Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #236 The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
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I have been putting off watching and writing about The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese’s controversial 1988 exploration of the dual nature of Jesus’ humanity and divinity, for months now.
That’s because my tormented psyche is dominated by the same emotion that rules Jesus’ life and mind at the very beginning of the film: fear. Jesus is afraid that he is not strong enough to endure the unimaginable torment and suffering he intuits his dick of a father God has in store for him (talk about being a hard-ass!).
I similarly was afraid that I was too weak to handle even watching Willem Dafoe’s intense method hippie Jesus get nails pounded into his palms as he hangs on the cross for days, enduring the kind of pain that really gets Mel Gibson’s blood pumping and his motor going.
This has been a brutal week. My three year old has been kicked out of two different preschools in the past five days so let me tell you I know a little bit about SUFFERING.
There’s never an ideal time to watch a 163 minute long movie about a crucifixion but Jesus does a whole lot more than just get crucified in The Last Temptation of Christ. He drops truth bombs. He gets the party started by turning the water into wine. He takes Mary Magdalene to the bone zone in fantasy sequences that had bible-thumpers mad as heck and ready to burn down theaters over the film’s heretical portrayal of Jesus as a deeply spiritual figure who hates the rich and loves the poor. Jesus tells crazy stories that actually have pretty cool messages. In that respect he anticipated Henry Rollins’ career as a spoken-word guru.
Jesus lived. He laughed. He loved. And THEN he was crucified.
But if I was understandably reluctant to revisit a nearly three hour long movie about Jesus’ spiritual anguish I am always excited to revisit the films of Martin Scorsese, particularly those written by Paul Shrader.
I absolutely adored Bringing Out the Dead when I re-watched it for Travolta/Cage and The Travolta/Cage Project and I am in awe of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.
So it is perhaps not surprising that a lot of what I liked about The Last Temptation of Christ is how beautifully it echoes and parallels the themes and obsessions of Scorsese and Schrader’s rightfully revered collaborations.
The Last Temptation of Christ is a Martin Scorsese movie first and foremost and a religious drama an unmistakable second. Scorsese and his screenwriter recreate Nikos Kazantzakis’ controversial novel in their own idiosyncratic image.
In the process they transform Jesus into one of their tortured loners, a brooding introvert torn between the lurid temptations of the flesh and a soul-deep yearning to transcend this wicked world through spirituality and sacrifice. It’s a film of hushed intensity, a prayer whispered into a cosmic void.
The Last Temptation of Christ opens with Jesus living a small, scared life as a cross-builder absolutely terrified of everything. He’s terrified of life. He’s terrified of death. He’s terrified of realizing his destiny. He’s terrified of not realizing his destiny.
Jesus’ life is one of doubt and uncertainty until he decides to put his faith in his heavenly father, and also his legit real-life dad as well. When Jesus becomes a vessel for a divine message the anguish on his face gives way to something more serene and certain.
The soul-wrenching doubt that he previously experienced is replaced by a messianic sense of purpose. Jesus’ voice becomes a deafening trumpet of truth once he stops communicating primarily through intimate, hushed narration rich in philosophy and muted poetry.
The Last Temptation of Christ begins as a somber, understated character study addressing Jesus’ human dimension, the side that’s lustful and ashamed and angry and proud and eminently failable.
It becomes more conventional once Jesus begins preaching a revolutionary gospel of radical anti-materialism and love and hits many of his greatest hits.
Jesus encounters a group stoning Mary Magdalene and admonishes he who is without sin to throw the first stone without uttering those exact words. Jesus turns water into wine and angrily throws money-lenders out of a temple before destroying the temple itself as a degraded palace of sin rather than salvation.
The Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ is a wild-eyed hippie Messiah high on God’s message of love and sacrifice. He's an unabashed Socialist who antagonizes the rich and powerful and gives comfort and solace to the sick, suffering and poor.
In The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese gives us an American Jesus, a New York Jesus, a Method Actor Jesus who associates with sex workers and the poor and reviled but also characters played by the Uber-hip likes of Harry Dean Stanton, John Lurie, David Bowie and Andre Gregory.
But no relationship in Jesus’ life is quite as important as his all-important bond with Judas Iscarot. In a much mocked but powerful performance Keitel plays Judas as a man whose destiny is inextricably intertwined with the man he will famously betray.
Judas knows that Jesus is not strong enough to embrace his destiny as a great teacher and then humanity’s preeminent martyr without a push. A strong man of principle, Judas realizes that it is his own destiny to set Jesus on the path to greatness.
Judas would paradoxically betray Jesus by not betraying him, since he needs to be crucified in order to save humanity.
The unmistakably contemporary, New York nature of Keitel’s performance would be a problem if the entire film didn’t also feel unmistakably modern and East Coast.
David Bowie breaks with the film’s New York vibe with his fascinatingly ambiguous portrayal of Pontius Pilate as a cool pragmatist intrigued by Jesus’ bifurcated identity as a revolutionary, philosopher, cult leader and possible deity.
With just the right note of skeptical dry humor, the Roman leader asks Jesus to perform a magic trick for him and dismisses him as just another Jewish politician. He's less a villain than a functionary doing a job he feels ambivalent about.
On the cross Jesus fantasizes about a timeline where he does not choose to martyr himself for humanity, when a guardian angel gives him a last minute reprieve and instead of realizing his Godly destiny he lives and dies and gets old as a man and experiences all of the things that he has purposefully denied himself: love and sex and fatherhood and the opportunity to be fully, poignantly, unmistakably human instead of being half deity, half man.
THIS is the sequence that madeThe Last Temptation of Christ one of the most controversial and notorious movies ever made and the target of collective action from evangelical Christians who found the movie nothing less than heretical.
From the vantage point of 2021,The Last Temptation of Christ looks less like heresy than an act of devotion. Jesus’ sacrifice is infinitely more powerful because of the doubt and angst and pain that precedes it.
Scorsese’s take on Jesus’ life and death is defined by love and spirituality rather than the hatred and brutality that characterized The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s much lesser take on similar material.
The alternate future section of The Last Temptation of Christ is exactly like the Marvel cartoon What If? except that it imagines what might happen if Jesus was not crucified and lived to marry and procreate and grow old rather than what might transpire if someone was killing all the Avengers.
If you really think about it, Jesus was the original superhero, with super-powers derived from his status as God’s son. Jesus is always telling people, “With great power comes great responsibility” and the movie features a post-credit sequence where Nick Fury recruits Jesus to be one of the Avengers.
“Are you ready to put your life on the line for the sake of humanity?” Fury asks smirkingly. “Wouldn’t be the first time!” Dafoe’s Jesus answers confidently, at which point Tony Stark shows up and asks if anyone is up for some shawarma.
The Last of Temptation consequently works best as a Martin Scorsese melodrama, then as a secret Marvel origin story and finally as a movie about that Jesus freak.
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