Customer Reviews

Bloodline

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This movie is really for the open minded. At first I was opposed to any negative view particularly when it came to my belief. I realized I needed to do my own research, if for nothing else but to prove I was right. Was I ever wrong. The pain & betrayal I felt for being lied to by the Vatican. For me, truth must win out no matter what. I find most people who give negative reviews never even take the time to read up on the subject. It's the only way you will ever be satisfied with the results. I find this film riveting. It confirms everything I've read and more. Too bad the average person doesn't realize that even our government has fed us garbage throughout the centuries and have their own agenda. What a true eye opener they would experience. Then they would realize nothing is outrageous of what people will do for power.

Bloodline Review

"Bloodline" is a documentary from the Cinema Libre Studio directed by Bruce Burgess that explores the popular belief that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fled to France with their child by following clues left in churches. It sounds very "DaVinci Code" and according to IMDB was released in 2008, 2 years after the "DaVinci Code" movie, more than likely in response to the peak of interest in the subject raised by the book/movie.

Bruce Burgess right away comes clean that the interest in the book is what propelled him to investigate the claims. He goes straight to the Louvre within the first few minutes and talks about the hidden messages in paintings and literature. The footage in the film has been taken from 2005 to 2006.

Burgess speaks with a spokesman for the Priory of Sion that became a public organization in 1956 but could not give away all the answers. This man indicated that certain works of arts are coded to allow a journey to the truth but it is too dangerous to say outright on film. Another mysterious guy in a cafe walks up and hands the spokesman a card with writing on it after which he shut up. Is the Priory real or a hoax? If it were a hoax, it is unlike any other hoax in history making the documents and "proof" so difficult to come across hiding the materials in libraries and churches. By releasing information gradually over a great deal of time, it is a lot more likely to eventually become widely accepted.

Tim Wallace-Murphy, an author on cracking codes speaks about Latin and anagrams and solving puzzles. He speaks of it as a game but asks the question, who is playing it? The claim is that Jesus did not come to die on the cross for the peoples' sins but to guide others to a path of a way of living and spirituality which would be a different version that would undermine the church's message for years. If a bloodline could be proved and came to light, many changes would take place. Some people the author met claiming to be from the bloodline were descended from Jersuleum, but it is unclear if they are direct from Jesus.

Burgess does a lot of investigating into his subject's backgrounds for authenticity and some people refuse to go on camera and are instead audio recorded. He tracks down a Nicolas Haywood who claims not to be a Priory of Sion member though others are convinced that he is. Haywood does agree to go under the lights on camera and agrees for the record that there is a bloodline and there is evidence for it, but the series of items that prove the bloodline are kept together in secret that he will not divulge. He puts on an aura as the cigarette smoking man like in "The X-Files" and seems much more mysterious with the smoke whirling around.

Suddenly Burgess' phones are apparently being bugged and he gets more involved in the story and it is hinted Burgess himself might be in danger too as well as people he is bringing into it. Haywood indicates that men who talk too much get poisoned, labeled as a cerebral hemorrhage including one person who dies before they can interview him. This is just the beginning!

The drama makes it very exciting with more at stake and might make you feel like you are living the DaVinci Code story all over again but you have to ask how much of it is contrived and how much is real. It is presented in an amazing way with discoveries supposedly being made live on camera, but from another perspective it all potentially could have been planted. There wasn't anything in the film that it wasn't possible in manufacturing circumstances, but then again it could all be real depending on how much you want to buy into it. The filmmaker obviously comes to a point of belief and continues to relate it in commentary. Whether you believe is completely up to you, but it's an interesting ride to say the least either way.

DVD Extras:

First off, the trailer for "The Beautiful Truth" that automatically played to get to the main menu caught my attention right away because it was so off topic of this piece and plays on a common fear people have about their teeth and claims to expose the greatest mercury poisoning one could have might be from fillings in their mouth and ominously asks "How many fillings do you have?"

For bonus features, there is an extended interview with Nicolas Haywood without being cut up like in the film. Absent of the music, it's a little less spooky but more informative and realistic. The deleted scenes are in low resolution video with the website address etched across the center and show footage of taking the chest to a museum, coded messages in a church, exploring a quarry and underground labyrinth, and more tomb footage.

