages to take all the cliches and make them real. While it is clear from the film that Opeka is making a difference, and he probably is a nice guy, the presentation here is so overdone and so filled with pontificating  that the priest comes off looking like a know it all ass.

I lost interest early

Not recommended.

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