Tommy Hartung’s 60-minute video “The Bible” is a captivating, hectic montage of animation, found news footage and music. It’s supposed to be a contemporary interpretation of the Old Testament, but except for a lovely musical version of the 23rd Psalm, sung by the British boy band the Choirboys, it’s hard to discern specific biblical references. Footnotes would be helpful. But there is a majestic quality to the whole as it ranges from real-world images of terrible violence to nearly abstract scenes of hallucinogenic beauty. Numerous sequences involve stop-action animation of collages and assemblages.

In one part, you hear excerpts from an interview with the physicist David Bohm, whose philosophical discussion about thinking sounds eminently sane. At other points, Osama bin Laden gives a speech in absolutist Quranic language, and Chelsea Manning, formerly Pfc. Bradley Manning, who leaked classified documents to WikiLeaks, recites an emotionally affecting statement in court.

The jerky imagery of two dolls impaled on a metal rod accompanies a digitized voice telling about a pair of South African men who were stoned by a mob after they were caught having sex. The heartbreaking story of John Constantino, a New Jersey man who immolated himself on the National Mall in Washington last year, is accompanied by gooey psychedelic text and illustrated by a horrifying video that a witness recorded.

Unlike the Bible, wherein God oversees and occasionally redeems humanity’s chronically self-defeating turmoil, this movie seems to have no divine authority in charge of events. Nevertheless, there’s a heartening amplitude of spiritual imagination and pragmatic invention in what Mr. Hartung has wrought.

Read it in The New York Times