by MALCOLM FRASER

Local filmmaker Julian Samuel flies the flag for religious nonbelievers in his challenging new documentary, simply titled Atheism. Samuel caused a little stir in the documentary world a couple of years ago when he slagged off Bowling for Columbine, The Corporation and their pop-cultural ilk as intellectually lightweight. As befits this perspective, Atheism is an extremely dense work devoid of any fluff or comic relief.

Samuel lines up an assortment of thinkers to share their opinions on the topic: activist and The Clash of Fundamentalisms author Tariq Ali, former Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, novelist Alison MacLeod, Queen’s philosophy prof Christine Overall and others. In what can only be considered either a bold throwing down of the gauntlet or a spectacularly ill-advised gesture of audience alienation, Samuel begins the film with MacLeod reading a lengthy excerpt from a book about physics. The subject matter is impenetrable and the text full of jargon, besides which MacLeod is reading from her lap, only occasionally glancing up at the camera.

From this peculiar opening salvo, Samuel dives into a rigorously analytical assault on religion, mixing interview clips with occasional personal reflections and assorted abstract or provocative imagery. The film’s style veers from the obscurism of late Godard (at one point, a quotation in black text is absurdly superimposed on a mostly black background, making it impossible to read) to the slapdash aesthetic of Ed Wood (during one of Ali’s interview segments, he tilts his head, clearly revealing a doorknob gleaming in the black background behind him). Since Samuel is an experienced filmmaker (this is his fifth film since 1994), we have to assume these odd choices are deliberate, but they’re still inexplicable.

Like Richard Dawkins’ much-discussed recent book The God Delusion, Atheism makes not the slightest attempt to win over anyone who might feel that there’s any validity to spiritual beliefs. Rather, it’s an insiders’ discussion by, about and for atheist intellectuals. As such, it contains a lot of interesting information and a few thought-provoking insights. But the unrelenting density and the muddled style might leave you feeling like the morning after a drunken philosophical debate in university: moderately enlightened but undeniably confused, and possibly with a bit of a headache.

Atheism opens this Friday, Dec. 1, at Ex-Centris

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