The film is set in the fictitious inner city Flint Street Primary School, on the Welsh-Cheshire borders. It focuses on the seven- and eight-year-old pupils in that evening's sole performance of the school nativity play, from the pre-performance classroom preparations to the final stage performance, which culminates in calamity.
Le film raconte la naissance, la vie, la mort et la résurrection de Jésus, à travers le regard de sa mère, Marie de Nazareth, la sainte Vierge Marie, humble femme, sans péché, honorée d'être la mère du Christ.
In Palestine during the Roman Empire, Jesus Christ of Nazareth travels around the country with his disciples preaching to the people about God and salvation of their souls. He claims to be the son of God and the Christ. He is arrested by the Romans and crucified. He rises from the dead after three days.
In The Bronx, the Lieutenant drops his two sons off at Catholic school. After they leave the car, and before he drives to work, the Lieutenant takes a few small bumps of cocaine. His first case is a double murder. He wanders away from the scene to get some coffee, and across the street, he watches a petty thief rifling through the trunks of parked cars, which the Lieutenant ignores. He approaches a group of drug dealers, who run off as he approaches. The Lieutenant follows one dealer into an apartment building and up the stairs. The dealer waits for him in the hallway, and the Lieutenant gives him a bag of drugs from a crime scene. The Lieutenant quickly smokes some crack, and then sets aside a portion of the drugs for himself. The thief promises to give him the money he makes from selling the drugs in a few days. At an apartment, the Lieutenant gets drunk and engages in a threesome with two women. Meanwhile, a nun is raped in a church by two young hoodlums.
Le curé d'un sanctuaire et d'un lieu de pèlerinage (qui n'est pas nommé mais ressemble fortement à l'Oratoire Saint-Joseph) engage le jeune comédien Daniel, nouvellement de retour à Montréal, afin de monter une version rafraîchie de la Passion du Christ dans les jardins de ce lieu de culte. Ce dernier réunira une petite troupe de comédiens et en fera une interprétation libre, grandiose et sensible. Lors d'une représentation, des forces de l'ordre interviennent et la lourde croix tombe sur lui. Daniel est transporté en ambulance à «l'Hôpital St.-Marc», un endroit bondé et impitoyable, mais n'y reçoit aucun soin. Il quitte l'hôpital en état de choc et descend dans le métro. Inquiets, deux condisciples l'accompagnent... Daniel, en train de mourir, tient un dernier discours sur l'amour humain qui reste si inaccessible aux gens et qui finit par les tuer: «C'est le manque d'amour qui tue les gens», dit-il. Daniel perd encore connaissance dans le métro. Il est reçu avec humanité et professionnalisme à l'hôpital juif, mais il est trop tard. Ses condisciples donnent «son corps» aux fins de la transplantation. Hautement symbolique, un homme reçoit le cœur et une femme les yeux.
A young boy named Karl Berger (a surname given in the sequel) murders his abusive mother with a meat cleaver, after she beats him for returning home late. Twenty years later, in the mid-1970s, the imprisoned Karl is being transported to an unspecified location by the police, but manages to kill his captors and escape into the wilderness, somehow acquiring a cleaver in the process. Over the course of several days, Karl commits a series of murders across the countryside, mutilating and occasionally cannibalizing his victims. After one double homicide, Karl faints and has a flashback to the day he murdered his mother, revealing he had been coerced into killing her by a demon (which a line of dialogue indicates may be his father) he had encountered in the cellar after being locked in it.
The film begins with a man whispering in despair, "The feeling begins. Very tender, very loving. Then the pain starts. Claws slip underneath the skin and tear their way up. Just before they reach my eyes, they dig in. And I remember. First I fasted for three months. I even whipped myself before I went to sleep. At first it worked. Then the pain came back. And the voices. They call me by the name: Jesus." Jesus of Nazareth is a carpenter in Roman-occupied Judea, torn between his own desires and his knowledge that God has a plan for him. His conflict results in self-loathing, and he collaborates with the Romans to crucify Jewish rebels.
Signs of the apocalypse are appearing, along with a mysterious wanderer. Father Lucci (Peter Friedman) is the Vatican official investigating them. He dismisses the occurrences as natural, but Abby Quinn (Demi Moore) believes that they are real.
The Roman tribune Pontius Pilate then runs Jesus Christ and then, never mind, allows Christ to be executed after being scourged. Crucified and dead, Jesus Christ promises to the faithful that would be resurrected three days after his earthly death. From this point Pontius Pilate begins to be opposed and hated by the Roman people that he realizes his mistake and that the Jews, who in turn are severely punished by the Emperor Tiberius.