Christine Hoff Kraemer, Boston University
Boston, MA
Abstract
Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ The
Last Temptation of Christ presents an unorthodox, nonhierarchical
dualism. This dualism has often been negatively interpreted
by critics, leading them to condemn the film for misogyny,
among other sins. Following Scorsese’s intentions
for the film, this essay offers an alternative interpretation
of Last Temptation’s
conflict as one between competing virtues. In addition, it also
positively evaluates the creators’ attempt to lift
the story of Jesus out of traditional Christianity in order
to offer it to a wider audience.
[1] If we consider religion as a storytelling enterprise, the canonized
sacred text becomes problematic even as it establishes a stable
centre for a tradition. In the case of Christianity, the Gospels
provide some of the best-known stories of Western culture, stories
that are cherished by believers, but are also an essential part
of being culturally literate for non-believers. Yet the endless
repetition of the text in both sacred and secular contexts has a
tendency to move some hearers from a position of engagement to one
of numbness and detachment. Particularly in cases where the antiquated,
if beautiful, language of the King James Bible is used, readers
and hearers of the Bible may feel alienated from the meaning of
the text by their sense that it is the product of a wholly other
time and place, written in a language that is not their own. For
others, antiquated language may not represent a barrier, but sheer
overfamiliarity with the same stories told year after year in the
same words may create the same kind of distance. In some cases,
this distance from the meaning of the text is institutionalized,
as in communities where the words themselves are understood to hold
sacred power, and the scriptures are recited as a ritual rather
than examined for their meaning. Even as a fixed text provides continuity
for a tradition, its sheer repetition can produce spiritual apathy,
particularly when a text can only be interpreted within a limited
system of orthodox doctrine.
[2] It is exactly this kind of spiritual deadness in Christians’ relationship
to the story of Jesus that Martin Scorsese sought to dispel when
he decided to film The Last Temptation of Christ. Last Temptation is
only one of the most recent in a long line of Jesus films, but it
is remarkable both for its portrayal of a radically human Jesus
and for the liberties it takes with the biblical narrative, even
as it takes scripture very seriously. Adapted from the book by Nikos
Kazantzakis, the Last Temptation film presents itself not
as being primarily based on the gospels, but instead on “this
fictional representation of the eternal spiritual conflict,” which
Kazantzakis saw as “the incessant, merciless battle between
the spirit and the flesh” (quoted from the film’s opening
sequence).
[3] In “Jesus Christ Movie Star,” William R. Telford
traces the development of the Jesus film from the early part of
the twentieth century. Up until the middle of the century, Jesus
was portrayed as an objectively divine being, often with halo-like
lighting effects and dramatic poses. By the 1960s, a growing
historical consciousness led directors to emphasize the political
situation of Jesus’ day,1 but
only in the 1970s did truly heterodox films begin to appear: in
1973 Jesus Christ Superstar dared to suggest a romantic connection
between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, while Godspell played up
the celebratory side of Jesus’ ministry. Scorsese is the first
filmmaker to attack the problem of Jesus’ simultaneous divinity
and humanity head-on, giving us a saviour who longs for the love
of a woman, a family, and the simple, quiet life of an ordinary
man. As Telford notes, Scorsese also follows Marxist director Pier
Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 The Gospel According to St. Matthew in
attempting to recover Jesus from the influence of centuries of religious
orthodoxy, which both directors perceive as distorting. Finally,
the Last Temptation film represents a response to the orthodox
Biblical epics of Scorsese’s childhood, which he confesses
he loves at the same time as he feels they present a distant and
unapproachable Jesus.2
[4] As Scorsese said in a 1989 interview, his goal was “to
make the life of Jesus immediate and accessible to people who haven’t
really thought about God in a long time.”3 In
pursuit of this goal, the Last Temptation film combines daring
interpretations of scriptural material with images and dialogue
that are entirely the products of the creators’ imaginations.
Unsurprisingly, the three major contributors to the film are all
unorthodox examples of their respective religious traditions. Kazantzakis,
the author of the 1955 book, was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church
and was arraigned for heresy by its hierarchs after Last Temptation’s
publication;4 Paul Schrader
is a Dutch Reformed Calvinist turned Hollywood screenwriter; and
Scorsese, as is well-known, is a liberal Italian-American Catholic.
The film represents the end product of multiple steps of retelling
and translation, with each artist attempting to preserve what they
see as the story’s spirit while allowing the artistic imagination
to breathe new life into the narrative. If one of the primary ways
that human beings make meaning is through religious storytelling,
the Last Temptation film represents a provocative and highly
controversial attempt to tell the Jesus story in a way that makes
it freshly meaningful to contemporary Americans.
