The Last Temptation of Christ, directed by Martin Scorsese, and based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, is one of the most controversial religious films ever made. There is no way of covering all of the points to be made about this movie and its impact on its genre in this review, but I’ll take a stab at highlighting some of the good points and bad points as I perceived them:
1. The entire film feels like a Bible movie on drugs. Basically, it’s the Gospel According to a Really Bad Trip. The fact that Jesus is being played by Willem Defoe – the Green Goblin from Spider-Man – and that Pontius Pilate is played by David Bowie – the Goblin King from Labyrinth – does nothing to tone down that psychedelic flavor. It’s not just the actors either; the entire universe feels not entirely of our own world, but rather some sort of jagged-edged dream-state, crossed between a mystical Middle East and a boozed-up Bronx. That having been said, there is a certain surreal quality to the surroundings that is also kind of effective as a device for chronicling a battle with inner demons, and for “pulling back the veil” of the sacred to behold the raw and gritty realities of our lives. This fits Kazantzakis and Scorsese to a tee, as the two of them have a history of dealing with the dark underbelly of religious imagery and themes, not so much as cynics but as searchers – and that’s why I’m actually more sympathetic to them than I ordinarily would be.
2. Jesus is depicted as a troubled, moody, and sometimes violently passionate man, almost eternally at odds with Himself and His mission – not to mention seeming to have severe antisocial tendencies and being super disrespectful to his mom, way beyond the “Who are my mother and brothers?” dialogue from the Scriptures. Even though He ultimately submits to the Father’s will, this rather unflattering portrayal caused a ton of consternation amongst orthodox Christians. The film tends to fixate on the notion of Christ’s dual natures of humanity and divinity being at war with one another. While I appreciate certain elements of this (especially since it seems the author intended it to reflect an “everyman” struggle to overcome the flesh and embrace the spirit), I think that it not only strays from traditional Christian thought on the subject but also makes Jesus seem like a schizophrenic. The orthodox understanding of the hypostatic union is that Jesus was a “split-screen” of natures, but at the same time, rather a perfect union of them. This is not to say that He wasn’t sorely tempted, that He had all of the answers, or that He didn’t have a whole host of normal human emotions, but the portrayal I get from reading the Gospels is not that of a loony-tune constantly second-guessing Himself and having a midlife crisis every fifteen minutes. In essence, I feel like Last Temptation took a good idea (i.e. focusing on the humanity of Jesus and his struggles), but then let it run away with them to the point of making Jesus not only unlikeable but also unstable and quite possibly out of his head.
3. The imagery in this movie is a cross between compelling and creepy. Probably one of the more compelling aspects was the famous “circle” Jesus draws in the sand, where He is subsequently tempted by a snake (the flesh), a lion (the ego), and Satan himself, in the form of a British-accented pillar of flame, promising to return to haunt him. As I was watching it, I was thinking aloud: “Only a dissident Greek Orthodox dude and a dissident Roman Catholic dude could POSSIBLY create something like this” (especially if they were on weed at the time!) We get everything from Jesus doing a “Sacred Heart” pose, by LITERALLY pulling his beating heart out of His chest, a Last Supper where the Eucharist LITERALLY turns into flesh and blood in his apostles’ mouths, to bringing Lazarus back to life… but more in the form of a rotting zombie corpse than a living man (and apparently the whole thing freaks Jesus out just as much as it does the audience). Oh, and then there’s the demon-child disguised as a guardian angel that insists Jesus should come down from the cross, then kisses His wounds, rather like Catholics do on Good Friday when we kiss a wooden cross in remembrance (I actually found that part perverse, but effective). Not to mention the get into the “dream sequence” sex which Jesus has with Mary Magdalene – quite frankly, unnecessary – designed only to get across some sort of “point” that Jesus was tempted on the cross, not with glory and power and riches, but with the ordinary life of an ordinary man; a super interesting supposition, but again, just taken too far with the visuals for shock factor effect. Also… who put the hippy bandana on Jesus for the Palm Sunday scene?
4. On a positive note, from a Christian perspective, the film takes seriously the mysterious necessity of the cross of this “abandonment” of self, which the God-Man must undergo to become the Messiah, the savior of the world. Actually, I would say that it takes it more seriously than most other films on the subject – plumbing the depths of the concept and the great cost of the cross for Jesus as a man, and a young one at that. The Passion scenes, I found, were some of the most heart-wrenching in the film – even in the case of this flawed portrayal – perhaps all the more so because of the emphasis that Christ, in His humanity, doesn’t always have the answers, but is willing to sacrifice His life to do the Father’s will even so. “Remember, we’re bringing God and man together,” Jesus tells Judas. “They’ll never be together unless I die. I’m the sacrifice… all my life, I’ve been followed by voices, by footsteps, by shadows, and do you know what that shadow is? The cross. I have to die on the cross, and I have to die willingly.” Later on, in Jesus’ “dream sequence,” Judas is going to lecture Jesus for “escaping” the cross. “What are you doing here? What business do you have here, with women, with children? What’s good for men isn’t good for God! Why weren’t you crucified? He was going to be the New Covenant. Now there’s no more Israel.” As this lecture continues, Christ’s wounds begin to bleed copiously, in remembrance, it seems, of the Covenant that was never sealed.
5. The end of the film sees dream-sequence Jesus realize that He’s been tricked by the devil into having abandoned the cross, into living the life of a mere mortal and into being goaded to “die… like a man.” He crawls through the apocalyptic debris of a crumbling earthly Israel, as the Romans massacre the Jews, and pleads with God to take Him back, that He wants to die and rise again, that He wants to be the messiah. In a genuinely powerful cinematic moment, He wakes from a swoon to find Himself naked, blood-drenched, and nailed to a cross, with a bush-like crown of thorns on his head. The crowd around him is restless, the men crucified on either side of him scream. It is the raw horror of it all that makes us truly feel the sacrifice of Christ’s humanity, and what makes it even more powerful is when He smiles through the agony and cries out “It is accomplished!” before He dies, and the film “burns up” in a stark yet suitable finale to a complex and ever-controversial saga.
So, what are my closing thoughts on The Last Temptation of Christ? Well, I wouldn’t say I’d go to it for theological orthodoxy on the hypostatic union, nor for Biblical accuracy on character depictions. Nor would I go to it, for that matter, on how to look classy in a bandana! But, like its latter-day remake Last Days in the Desert, there are good morsels to be taken away from it. I dare say that the prologue of the actual book contains some of the most beautiful reflections on Christology that I have read in quite some time, so I will close with an excerpt from it:
“This book was written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation, or death-because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then, pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and, at that instant, death was vanquished forever.”
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