Bloodline

Directed by Bruce Burgess
Not Rated

Does it matter whether or not anything here is real?

There's an old saying, and I usually unfurl it when it's convenient for my argument, about never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Of course, it's just easy to pick apart a movie for its inaccuracies, so make of that what you will.

Ultimately, the goal of the filmmaker is to entertain his audience. Michael Moore, for example, makes stuff up and purports them as being factual. He engineers specific scenes to play out a certain way. It doesn't make him any less of a filmmaker but it certainly doesn't help his reputation as a paragon of virtue.

This, however, might be an extreme case both for and against never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Bloodline is the latest film by Bruce Burgess, who as a documentarian does not cover African famine or the strange and beautiful creatures of the Galapagos Islands. Instead, he studies Area 51, Bigfoot, UFOs, and now the theory that there is a bloodline from Jesus Christ. Jesus may or may not have died on the cross, so the story goes, but he certainly was married to Mary Magdalene and she bore him at least one child.

If true, of course, it would kind of force a mass reexamination of Christian doctrine. Some believe it would do irreparable harm to the Church, which is why in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the Catholic Church sought to keep this information locked away forever.

Those familiar with that book or the film adaptation will no doubt feel as if they're retracing their steps for a while watching Bloodline, as Burgess tries to uncover the real truth behind history's best kept secret. He talks to members of the Priory of Sion, supposedly the keepers of this secret, a centuries old collection of Europe's finest, who know where the bodies are buried, figuratively if not literally.

Burgess travels to southern France where he meets Ben Hammott - an anagram for The Tomb Man - an adventurer who claims to have uncovered secrets and artifacts that prove many points of the theory Burgess is investigating. Well, that's certainly convenient.

That Burgess seems to find all of these answers when he was setting out to make a documentary about finding all these answers does fit a little too well. Then again, Oxford University and far-flung museums have dated items found during his search that fit Burgess' timeline, from 1st Century cups and coins to 125 year old notes written by the French priest who first found the sacrilegious mother lode. Could it be that after all this time, a guy who made Bigfoot movies could turn Christian thought on its ear?

I don't know if he found anything. I don't know if it's the truth. But Burgess has told a pretty good story and in large measure, that's what really matters. Bloodline is an entertaining yarn. It keeps you thinking and guessing. Of course, if your mind is already made up one way or the other, you'll get nothing out of this.

You ask if Bruce Burgess can really prove any of it? And I ask you if that matters? What he's trying to disprove relies on faith instead of evidence, anyway, so what's the difference?