[5] The plot of the Last Temptation film revolves primarily
around three characters, Jesus (Willem Dafoe), Judas (Harvey Keitel),
and Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey), all of whom are engaged in
the struggle between the spiritual and material. Judas’ role
in relation to Jesus is complex. He is both a loyal friend and a
voice of challenge, the disciple that, as a nationalist, most opposes
Jesus, and the only one who seems to really understand his message.
As the film opens, we find Jesus racked by painful experiences of
God, making crosses in the hopes that God will reject him. Jesus
is riddled with guilt for what he considers his terrible sins, including
his belief that his refusal to marry Mary Magdalene has driven her
to prostitution. Condemned by Judas for assisting the Romans in
their executions, Jesus makes the decision to stop avoiding God
and go to a monastery in the desert.
[6] There Jesus receives a call to ministry, and with a dubious
Judas at his side, returns to civilization. Not knowing what his
message will be, he opens his mouth and finds himself preaching
love and forgiveness, and the blessedness of the weak and marginalized.
A crowd of disciples grows around Jesus, but Judas still challenges
him; Judas believes that the path of true revolution is to free
the body first, and then to free the soul, while Jesus insists that
to free the body without freeing the spirit is to allow the same
cycle of violence and oppression to begin anew. After an encounter
with John the Baptist, who believes Jesus may be the messiah, Jesus
goes into the desert to encounter God. There he is tempted–first
with domesticity, by a snake using Magdalene’s voice; second
with power, by a lion using the voice of Judas. Satan also appears
before him, and then at last the dying spirit of John the Baptist,
who with Old Testament prophetic fervor urges Jesus to take up the
ax and cut out society’s corruption at the root.
[7] Thus Jesus enters into a new phase of his ministry, characterized
by dramatic miracles, a rhetoric of apocalyptic violence, and increasing
emphasis on himself as the messiah. The word “I” begins
to appear in Jesus’ preaching in a way it did not when he
spoke of love. Judas, naturally, is thrilled–Jesus’ new
focus fits well with his desire to liberate their people from the
Romans. But in the midst of this triumphant ministry, Jesus receives
a vision from God that suggests he must die on a cross in order
to atone for the world’s sins. Cringing from this terrible
fate, Jesus pleads with God to let him have the axe instead; he
leads what is essentially a mob to Jerusalem, but when called to
give the signal to attack, God sends him a sign–blood running
from his palms. Escaping with Judas, Jesus begs his friend to betray
him so that he might be executed, knowing that Judas is the only
disciple with the strength to do so. Jesus holds the Last Supper,
prays at Gethsemane, and is taken by the Romans, tortured, and crucified.
[8] Yet as he hangs from the cross, Jesus faces his last temptation–Satan
comes in the guise of a beautiful angel, tells him that God has
spared him, and gives him the dream of a pleasant, domestic life,
first with Magdalene, then with Mary, Martha, and many children.
Only at the moment of his natural death does the reappearance of
Judas stir him to action–he begs God to take him back like
the prodigal son from the parable, to let him be crucified for the
sake of the world. Instantly he finds himself back on the cross,
the last temptation conquered. Smiling, he cries, “It is accomplished!”
[9] Scorsese’s aim is consciously to freshen the Jesus story
and make it more accessible to American viewers, a task that also
requires him to bend the Kazantzakis’ very Greek novel to
an American context. The director uses a number of techniques to
accomplish this, not the least of which is the vibrant, multicultural
setting which serves as the story’s backdrop and echoes our
contemporary celebration of American pluralism. Jesus’ Israel
pulses with cosmopolitanism; men of many races pass each other on
the street and wait their turn with Magdalene, and the wedding festival
which Jesus attends shows elements of cultural syncretism in both
music and dress. The setting of the story is Israel, but it is an
Israel that consists of more than just Jews and Romans–it
has permeable borders and is part of a thriving Middle Eastern culture.
This rich, exotic backdrop is emphasized by Peter Gabriel’s
memorable score, which includes musicians and instruments from all
over the Middle East and Africa. The desert monoculture familiar
from Sunday School is swept away in an onslaught of exotic sounds
and colours–a world of erotic beauty wholly suitable for tempting
Jesus’ heart. The setting’s lush materiality is perhaps Last
Temptation’s greatest strength as a film. The seductive
splendour of earthly life is not merely described, but demonstrated.
