This Defender Of the Faith Won't Clam Up

BY JOHN ANDERSON

Imagine Newton and his apple. Proust and his Madeleine. Kane and his Rosebud. Now, imagine naked picnics and clam chowder.

It was spring. We were fortunate enough to be in Paris, inside the Musee d'Orsay and confronted by Edouard Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" - a painting that caused near riots in 1863 because its elements include two fully dressed men and a female companion who's dining toute nude.

In a museum full of wonderful art, this was a highlight. But testifying to the ultimate roundness of things, our beloved companions (not coincidentally female) provided the defining - and definingly '90s - critique of one of the pivotal works of the impressionist movement: "Why is the woman the only one naked?"

Forget the fact that Manet was demolishing artistic assumptions about subject, composition and perception. Never mind that it's that woman in the picture - the one with the challenging stare and the "who-cares" nudity - who possesses all the power of the painting. Never mind that it remains an alarming, revolutionary work nearly 140 years after Manet made it. The politicization of seeing was rearing its ugly head.

Chapter Two. It was summer. We were fortunate enough to be on Montauk Highway, confronted by a bowl of Manhattan chowder and a quandary: No clams. Not a bivalve in the bowl. I peered. I spooned. I swirled. I considered cheesecloth. I considered chemical analysis. But all my succulent mollusks apparently had been given the Memorial Day Weekend off.

But what of it? Does a clam really make a clam chowder? If the broth is potent and well-intentioned - if the essence of clam, in other words, is possessed by the soup - do we have a moral legitimacy in demanding actual clam in our chowder?

You're darn right we do. Clamlessness may not be evil, of course. But it doesn't constitute chowderhood, either.

Which brings us to director Kevin Smith and his movie "Dogma." Masterpiece? Or chowder sans clams? A comedy that explores the existence of God - but much more so the validity of religious doctrine - Smith's film has been put on the block by its distributor Miramax, evidently to stave off a confrontation with parent company Disney. The assumption is that Smith's irreverence will make it hotter to handle than a heisted Vatican hat rack. And as we all know, politicized perception needs no reality other than itself.

Whether the real cause for Disney's displeasure is Smith's lampooning of Mickey Mouse (not by name, exactly, but the point is made) or whether there are real religious reservations is, at this point, moot. It doesn't matter. The mark of Cain is upon it.

Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, Linda Fiorentino. Automatic weapons. Off-color humor. I smell money. Maybe even clam. But no distributors who saw the film has wanted to take the plunge so far. "Well," several said, "if it were a good movie . . ." Oh yeah. You know, like all those other Quality Pictures occupying the multiplex. (The word is that Lion's Gate, MGM and Artisan are all still in the running.)

Smith, director-writer of such hits as "Clerks" (1994) and "Chasing Amy" (1997), is the first to trash his visual technique. "Complete lack thereof," he said at the Cannes Film Festival. "Very pedestrian director. God willing, someday I'll get better. But right now, this is the best I can do."

"Clerks" might have worked just as well on radio; "Chasing Amy" suffered more than a bit from Smith's proclivity for long-winded characters. But you can't deny that his dialogue is always full of provocative ideas. Likewise, "Dogma," which manages to affirm the faith while still asking all those questions any young believer asks on the way from Sunday school to becoming a rational human being. You can't help but question certain things, unless you're an automaton. But it doesn't necessarily mean you lose your faith, as Smith proves.

"I'm a practicing Catholic," he said. "Defender of the faith. I still believe. That's what the movie is about.

"The crime is, you're not allowed to question," he said. "I mean, I didn't go anywhere. There was a time I looked around for another religion, but I didn't make it too far. And when I heard . . . [critics] calling me anti-Catholic I was so - - - and hurt, because, I thought, `Man, I'm doing your job. I'm out there talking up Christ.' You read their literature and never does it say, `P.S., God bless you.' It's mean-spirited. I've read the Bible. Nowhere does Christ say, `Go out among the masses and kick - - - among anybody who doesn't agree with Me.' "

Smith has, essentially, a comic-book sensibility, and there are some who'll never reconcile that with their personal concept of the divine. There are plenty of aesthetes who'll shun "Dogma" for its ham-handedness; others may fault its theology. But amid the madcap humor and action, it has a hunger for answers that's refreshing. Even uplifting.

What's really causing a crisis of faith for me, however, is the movie industry. Just when they've convinced us that the dollar is Almighty, they start worrying about public relations and religious conservatives. It's like . . . well, it's like discovering the clam has no clothes.