God is a Beetle

The part of the hybrid film God Is a Beetle that talks about its rather blasphemous title comes towards the end, where one character mentions the concept of Negative Theology. If God is unlikely to look like anything humans imagine him to be, then he can’t be a white-bearded patriarch. Thus, maybe a beetle? It’s a ludicrous assumption that recalls Darwin’s alleged commentary about God’s apparent fondness for beetles.

But all that is both the point and beside it in this astringent, talky drama that takes place in three parts. First, the young lady Aline (Amelle Schwerk) is introduced. Her boyfriend has left her and she has failed to graduate from college with a degree in design. She is to become a teacher. Before heading to the city to teach, she goes home to her father while dealing with the grief of it all. And although she is a religious skeptic, she gets into a discussion of the centrality of Jesus and other matters concerning Christianity with a priest who backs up his faith with lucid philosophy. She appears impressed but retains her skepticism.

In the second part of this triptych, a dissatisfied young man named Benjamin seeks something more from his life. Like the rest of us, he thought he was going to be more, but that hasn’t happened. He was going to write like his heroes, among them Ottessa Moshfegh, but he realizes that they had all written books by his age, while he has been unable to generate a short story. It’s a familiar problem for writers manqué the world over, but this man has an interesting solution: he is going to choose his pursuit of Christianity as subject. He recognizes the strangeness of his decision and speaks with a nun who explains some things to him, notably, how he can be Christian and modern, with regards to feminism. Her explanation is itself a bit obfuscating but Benjamin appears to understand as he seeks a realignment of his life.

By the film’s third and final part, the characters of the first two parts unite and, perhaps inevitably, there is a romance plot afoot—but nothing is easy in a film that mixes the real and the contrived with images. It’s all a bit dry but there is some power to be found in the frank discussions of faith, religion and Christianity that director Felix Herrmann allows us to eavesdrop on.