Dogma Is Still the Best Movie Kevin Smith Ever Made

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Dogma. Photo: Lionsgate/Everett Collection

Kevin Smith wrote the screenplay for Dogma before his 1994 DIY hit Clerks came out, but it took several more movies and a stint in the Hollywood meat grinder before he felt ready to make the film. At the time of Clerks, Smith was an unknown from the New Jersey suburbs who had shot a feature with his friends for practically nothing; five years later, he was an industry veteran with the scars to prove it. He had undergone the humiliation of rewriting aborted superhero flicks for Hollywood producers who sought to capitalize on his unique voice. He’d directed his ill-fated (but low-key wonderful) comedy Mallrats and the widely acclaimed Chasing Amy. He’d also been an executive producer on Good Will Hunting, which won Oscars for his pals Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both of whom had agreed to star in Dogma. With its ambition, its name cast, and its incendiary subject matter, Dogma seemed set to inaugurate a new era for Kevin Smith, indie auteur.

The film (which is now being rereleased for its slightly belated 25th anniversary) was well-received in 1999, but for some reason that new era never quite materialized. Smith has gone on to make plenty more movies — ranging from for-hire studio-action flicks to mainstream comedies to Clerks sequels to whatever the hell Tusk was — and he’s become his own lucrative multimedia brand, but the hilarious Dogma still stands as a cinematic high point in his career, the moment when his type of filmmaking made the most sense. Whipsawing between profane irreverence and spiritual earnestness, the chatty comedy about two fallen angels, Bartleby and Loki (Affleck and Damon), seeking to reenter Heaven by utilizing a loophole in divine law has a precocious imagine-if energy. If the angels succeed, it could mean the end of the world, as it would prove God’s word to be fallible. So other heavenly messengers try to convince a semi-lapsed Catholic named Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino), who volunteers at an abortion clinic, to travel to New Jersey to stop the duo; she’s been given the task because she also happens to be “the great-great-great-great-great-grand-niece of Jesus Christ.”

Various divine figures show up, including Alan Rickman as a seraph who speaks for God and Salma Hayek as a Muse who works as a stripper. There are new revelations about goings-on in the Bible: Jesus was Black and had a brother; there was a 13th apostle named Rufus (Chris Rock); the Lord is a Skee-Ball enthusiast; a shit-monster emerged from all the fecal matter left behind by the crucified corpses on Golgotha. Despite all of Smith’s patented dick and poop jokes, the movie’s charming literal-mindedness feels aspirational, as if he were trying to get back in touch with the particulars of the faith he had grown up in (and which he would eventually leave behind).

Religious subjects often inspire filmmakers to stylish indulgence — in cinema, aesthetics and awe usually come intertwined — but Dogma might be Smith’s most ground-level effort. (Clerks is obviously more basic in style, but it’s so delightfully grainy, awkward, and rambling that it achieves abstractness.) Critics loved to ding his work for its lack of cinematic pizzazz, and Smith himself could be self-deprecating about the fact that his movies never looked particularly great. In Dogma, however, there’s value in his casual, inelegant approach. Yes, his blocking can be listless, his close-ups can be a bit too close, and he’s not exactly a master of mood or atmosphere. But the lo-fi, homemade verve of the film lends it a sincerity that suits the subject.

Dogma walks a fine line between myth and nonsense. Its plot doesn’t entirely hold up to scrutiny, but it’s not really meant to. That’s sort of the point. Smith’s fallen angels are just a couple of bros who walk around speed-talking, and his heroine constantly asks questions of the heavenly emissaries surrounding her, turning many scenes into borderline Q&A sessions. Smith is not interested in the exaltation or fearsomeness of religion, but in interrogating the received wisdom of church teaching. When the film’s fallen angels finally reveal their wings in an extended scene of gruesome violence, the janky special effects underline the very ridiculousness of the concept of angels. In a world so mundane, where golf-obsessed priests try to appeal to younger parishioners with a statue of Jesus giving a thumbs-up, the idea of the divine seems not just impossible but downright laughable.

In the end, what makes it all work is Smith’s voice, which can be heard in just about every character. (They all talk like Kevin Smith, save for the usually wordless Silent Bob, the character played by Kevin Smith.) That voice has been his great gift all these years, and he knows it. Part of the reason why he branched out beyond film to stand-up, and podcasting, and blogging, and all the many other things he’s done, is probably because he realized that he didn’t need movies to express himself; he could just express himself. But what makes Dogma unique is that it’s Smith’s voice attempting to know the mind of God.

That’s also why the film came under fire from the extremely right-wing Catholic League at the time. Smith recalled receiving “400,000 pieces of hate mail and three bona fide death threats.” That led to a complicated release strategy, the details of which are too arcane to get into here. But Smith was recently able to wrestle the picture away from Harvey Weinstein, who held the rights. It’s now been restored in 4K for this rerelease. All of which is welcome news, but part of me hopes it doesn’t look too good.