We see, as Jesus sees, that it is good; perhaps we are tempted,
as Jesus also is, to value the material world that we can see over
the spiritual world that we cannot.
[10] Kazantzakis wrote his novel in demotic Greek, the language
of the Greek peasantry, both for reasons of aesthetic effect and
as a way of championing what he saw as the imaginative soul of the
common people.5 Although English
lacks some of the poetic flexibility of this form of Greek, screenwriter
Paul Schrader follows a similar impulse in having Jesus speak in
an easy American vernacular. Parables are retold and famous wisdom
sayings reproduced in natural, twentieth-century American English,
allowing the audience to focus on his meaning in a way that first-century
listeners might have when listening to the Aramaic vernacular of
their day. When Peter attacks the Roman soldier and Jesus stays
his hand, we don’t hear the awkward, third-person statement
of the KJV’s Matthew, “[F]or all they that take the
sword shall perish with the sword,” but instead–as he
dramatically wrests the knife from Peter’s hand and it falls
to the ground–“You live by this, you die by it.” From
his challenge to the crowd at Magdalene’s stoning, “Who
here has never sinned?” to his gentle command to his disciples
at the Last Supper, “Do this to remember me,” Jesus’ words
are made natural and newly relevant to the contemporary viewer.
[11] Moreover, as Scorsese explains in his commentary on the Last
Temptation DVD, his casting choices and use of a variety
of American accents were made to emphasize that this is a story
of ordinary people, taking place on ordinary streets–a
move that connects the film to others in Scorsese’s oeuvre at
the same time as it adds an urban element not present in Kazantzakis’ novel.
As screenwriter Jay Cocks remarks, “It was a way of achieving
a certain kind of immediacy, trying to take the mystification
out of religion, make it something that could have happened on
the street. Which is, in fact, where it did happen. The fact
that the streets were covered with sand is sort of irrelevant.”6 Willem
Dafoe, explains Scorsese, was chosen because the director had
admired the physicality of his performance in Platoon, and
desired that quality for his very human Jesus. The casting of
Harvey Keitel as Judas is also interestingly appropriate, recalling
as he does Scorsese’s gangster films. The Last Temptation film’s
Judas is essentially a member of an organized street gang or
terrorist organization, a revolutionary group that seeks to overthrow
the standing political order through covert acts of violence.
Scorsese’s knowledge of rough New York neighborhoods and
the camaraderie between men comes through in the relationship
between Jesus and Judas, even as this relationship is complicated
by Jesus’ developing philosophy of nonviolence, which Judas
describes as something only an angel or a dog could practice.
Scorsese reflects that this is a tension that comes directly
from his own life: “I grew up trying to place the proper
balance [between] Christian teaching and the law of the street.
I think it’s very hard to do, to say the least.”7
[12] The reactions of some critics, however, suggest that despite
Scorsese’s efforts, many viewers of Last Temptation saw
the film in terms of the same orthodox themes and assumptions that
Scorsese wished to ignore. Critics Margaret Miles and W. Barnes
Tatum both emphasize the association of women with flesh and temptation
and condemn the film for its misogyny and sexism. Similarly, although
Telford is more sympathetic, he still asserts that “What makes
[Jesus] the Christ–for Scorsese, for Kazantzakis and arguably
for the Gospels also–is his victory in this struggle of spirit
over flesh, mind over matter, good over evil.”8 Although
the film is unabashedly dualistic and can be criticized for dichotomizing
men and women, this understanding of its dualism is a vast oversimplification
of the film’s message. The common Western assumption has long
been that where there is a dichotomy, one side must triumph over
the other; one side must be associated with good while the other
is associated with evil. Yet Scorsese’s delicate handling
of the life of Jesus demonstrates that this is not so–and
this is probably this aspect of the film that follows the novel
most closely. Spirit and flesh may be at war, but as the Christ,
Jesus affirms both to be good. Though his destiny is to take a path
of nearly pure spirit, he is tempted by the beauty of material creation
because it too is of God. As Kazantzakis explains in his prologue,
regarding his own struggle:
The anguish has been intense. I loved my body and did not want
it to perish; I loved my soul and did not want it to decay. I
have fought to reconcile these two primordial forces which are
so contrary to each other, to make them realize that they are
not enemies but, rather, fellow workers, so that they might rejoice
in their harmony–and
so that I might rejoice with them.9
For Jesus, the consequences of the dualistic world he lives in is
the profound pain of having to choose between two sources of good.
