GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 - Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020
Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is, at its best, a wildly original and outrageously funny journey through the exploitation genre. Through its extreme stylization and creative use of both narrative structure and cinematography, the film achieves a level of self-awareness in its mind-boggling plot and continuously escalating science fiction concepts. The film’s beauty comes in the form of striking an effortless balance between amateurish parody and incisive deconstruction, which allows it to transcend normal genre constraints and journey into unknown cinematic territory.
The film (directed by Miguel Llanso), centres around the efforts of CIA agents D.T. Gagano (Daniel Tadesse) and Palmer Eldritch (Agustin Mateo) to destroy a computer virus called “The Soviet Union”, that has infiltrated their computer program “Psychobook”, which somehow governs the city of Tallinn, Estonia. Once Gagano is betrayed by Eldritch and left for dead within the program, he must fight his way through the increasingly hostile virtual reality environment, evade capture by the imposing Ethiopian president Batfro (Solomon Tashe), solve a worldwide conspiracy, and return to his one true love, Malin (Gerda-Annette Allikas). From there, the reality of the film gets more and more warped, confusing, and unpredictable.
The film’s main strengths lie in its attention to detail in both its cinematic allusions and its production design. The world the characters inhabit feels suitably lived-in and futuristic, despite clearly operating on a tight budget. This financial restraint allows Llanso to stay creative in his depiction of the action that unfolds onscreen, which utilizes stop-motion in-camera Kung Fu sequences, and fittingly cartoonish special effects. The film is hilariously self-indulgent in its reimagining of the exploitation genre and pairing that with a science fiction spy romp gives this story a unique and novel quality that distinguishes it from its references.
Though many of the actors are clearly overdubbed into the English language --as can be seen with the often out-of-sync ADR-- the heightened performances shine through clearly and passionately. Tadesse in particular delivers real emotion here, and accesses some form of believability that grounds his character’s motivations in reality amidst the ludicrous world he finds himself in. The entire ensemble is committed to this unusual and heightened version of reality, and this allows the film to display an intentional sense of humour with conviction and style.
At the core of this convoluted and beautifully messy narrative is the idea that reality is subject to the viewer and that one can still find a meaningful path if they remain strong and committed to love, even in the face of dire odds. The film is generally uninterested in theme and meanders quite a bit, but it keeps a solid undercurrent of heart and humanity through its development of Agent D.T. Gagano, whose motivations and beliefs form the crux of the story. From an aesthetic point of view the film looks and feels old-school and captures the essence of a bygone style of filmmaking through both its camera and its design. Everything about this film is raised to a heightened and cartoonish degree in its construction, and this creates something wholly original. Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is an inexplicably effective recreation and unintentional deconstruction of the exploitation genre, that captures a mind-bending and ridiculous affect while still being thrilling, touching, and undeniably hilarious.