Director Bruce Burgess and Producer Rene Barnett have a commentary track for the film. After starting off talking about his red watch strap and the difficulties of looking pensive in the car while his cameraman attempted not to fall over, he admits that Haywood is the Bloodline version of Cancer Man from X-Files. They remark on how exciting some of their findings were and how some people were mysterious and withholding in their giving of information. Also the many warnings that Rene gave by phone are acknowledged but not explained. Many facts are just acknowledged but not expanded very much on.

More fascinating are the images of scientific documents examining hair found at the tomb and the fact that they aren't afraid to put them on the DVD. If you get the chance, check out this movie's website. It has a really neat opening graphic and is very detailed with more information about the film including news, a blog, and a photo gallery. [...]

Man creates documentary about the bloodline of Jesus, with compelling evidence that Jesus did not die on the cross. It sounds like a great premise. Unfortunately, the evidence is not compelling and the attempt to make it more exciting comes across somewhat overblown, like the kabuki acting in Ran (Kurosawa's kabuki version of King Lear - great film; this isn't).

If you have read The Da Vinci code (or saw the Tom Hank's cliff note version - another good film), you have an inkling of what is going on. In this film, Bruce Burgess digs deep into the world of the Priory of Sion and the mystery of Bérenger Saunière and Rennes-le-Château, the village where he was a priest. If you have read the source material Dan Brown used (Margaret Starbird's books, or Holy Blood, Holy Grail), you are right on track.

Within the first few minutes, we are thrown into a faux thriller, with unseen baddies that are apparently out to hurt, maim or kill all of the participants in the film. I say unseen as we never get a glimpse of any of the bad guys, nor does anyone associated directly with the film die. There is one person who dies of a stroke, or cerebral hemorrhage, but there is no evidence this person could have given any information or was killed due to his association with this film.

The film lost me within the first few segments. Rather than state allegedly or possibly, all of the theories, no matter how out there, are stated as facts. Characters known to have perpetuated fraud are presented as persecuted visionaries. It gets a bit annoying after you realize the entire film is going to be this sort of propaganda.

Where it starts to get funny is when the narrator (Bruce Burgess) starts re-enacting bits as if they were filmed as the story unfolded. You know the bits are re-enacted as no low-budget documentarian would film every time he picked up the phone, just in case his producer was calling to tell him some guys (the invisible bad guys) were coming to get him so he should stay away from his hotel. It continues to get more and more sensation as the film goes on.

After tooling around Paris and London, talking to a couple of "Priory insiders" (both of which appear to be a marbles short), and speculating about a possible murder by stroke, the filmmaker and his French producer finally get to Rennes-le-Château.

In Rennes-le-Château, they find a local artist who takes them down to a secret room that nobody has seen (except of course anyone who has asked, according to many Rennes sites) and start to unravel the mystery that leads to the tomb.

During the last half, we find a secret box that contains a stone chalice (Indy fans will be thinking "carpenter's cup") a perfume annointing jar and a variety of ancient coins. These are found in the well known "Cave of the Magdalene" across the valley from Rennes-le-Château. They are very fortunate, indeed, that no Rennes explorers were smart enough to find this.

Then, it gets better. Late at night, Ben Hammot takes them down a side road and has them stand guard while he goes to film (and desecrate) the tomb. Just like any other documentarian worth his salt, Bruce says "sure, go film that all by yourself and I will stand guard." Okay, so he doesn't actually say that, but the film in the movie is supposedly shot by Ben, all by his lonesome.

The best part of the movie, for me, is when he talks to Robert Eisenman, a well known liberal bible scholar and archaelogist. Eisenman nicely hands Bruce Burgess his head on a platter, explaining why he should not be too excited: "It's too perfect! Why is the shroud sitting there with the cross so you can see? Why, in a wet climate like Southern France, hasn't that whole thing rotted away?" Priceless.

If you don't mind loose facts, you can very well come away a bit excited about this film. If you are looking for a film to "prove" religion is bogus, and don't care much about how loosely the evidence is chained, you might like it.

Despite the fact the film is horrible on facts, I would have given it a better rating if the cloak and daggar stuff actually worked. As it stands, it feels like it is woven into the story to make it an easier sell. There are parts that are so obviously restaged that it comes across as Vaudeville.

On the plus side, the film is fairly well filmed for a low budget documentary. The filmmaker also does not take potshots at his guests (ala Bill Maher or Michael Moore). But he also stacks the deck with Rennes enthusiasts, "experts" simpathetic to the Bloodline theory and liberal biblical scholars. Not exactly the balanced approach.