For Scorsese, the consequences of presenting an unorthodox dualistic
world view in the Last Temptation film is to have the critics
endlessly condemn it for orthodox dualistic sins it does not commit.
[13] One of the primary contrasts the viewer encounters in the Last
Temptation film is that between the God of the desert, who
is honored most directly by the monks and by John the Baptist,
and the God of the home, who is honored by the women in their
knowledge that the everyday is sacred. Though these two conceptions
of God suggest radically different theologies, they are threads
that are found in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, and
Jesus honours and struggles with them at different points in
his ministry. Mary Magdalene is a primary representative of the
God of the home. It is possible to read her first encounter with
Jesus as a pure temptation to sin–naked and dirty from
her day’s work as a prostitute, she places his hand on
her womb, saying, “If you want to save my soul, this is
where you’ll find it. . . . Here’s my body. Save
it.” For Magdalene, body and soul are one; Jesus can still
redeem her by making love to her and marrying her, rescuing her
from her fallen state. Yet Jesus is called to save more than
the soul of just one woman. To live a good life may be salvific
for a single man and woman, but it will not transform humanity.
Yet Jesus sees the beauty and goodness of the domestic life,
which is why it tempts him so harshly. When he returns from the
desert and is taken in by Mary and Martha, he tells them, “I
want to say that you’re both blessed. . . .You took me
in, fed me, restored me, and God came down and went into my heart.” Similarly,
the pleasure that Jesus takes in eating, drinking, and celebrating
is obvious. One of the only miracles that he works that is not
a healing is to change water into wine for a wedding feast, and
in the same scene, we see him dancing happily with the crowd.
God’s creation delights Jesus, and it is notable that the
same women who scold him for half-killing himself in the desert
instead of taking a wife are among his most beloved disciples,
appearing (in direct contrast with orthodox tradition) even at
the Last Supper. His pain at having to turn away from the goodness
of the everyday comes to a head at Gethsemane, when he prays, “The
world You created that we can see is beautiful. But the world
You created that we can’t see is beautiful too. I don’t
know–I’m sorry, Father–which is more beautiful.” Scooping
up a bit of earth, he murmurs that it too is his body, and he
is loath to leave it behind so soon.
[14] The Last Temptation film makes the spirit-flesh conflict
even more problematic with its disturbing portrayal of the workings
of God. Perhaps drawing on the traditions of the medieval mystics, Last
Temptation’s Jesus experiences God as harsh and often
confusing, his holy visions frightening and disturbing. Like Otto’s
concept of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the God
Jesus follows is radically Other, mysterious, and terrifying, suggesting
that even if the God of the home is compatible with the best in
human nature, the God of the desert is in direct conflict with it.
After Jesus encounters the spirit of John the Baptist and enters
the phase of the ax, we see him as wholly filled with the God of
the prophets–he proclaims that he will baptize with fire,
that he brings not peace, but a sword, and that the destruction
of the Temple will be followed by the kingdom of God. At the same
time, his miracles become numerous and central to his ministry–he
performs healings, casts out demons, and raises Lazarus from the
dead. Yet it is difficult for the viewer not to feel disquieted
at the way in which Jesus’ experience in the desert has changed
him. Orthodox thought tends to read Jesus’ claim not to know
his mother Mary as an affirmation that he is the son of God and
is no longer truly human. In the Last Temptation film, however,
when Jesus encounters Mary he reacts with puzzlement–he seems
to have genuinely forgotten who she is. When Mary’s friend
reassures her, telling her there were armies of angels with Jesus,
Mary replies bitterly, “There were? . . . I’d be happier
if there weren’t.” Similarly, Jesus’ resurrection
of Lazarus is not, as it is traditionally portrayed, an entirely
joyful event. When the tomb is opened, the revolting smell of rotting
flesh is signaled as all present, even those standing many yards
away, cover their noses and mouths. The sequence is marked by a
long, strained silence as Jesus calls Lazarus’ name over and
over. Finally, a palpable shock ripples through the crowd as the
dead man mechanically sticks out an arm with greyed, rotted-looking
skin. In a moment of foreshadowing, Jesus is pulled halfway into
the tomb as he tries to bring Lazarus out. Lazarus lives, but as
becomes clear in his later appearance in the film, he has been transformed
by his death; his movements are stiff and zombie-like, his eyes
vague, his skin ashen.
[15] The presence of God seems, at times, to push Jesus’ humanity
out. His rejection of his mother and the resurrection of Lazarus
seem monstrous and unnatural, to the extent that Jesus, embraced
by Lazarus, finds himself praying in horror, “Adonai . . .
