Jesus in Hell - Day 1, Part 1

 

 

Previous chapter: Introduction

Cut scene: THE BLOOD CRIES OUT FROM THE EARTH

    Long establishing shot of an ancient desert road at night.  [Modeled on the Negev.]  Wind.  A distant dust cloud building as if in slow motion.  Soft, scattered Morricone-ish music gradually builds out of the near-silence, eerie, ominous, foreboding.

    Enter, from the right side of the screen, a shadowed figure wearing a dark red cape, cowl shadowing his face, furtively running from an ancient desert city.  All business, he hurries off of the dusty road, checks to see that no one is following him, and climbs his way down a rocky embankment to the valley below.  In this area, the cracked earth has lost its golden color and is a dull ashen gray.  Hunching over, he produces a bladder from within the robe, pulls out the cloth stopper, takes a moment to waft the opening under his nose and savor the aroma, and then quick as lightning he is down on his knees, his cloak spread out around him like a bat’s wings.  Slowly, tenderly, he begins to pour the contents of the pouch out onto the dry ground.  In the moonlight the fluid looks black - or is it red?  As soon as the liquid touches the parched sand, the earth seems to open up around it, melting down into a widening maw.  Yes, it’s definitely red.  The dripping muddy walls of the hole that is slowly opening are a red so bright that it almost seems to be glowing in the darkness.  In fact a very faint, even pulse of red light seems to be coming from the hole like the beating of some giant awakening subterranean heart....

DAY 1: The Forsaken

“...descendit ad inferos...”
[“...he descended into hell...”]
-The Apostles’ Creed
(traditional version)

“...[H]e descended into the lower parts of the Earth....”
-Ephesians 4:9

“In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead.”
- Catechism of the Catholic Church


[Music resembling Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater or Mozart’s Requiem - intense sorrow, beauty, and gravity]

Extreme close-up of a man’s face, turned slightly to the side, chin turned up as if he is looking to the sky, a posture of yearning.  Our view is centered on his right cheekbone, perfectly framed in the dusty light, beautifully handsome, somewhat dark-skinned, yet pale.  Gray.  Motionless.  Is this a photograph?  A statue?  As flies buzz around the eyes, which are half-open, the pupils rolled up into the head, we gradually realize that this is a dead man’s face.  

The camera very, very slowly zooms out, and as it does, quite suddenly, the background behind the head moves in a direction that looks upward from our perspective, and the face violently shakes in a blur of vibration that scares away the flies.

As the camera backs further away, we see the ragged beard, the dried blood in long drips down his forehead.  The head flops over, turning so that we can see the other cheek, and we realize: this is Jesus.

Voice-over: How long have we been here?  

The camera continues to back away, and we begin to make out Jesus’s arms stretched out above his head.  We suddenly realize: we are looking down at Jesus’s face.  He is lying down, his back on the cold, cracked, rocky sand.  This desert floor which forms the backdrop to his face moves again and again his lifeless body vibrates almost convulsively.  

Voice-over: The sun has not moved.  Is there any time here?  It already feels like eternity.

Flash cut to a giant black sun shining blackness in a clear grey sky, like a photo negative.  Vulture-like birds are circling.  Then back to Jesus.

The camera pulls back a bit further, and suddenly Jesus’s chest and stomach stick way out toward the camera at an unnatural, disturbing angle.  As we move higher into the air, looking down at Jesus we can now see what is happening: he is being dragged across the desert by his feet, which are up above the shoulders of the person dragging him, his head lying on the sand, his black hair, thick with blood, and his arms trailing along behind him.  

Voice-over: My agony deranges me.  

The person dragging him is stooped very low, almost crawling.  He is wearing a wide-brimmed, black hat, and a black, ragged, poncho-like cloak, and so we can see nothing of him from above.  Jesus’s naked legs are very pale against the black cloth, almost seeming to glow.  The camera is moving with them, so every time he takes a step (which only happens once every several seconds), the ground seems to move beneath them, and Jesus’s body vibrates again, flailing.  From this perspective, with every step the man in the black hat takes, Jesus seems to be falling.

Voice-over: I... cannot go on.

Suddenly the man in the black hat stops.  His body heaves; his weariness and exhaustion is overwhelming him.  He’s about to collapse.

Cut.  We see the man in the black hat’s bare foot, burning in the hot sand.  After a few seconds of motionlessness, it picks itself up, shaking with exhaustion, and he takes another step.

Cut back to looking down at Jesus from above.  Now the camera is stationary relative to the ground, so that Jesus’s almost luminous body seems to be falling out of the bottom of the frame.  The music swells in a climax of pathos.

Voice-over, impatiently: Well, let’s go!  Help me carry him!  Let him have some dignity!

The camera looks down from higher and higher up, and we see a desert landscape littered with bodies, their heads shaven, like a war-torn battlefield.  We are flying up away now, but as the scene fades from our view, we can start to see an obese man with a sinister curl to his lip, coming up behind Jesus and the man in the black hat.