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The Last Temptation of Christ
(****)
Movies based on religion, especially Judeo/Christianity, have always been met with protests from a very loud group of religious wackaloons who want nothing more than to force everyone to think exactly like them. At the time of The Last Temptation of Christ's release, they were calling it blasphemous and heretical. It's a shame; not only is it not that, but the groups were calling the film blasphemous without having seen anything about it.
That bothers me. It's as if these people think that no film can capture magic, like art isn't possible if it isn't at least a millenium old. We recently saw a similar upset over Kevin Smith's powerful "Dogma" and also a few others, including "Stigmata". I can't speak for Stigmata, but both Dogma and The Last Temptation of Christ deal with the subject of Christianity and divinity in a more mature and developed manner than any one of these religious groups.
The story centers around Jesus of Nazareth. We meet him as a man in his early 30's; plagued by a voice who claims to be God, he's constantly told that he must spread the word that God is coming. Jesus knows that this means he can not live a life, and he tries to spite him at every point. Jesus the carpenter is building crosses for Roman crucifixion, and his fellow Jews are quite upset that a Jew is killing Jews with the cross. His friend Judas (Harvey Keitel) is ready to kill Jesus just to slow the Romans down.
But God isn't abandoning Jesus, and finally the man accepts the responsibility, however reluctantly. It takes a meeting with John the Baptist (Andre Gregory) to let Jesus see that God isn't coming, he's here. It's painful for Jesus the man. He's consumed by regret that he's not allowed the most simple things; a wife, children. He's filled with pain that he must ignore his mother, and he allowed Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey) to become a prostitute because God told him he could not marry.
The story takes us on a long journey; from his acceptance of God to his death on the cross. And it paints Jesus not as a divine image so much more powerful than evil, but rather as a man.
That's the problem; over the last 2000 years, the Catholic church has put such a spin on the life of Jesus that people don't see him as a man anymore; but that's what could be so powerful. And that's the central power to the movie here. It's about a man, a simple man like you, me, or anyone else; and how he can fight off evil just by having faith. What's so wrong with that?
I haven't given you the half of what this movie is, both superficially and metaphorically speaking. If viewed properly, this may rank as one of the most thought provoking films I have ever seen.
Religion seems to have a large chasm with your average Scorcese character; but the central message is the same. Also, there's a certain familiarity with all the characters too. We don't have characters speaking with lots of "thou's" and so forth. Instead, we have a guy on the street walking up to us and telling us how it is.