REVIEW: Three Christs – A Good Doctor Movie!
Richard Gere plays the “Good Doctor” as Dr. Milton Rokeach in “Three Christs” from the book “The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.” Read on to get CelebNMovies247.com’s review of Three Christs…
Overall CelebNMovies247.com gives Three Christs a C.
Back in the late 1950s a social psychologist Dr. Milton Rokeach took three paranoid schizophrenic men who all believed they were Jesus Christ. The three men were put together and studied by Rokeach who had no clue what would happen. His findings, during that study eventually raised ethical reservations, which were limited to professional journals.
Dr. Rokeach hopes was to test the three men by confronting them with “the ultimate contradiction” of their claims in hopes the impact may help them in curing their “God-like delusion.”
In 1981 Rokeach wrote his reprint from the original book, which was published in 1964, “The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.” He stated in the book, “While I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing me of mine — of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives.”
Since then the book was made into a film “Three Christs” and has been dramatized elsewhere, including onstage. Though, the movie “Three Christs” misses the mark completely at least to us. The movie just lacks the true passion and narrative of the Rokeach book. What he learned from this experiment is that the Three Christs was four.
“When psychology is used to agitate, it’s not sound psychology anymore. You’re not helping the person.”
Dr. Milton Rokeach was under the delusion that he could help “cure” the three men. He ended up realizing that he himself was playing God.
The movie just left us, feeling blah, unenthused and lackluster. Three Christ is one of those movies where an actor can thrive because the real acting opportunity is of the Three Christs roles Bradley Whitford, Peter Dinklage, and Walton Goggins to really play on the what makes a paranoid schizophrenic tick. The options are endless. It that role where an actor can just go as big as they wanted because a real person suffering from schizophrenia is mind-blowing, terrifying, and truly scary to witness. Each of the men (Christ’s) play a different type of schizophrenic (angry, hopeless, or lordly). The casting was impeccable with these actors, but we expected more, and we didn’t get that.
Charlotte Hope (Becky) gives a compelling performance, as does, Richard Gere as Alan Stone. Julianna Margulies role is restrictive as Alan’s wife, so there wasn’t much for her to play within Three Christs. Though the movie seems more polished than the real writings. It ends on a positive instead of the book’s truth that the study was NOT a success. The film falls back on writing 1A clichés to motivate scenes to get to an end.
Director, Jon Avnet, who wrote the script with Eric Nazarian made sure to carve out the antagonist a jealous hospital superintendent (Kevin Pollak, giving it his full weasel) who undermines and meddles in protagonist Alan’s work. The movie is an emotional movie for some, yet we felt it was too polished instead of truthful.
We see this better as a play than a movie.