God, help me!” Clearly, to associate flesh with evil and spirit
with good, or to understand “temptation” as the urge
to commit acts that are evil in an absolute rather than a relative
sense, is to vastly oversimplify the complex interaction of spirit
and flesh in this film, in which the moral status of both remains
ambiguous. As Jesus’ love of creation and the film’s
explicit atonement theology indicate, to say that salvation requires
that Jesus not live the life of a man is not to condemn domesticity,
women, or material existence as evil, nor to deny that ordinary
human life is also sacred.
[16] That Kazantzakis, like Scorsese, believed that both the ascetic
life and the life of earthly experience were valid paths to God
is further supported by Kazantzakis’ 1952 novel Zorba the
Greek. Zorba is a tale of friendship between two men, one a
wealthy intellectual continually buried in his books, and one an
intense, extroverted hedonist who loves nothing better than good
food, a lively song played on his stringed santuri, and a
soft bed with a willing woman in it. Zorba, who represents the life
of intense experience, is also a genuine mystic to whom the world
appears perpetually new. Although he has committed crimes of violence
in the past, particularly during wartime, Zorba’s long life
has taught him compassion, and he risks his life to save others
several times in the book while the nameless narrator stands by
helplessly. Through Zorba’s example, the narrator comes to
believe that his years of abstract spiritual exploration are empty
compared to the rich, earthy life that Zorba has led. Overall, the
book is a celebration of the daily miracle of transubstantiation,
in which meat, bread, and wine are transformed into the human mind.10 Zorba’s
hedonistic path, then, is ultimately a spiritual one. At least in
this novel, Kazantzakis seems to have come down firmly on the side
of the flesh as the preferred path to the divine, though in Last
Temptation his Jesus must ultimately choose asceticism.
[17] The painful choice that Jesus must make between two compelling
sources of good also resonates well with the feminist theology of
Kathleen M. Sands. In her book Escape from Paradise, Sands
deconstructs the notion of a singular source of absolute Good. Instead,
she describes our world as plural and conflicted, one in which many
different sources of good are mutually exclusive and incompatible.
In a world such as this, she argues, moral and religious choices
have profoundly tragic consequences; to choose one source of good,
one way of living and acting, is to sacrifice another. Sands advocates
the rejection of notions of transcendent perfection and absolute
good, and instead embraces tragedy as a more realistic mode of knowing,
one that allows us to be compassionate to those who hold models
of belief and behaviour that we reject. These other systems of belief,
she suggests, are alternate sources of different goods, a fact we
must acknowledge even as we affirm our own conflicting point of
view. “Compassion,” she writes, “is opposition
that is not benumbed to the enemy, negation that dares to understand.”11 In
this sentence it is easy to hear the echo of both Kazantzakis’ and
Scorsese’s Jesus and his terrible choice. If by the nature
of his mission the flesh must become his enemy, it is clear that
in his opposition, he not only understands, but loves.
[18] The Last Temptation film allows us to see that to be
the Christ is to be a tragic figure. Being God’s only son
means being denied those good and beautiful things that are the
birthright of every human being, for the messiah must be more than
human. As the final temptation demonstrates, if Jesus is to fulfill
his salvific role, liberating all people to live their human lives
in spiritual freedom, he cannot live the life of a man–and
that, perhaps, is a sacrifice far more profound than the simple
fact of his death. Crucifixion is a terrible way to die, yet Jesus’ greatest
pain comes from the sacrifice of the happy life he could have had
with Magdalene. As Jay Cocks remarks in the DVD commentary, “Of
course that’s what scandalized people so deeply . . . The
fact that Jesus, who could have and do anything, wanted the one
thing in the world that everyone takes for granted. Simple humanity.
Love. Family. The most blessed things there are.”12
[19] Conservative critics have often accused the Last Temptation film
of being a deliberate assault on their faith. As recently as 2003,
Robin Riley has claimed in a book on the Last Temptation controversy
that it “victimizes” traditional Christianity by replacing
conventional associations with nonconforming ones,13 and
suggests that the film is an attempt to remove the Jesus story from
a religious context. These accusations, however, are belied both
by the creators’ vocal piety and the seriousness which with
the film treats the gospels, despite its claim not to be directly
based on them. In fact, the eccentricities shared by the narratives
of both the novel and the film–Jesus’ change in focus
from love, to the axe, to the cross; the portrayal of Judas as Jesus’ stalwart
friend–show obvious signs of Kazantzakis’ intense struggle
with the gospels, and his attempts to imagine human motivations
behind Jesus’ sometimes puzzling actions.