I would like to see this subject revisited in a fair, unsensationalized documentary. I would also like more information on what has transpired with the evidence since they finished editing the film last year. I would like to see the DNA test results, etc.

Recently I watched the "feature pseudo-documentary," including all bonus features, Bloodline. In a nutshell the documentary presents a series of interrelated claims like the existence of Jesus' and Mary Magdalene's offspring; the protection of this bloodline by the 12th century, still existing and very powerful secret society the Priory of Sion (the real mover behind the Templars); and its coming out of hiding through its recent grand master Pierre Plantard. Central to the story is also the Roman Catholic priest, Bérenger Saunière, who found around the turn of the 19th century evidence of the whole lineage hidden in his church in Rennes-le-Chateau. He became subsequently very rich and left curious clues of his knowledge for later generations to find. Burgess did interviews with self-declared representatives of the Priory, Gino Sandri and Nicolas Haywood, who were so kind to corroborate many of the astounding claims. Burgess was also to meet a British Lord to receive important additional information, but the chap suspiciously died a few days before the meeting would take place. Burgess then buddies up with a British treasure-hunter, Ben Hammot, and together, following Saunière's clues left in little bottles, find very suggestive evidence in a tomb close to Rennes-le-Chateau with possibly Mary Magdalene's remains. Hammot provides some footage of the inside of the tomb, though it's not really clear when and where the footage was taken. It has a mummy draped in something resembling a Templar tunic. They take a hair sample and have it analyzed by a professional laboratory and present the results indicating a middle-eastern origin.

Before giving my own interpretation, it looks that reviews of the film range between Paul Smith's debunking two-liner and Rob Humanick's enthusiastic assessment. Paul Smith described the documentary as an "[a]ssortment of pseudo-historical claims, hoax treasure discoveries and motley crew of charlatans. Totally uncritical 'documentary' giving the doubt to the extremely ludicrous." (1) Rob Humanick stated that "[c]oncrete or not, however, the physical evidence of his [Jesus'] bloodline as shown here is awesomely compelling, from interviews with individuals claiming intimate knowledge on the Priory of Sion--the organization rumored to have long protected the secrets of Jesus' life as covered up by the Catholic Church--to an extended exploration of a French tomb that contains what may very well be the mummified remains of Mary Magdalene." (2)

There seem to be at least three ways to deal with the whole Priory of Sion / Rennes-le-Chateau / Jesus' bloodline issue:

(continued on the Alpheus.org web site)

Sorry, but all I can suggest for the individuals in this "documentary" is a good series of beginning acting classes. This is such a laughable attempt at a hoax, it almost seems like a parody. Around every turn is some mysterious, deadly presence. Strangers approach the filmmaker with unheard-of historical finds they've never revealed to anyone else. A researcher finds not one but FOUR hidden bottles with earth-shattering evidence, buried just ever so sliiiiightly beneath a handful of dirt in a cave or underneath a rock. Within the bottles are parchments that are clearly modern-day note paper in absolutely pristine condition, spelling out all the secrets of Christianity. These ancient documents and artifacts are handled with all the care of a child rummaging through a box of Cracker Jacks. Every time an important artifact is found, the camera suddenly and inexplicably begins to move erratically and goes in and out of focus, despite being perfectly steady and clear moments before. Interviews are conducted always at night, sometimes with eerie, low-level lighting like you see in old-time horror movies. The filmmaker speaks into the camera lens in a manner reminiscent of "The Blair With Project". It's too much. It would have made a hilarious parody, if only they'd had the presence of mind to go in that direction. Instead, it's a dishonest attempt to cash in on the hype created by The Da Vinci Code. Just pitiful.

One especially hilarious image is the filmmaker in his seat on a train, reading "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", with about a hundred different colored page markers, none labeled, covering just about every inch of the book.

If you're a fan of the unintentionally funny, you'll probably get a few pretty good laughs out of this. Beyond that, you'll be looking for your 4 bucks and two hours of your life back.

Ridulous if competent attempt to catch the coat-tails of Da Vinci Code. This is plainly a hoax, fairly well-acted by the lead, the putative filmmaker. He's oh so skeptical - as evidenced by his repeated claims that he's skeptical. He's not a shameless exploiter of the stupid - no - he's Open Minded. He's a Maverick intellectual, no less. You don't need a PhD to make great archaeological discoveries, he insists. This, of course is true. And also, there is no license for making movies; any crackpot or fraudster can (and does) do it.

