![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
The Last Temptation of Christ
Last night I watched Martin Scorsese’ The Last Temptation of Christ and was pretty much blown away. I had heard various bits about it recently, but nothing prepared me for the nuanced, intelligent and beautiful portrayal of the Christ story contained in that movie. I personally find it almost unfathomable why conservative Christians were in an absolute uproar over that movie for several years when it first came out (1988, I believe). Whatever liberties it takes, in my opinion, only serve to make the story more real, and the characters more human and approachable.
And damn, Harvey Keitel’s Judas was just awesome. I totally had my doubts at first, but they totally were washed away. I had a couple favorite scenes though. One was when Jesus goes into the desert to hear God’s voice, and he draws that circle, and then says (from the script):
I’m not going to leave this circle. I won’t leave until you talk to me. No hums. No thunder. No headaches. Just talk to me in human words. Whatever path you want, I’ll take. Love or the ax or anything else. Or if you want me to stay here and die I’ll do that too. But you have to tell me.
Also, the altercation that he gets into with the reformed Saul/Paul towards the end was just phenomenal, including when Paul tells him:
I created the truth. I make it out of longing and faith. I don’t struggle to find truth — I build it. If it’s necessary to crucify you to save the world, then I’ll crucify you. And I’ll resurrect you too, whether you like it or not.
I forget where I heard this, but I read something interesting about the very end of this movie. Right after Jesus exclaims “It is accomplished!” the screen goes haywire, and it looks like the film reel is fluttering or burning in all these different colors. I read that Scorsese claims that anomaly actually occurred right at that very moment in his filming, and that he was so astonished by it’s almost miraculous timing and eery beauty, that he left it intentionally in the movie. Has anybody else heard that before? I’m trying to find a source to verify that, but am having trouble.
Anyway, what did you think of this movie? What were your favorite parts? Oh, also that part with Lazarus was really freaky (along with what the Zealots came and did to him later on). I didn’t see Passion of the Christ, but how many million times more profound is this movie than the freaking Da Vinci Code? There’s not even any contest. But at the same time, it’s no wonder that people seem to have seized more readily to the simplistic message of the Da Vinci Code, that Jesus was married and had kids. Because it’s the kind of thing that can be encapsulated and repeated much more simply and quickly than the complex beauty of the conflict between spirit and flesh in the Last Temptation.
September 4th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
I’ve never heard that about the burning film reel at the end of the Last Temptation of Christ - but it’s funny, in Caveh Zahedi’s movie “I don’t hate las vegas anymore” a similar “miraculous” thing happens to the film. If you remember, the movie is about Caveh positing that God is the director of the film since God is creating reality (thus, he throws out his script and let’s whatever happens happen)…. - well, during a scene where everyone is on ecstasy (including his brother and father), already exposed film is loaded in the camera and there is a double image. Very eery timing, I’d say.
Looks like in both movies God is not quite up to par on his omnipotence claim when it comes to using camera equipment.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:14 am
I saw ‘Last Temptation’ a few years ago and thought it was the most human portrayal of Jesus in any movie. I’ve seen those Jesus movies you get in the mail from some church and probably a bunch of others on tv, and they all have this stupid look on their faces and look and sound like they are reading from a script. Granted those movies are probably just low budget and don’t have any professional actors, but still. I had to read Kazantzakis’ book, and after it sitting on the shelf for over 2 years I finally read it a few months ago and it was great. Jesus wasn’t just God incarnate, he was a man struggling with himself and his spirit or God and he didn’t know if he was crazy or not. He goes through different stages of gnosis, that we all go through, in our struggle to know ourselves and God or whatever you want to call it. I haven’t seen ‘Passion of the Christ’ and don’t really need to see a guy get beat up for a few hours so I feel sorry for sinning my arse off.
My favourite scene, it’s been a while, but I think it’s when Jesus begs Judas to betray him. It’s not just some guy who want’s 30 pieces of silver, but the mans friend, and he struggles with that.
All Jesus wanted was to live a normal human life, have a wife and family and die happy. He didn’t want to be God and save humanity from itself. I liked the end where he wakes up from his dream and renounces it, he’s not sacrificing his body, but his LIFE, the one he wants more than anything.
