“It’s Hollywood’s big atheist comedy,” wrote New York Post movie critic Kyle Smith on Sunday.
Several days before the October 2 release of The Invention of Lying, Smith hinted that the movie “might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros”.
But contrary to what you might think, Smith is not “one of those hyper-sensitive Bible lovers who thinks the secularists are coming to strip my Christmas tree down to a Midwinter Solstice Pole”.
“Actually, no. Like Gervais, I’m an atheist,” he confessed.
And even for Smith, The Invention of Lying was over-the-top.
“Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God,” the film critic wrote in his personal blog.
The movie – in which Gervais directed, produced and starred – is set in an alternative reality in which no one has ever lied. And not only does no one tell a lie, but people often tell the entire truth, or blurt out very blunt remarks and opinions that people in normal society would normally keep to themselves.
Organised religion does not exist in this world, nor are there any forms of fiction, in both film and literature.
So when unsuccessful lecture-film writer Mark Bellison (Gervais) invents the first lie by telling a bank teller that he has $500 more than he actually has (and gets away with it), he begins lying to others and helping people feel better about themselves and help others with their relationships.
The lies start spiralling out of control, however, when he tries to comfort his dying mother at the hospital by telling her that she will not go into a state of nothingness, as she believes, but rather to a place where everyone gets their own mansion and where she will be young and happy and be with the people she loves.
