Dogma in 2025
The Return of Kevin Smith's Blasphemous Masterpiece.
A couple of weeks ago I caught a theatrical screening of an old favorite: Kevin Smith’s Dogma (1999), a cult classic that has languished in rights hell for years. Now, thanks to what I’m assuming is a loophole in Hollywood law, Dogma has passed through the doors of the movie theater and returned home. Actually, as Smith puts it, the heavenly film was bought from “the devil himself” Harvey Weinstein.
In Dogma, two fallen angels, played by that very nineties duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, try to get back into heaven against the will of God. An ensemble, supernaturally gifted cast — including Linda Fiorentino, Chris Rock, George Carlin, Alan Rickman, Salma Hayek, and Jason Lee — fills the film with demons, muses, apostles, and seraphim. Even God herself joins the party.
Dogma is one of my cinephile origin stories: I remember poring over the frames, absorbing the sincerity of Smith’s style, especially compared to the ironic detachment of Tarantino (who I also obsessed over at the time). I loved Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy, but Dogma seemed then, and especially so now, to be Kevin Smith’s opus.
In the interview linked above, Kevin Smith talks about the difference between the film’s release in the late nineties and now, particularly the lack of controversy and even death threats this time around. It’s amazing to think of a time in which Dogma was considered controversial, but I lived through that era enough to remember the moral panic over movies, books, music, and videogames. I’m sure there are some folks still upset over Smith’s loving yet heretical depiction of faith and religion, but the same people who might have picketed a screening of Dogma or called Harry Potter a gateway to witchcraft are probably too busy posting anti-immigrant disinformation and JK Rowling quotes on social media to notice.
At its core, though, Dogma is in fact an ode to faith, albeit one that rejects religious hierarchies and dogmatic rules. Dogma takes the mythology of religion literally, but not seriously, and therein lies the brilliance. The film is a deconstruction of religion, breaking down its constituent parts to better expose the absurdity of, well, any kind of strict dogma. In this sense, Dogma is pro-faith and anti-religion: as Rufus teaches Bethany, it’s better to have ideas than beliefs.
Having watched more than my share of weird Christian religious movies, I partly love Dogma because it’s the opposite of films like God’s Not Dead. For one, there’s no pervasive sense of Christian persecution, but for two, Dogma gives off more actual love and kindness than any Christian propaganda movie I’ve ever seen. In 2025, we need more Dogma and less dogma.