In the book, people are constantly screwing with his message and interpreting it their own way, and he can’t do anything about it because he himself doesn’t know exactly what he means, then he just gives up trying to explain himself. The book and movie are less traditional than the biblehumping crowd likes, maybe because of some of the story between Jesus and Magdalene, or some of the Gnostic stuff in it, and probably the scrambling of his message by his followers, which is what they believe.
You gotta ask yourself, would you listen to a robot reading a script, or a man saying what’s on his heart?
September 5th, 2005 at 12:45 am
You know what else I really liked about it? How carefully Willem Defoe was able to sort of “tread the line” in the scenes that Jesus was preaching and saying “I’m God! It’s me!”
It really makes you realize how often you hear crazy people exclaiming exactly that same message, and how you pretty much never would take them seriously. And assuming people back in the old days were more or less like people now, they’d likely have had the same reactions as we would: “Oh that guy’s just a nut!” and so on. It really drove that point home for me in an excellent way.
If Jesus came back today, nobody would believe him either. Which is I guess partly where the miracles come into play.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:59 am
That bit about the “anomaly” sounds like horseshit to me. A bit too convenient.
Few “great” filmmakers have been such a disappointment to me as Martin Scorsese, but I do recall liking Last Temptation when I eventually caught up with it. The “dream” bit at the end of the film irritated me, though.
September 5th, 2005 at 2:15 am
Speaking of horseshit, I’ve always wondered why those handful of “Christian” stations in the UHF are of such low power and shitty picture quality. Wouldn’t God see to it that the signals of these networks be boosted? Or when a “Christian” radio or TV station encounters technical difficulties, doesn’t that make the employees and missionbound interns paranoid that they’ve wronged God in some way? Of course the same people who believe in a literal 6 day creation and Noah’s flood and that dinosaur fossils and the Grand Canyon are mere thousands of years old have a much more prosaic answer for those “anomalies”. Technical difficulties.
Christians today don’t even believe in the power of their own God performing miracles anymore. The wellspring of awe has been capped and dried and the great flock, as ever, are now no more than consumers of a rather corporate appearing sham. I’m not even talking minor superstition here. The only miracles of note I’ve seen are those which smite their perceived enemies such as the “fetus shape” of Katrina’s cloud bands and the ubiquitous miracle of God provinding financial security to all who buy the right books, attend the required seminars and bible studies. Everything is workaday and uninspiring. Isn’t it funny? They even take antibiotics and spray new pesticide compounds on their fields as evolution would predict they must and think nothing of it.
Frankly, Americans for the most part exhibit the distinct inability to be religious at all. Religion and “spirituality” are perfectly constant and immutable, while “Satan” is the only entity *they believe in* who has the ability to improvise. Some god the American ChristCo Cult have there.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
a few generations of consumerism is all it took to create the industry of religion. it is the demand side economic process at work. the consumer wants “fastgod” or “mcgod”. a quick fix similar to band-aids and wieght-loss pills or bowflex. the evangelists understand this and thier broadcasts emulate the infomercial. mel gibson made religious porn for grandmothers and maiden aunts to scare the fuck out of little children. “see, he died horribly, for over 40 minutes, for your sins. then he was resurrected”.
how can a personal path towards divinity compete with the hollywood version?
September 6th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
The movie is amazing. The book is even better. The uproar was caused by an alleged early draft of the script that was leaked to the press– in this early version, Jesus was supposed to have told Mary Magdalene (after they had sex) that God slept between her legs.
No shit. Not making this up.
Whether the line actually was in the script is speculative, but I remember hearing the line and cracking up. It made me want to go see it. Imagine my disappointment when the movie was actually very intelligent and restrained!
I haven’t seen “Passion” yet but I want to, ever since Quentin Tarantino raved about the movie as a work of cinema and not a statement about Christ. His review helped me see past the hoopla and remember that a movie, above all, must be judged on whether it is cinematic and entertaining. I have a feeling that “Passion Of The Christ” is entertaining on the same level that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is entertaining to me. And if it turns out to be better than I expected, I won’t feel like I did a 180 degree on my “beliefs”.
I joked a year ago that the “Passion” DVD would have extra scenes of Christ getting pummelled to a bloody pulp. But I have a feeling that the movie is more than just red dye #5 and a lot of mortician’s wax.