Yes, true believers - Mary Magdalene is buried in France. The Man doesn't want you to know. (The Man = the Catholic Church) But you, brave truth-seeker, will go boldly, where no hoax-ster has gone before! Yes, into her very tomb. Of course, the Man will surely suppress these astounding discoveries. But you, noble Seeker of Truth, you now HAVE THE TRUTH on film.

I kind of enjoyed the wild-eyed goofballs they had playing representatives for the fabled Priory of Sion. (People, just google this. This is well-established as a hoax.) Were they in on the joke? Or did the movie makers troll through the underbelly of the lunatic world of conspiracy theorists, to find these people - dropping hints, looking knowingly, pretending to be afraid, or to be holding back on much more information. Hungry actors, or crazies? You be the judge - IF you have what it takes to sit through this dreck. They did go after, and get a small amount of usable footage from real scholars - not that what those PhDs said supported the silly premise of the film.

So if you really want to know if Jesus was married - seriously, you should look elsewhere. Ask any real historian, who isn't on the crackpot fringe. There is not a shred of credible evidence in this "documentary" for anything about ancient history, and abundant evidence of hoaxing. But if you enjoy stupid for stupid's sake - this movie may go down well with a couple of beers, and a few friends who love Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Believe it or not, this movie offers some interesting information that most Christians may not know. I think it is important to think critically about your beliefs and this book brings to light interesting questions for the believer to consider. The movie offers some interesting things with which you can then continue your own investigation. The movie suggests that Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross, but instead died several days afterwards. It also suggests that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife and that they had children and that the Church has continued to cover up these interesting details of Jesus' life.

Bloodline is an entertaining pop documentary that purports to examine the controversial assertion that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and like any red blooded American schmuck passed on his DNA down a line of descendents to the present day. This secret and the existence of evidence in support of it are supposedly currently guarded by the secret society the Priory of Sion. Our investigator/filmmaker Bruce Burgess takes us to the belly of this mysterious beast by way of Rennes-le-chateau, France where it's said that the evidence and possibly Mary Mag's mummy are entombed.

Once there our intrepid investigator attempts to solve the case by way of a motley crew of characters most of whom lean towards the comicly shady to say the least. Amateur archaelogist Ben Hammott's suspiciously successful mini "quest" is a hoot for sure and takes up the better part of the middle of this thing. Sion member Nicolas Haywood lends his own special brand of levity to to the proceedings, but it's hard not to imagine that he's really Peter O'toole having some fun at the filmmaker's expense. There are also suggestions of danger and murder conspiracies which are sadly laughable.

For anyone with two brain cells to rub together it's obvious that there's no attempt at due diligence by the filmmaker. There's barely any real critical analysis here although the material is just begging for it. Questions that would be obvious to a 10 year old are just left like so many loose ends. There are no real questions to be begged here though. The filmmaker doesn't take any of this to any real conclusions. He tells us what he believes no more no less - no harm no foul. As is usually the case with this type of documentary "you be the judge". To his credit he does occasionally question whether he's being scammed or not. By the very end he also provides us with the only voice of reason via Prof. Robert Eisenman who provides the sole instance of intelligent skepticism so lacking in the rest of the documentary. It's a little too late but it's enough to demonstrate that the filmmaker's intention isn't merely to scam less critical viewers.

As goofy as this film was I was gladly entertained by it. The controversy is intriguing and it's handled imaginatively here. It has much in common with those ufo/bigfoot psuedo-documentaries that were so popular on television and in theatres in the 70's and 80's. 'Bloodline' is only a hairs width more legit than those, but of course it comes no closer to being serious journalism. Anyone clueless enough to review this as a such has only punked themselves. If you're at all entertained by the tall tales related to Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' you might like this.

The comments by Margaret Starbird and Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong at the very end of the film are certainly food for thought and warmed me to the film enough to recommend it as light entertainment. For a more rational investigation the the Mary Mag caper I'd suggest the dvd The Real Davinci Code with veteran English actor Tony Robinson.

Documentary style trying to capitalize on the success of "The DaVinci Code". If you want to spend 2 hrs being bamboozled watching this guy walk around and close-ups of his face this DVD is for you.

I LOVED this documentary, it's so cutting edge, and riveting to watch, I was on the edge of my seat, and watched all the extras.... very pleased, well done, a great documentary at last! Long live the Grael!