[20] It is difficult for any engaged reader of the gospels to reconcile
the contradictions between Jesus’ advocacy of nonviolence
and his apocalyptic rhetoric which brings “not peace, but
the sword.” In Kazantzakis’ story every element in the
narrative, however contradictory, plays a role in bringing Jesus
to the cross. It is exactly his vacillation between love and the
axe, so disturbing to many Christian viewers, that leads him to
his execution, exactly where God intends him to be (clearly indicated,
for once, by means of Jesus’ bleeding palms). Similarly, both
the novel and film versions of Last Temptation provocatively
answer the question, “Why would Judas have betrayed his master?” by
positing motivations of love rather than anger. In order to be arrested
with a minimum of violence, Jesus requires an informant. Judas,
then, becomes essential to the process of redemption, the one with
the most difficult job of all. In the film, when Jesus asks Judas
to betray him, Judas, is shocked and asks, “If you were me,
could you betray your master?” Jesus replies simply, “No.
That’s why God gave me the easier job . . . to be crucified.” In
a sense, love and the axe are made one in Judas’ “betrayal” as
he offers up his friend to be sacrificed for the good of the world.
The novel and film attempt to knit these problematic gospel elements
into a coherent storyline, emphasizing subjectivity, change, and
human struggle. Through these creative retellings, the hope is that
the audience will experience–perhaps for the first time–the
pain and tragedy of this ancient story, a story that is so often
sanitized beyond recognition by orthodox religious traditions, reduced
to dogma so familiar it no longer inspires.
[21] The Last Temptation film also contains a call for religious
people to consider whether the Christian Church represents a fulfillment
of Jesus’ life and message or a betrayal. Both the novel and
film portray Paul as a showman, a preacher with a P.T. Barnum-like
sense of spectacle. In the film, when Jesus encounters him in the
dream of his last temptation, Paul is entirely unconcerned with
the facts of Jesus’ life, preaching the story of Jesus’ resurrection
with no reference to his wisdom sayings, and throwing in a virgin
birth seemingly for extra flair and interest. Much like the Grand
Inquisitor of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, he
wants to ease human suffering by offering the people comforting
stories rather than calling them to either physical or spiritual
liberation. His reaction to meeting the “real” Jesus
who has escaped crucifixion is predictable: “I’m glad
I met you, because now I can forget all about you.” With the
thoroughly dislikable character of Paul, the Last Temptation film
criticizes the church as an institution that breaks with the spirit
of Jesus’ message of liberation in favour of an agenda of
sedation and control.
[22] An alternate and more sympathetic interpretation of the film’s
Paul, however, might consider him merely to be cognizant of the
salvific power of the resurrection story. Paul’s dialogue
with Jesus echoes the earlier sentiment of one of the apostles,
that a story being told about John the Baptist is important “because
people believe [it].” Whether Jesus died on the cross or not,
Paul argues, it is the story that gives people hope, inspires them
to reform, improves their quality of life. The dialogue also implicitly
brings up the question of the importance of the historical existence
of Jesus–if Jesus never existed, or never died on the cross,
or never rose again, is Christianity any less legitimate a religion?
Although the film leaves the question open to discussion, Jesus’ embrace
of his own death suggests that as important and spiritually effective
a story alone may be, to live the story is yet a higher good. Perhaps
the film follows the early church father Athanasius in suggesting
that “the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” A
story may help to save our souls, but the reality of a human being
becoming fully divine demonstrates a much more profound, yet-unrealized
human potential–the potential for human beings fully to embody
the love of a compassionate God on earth.
[23] Despite its controversial nature, The Last Temptation of
Christ film is a deeply pious and spiritual work–or,
perhaps, it is because of its intense and authentic religiosity
that is it so controversial. Last Temptation calls its
audience to make a direct and personal connection to the Jesus
story. The film challenges us to imagine a truly human Jesus,
one who became more than human despite having every human failing.
In contrast to Godspell, where Jesus’ kitschy Superman
t-shirt inadvertently implies that for the Son of God, sinlessness
and self-sacrifice by crucifixion are easy, Last Temptation’s
Jesus suffers profoundly, making the enormity of his sacrifice
all the more meaningful. Yet the film also reaches beyond merely
offering us a new understanding of Jesus. As Paul Schrader explains
in the DVD commentary, the filmmakers understood the character
of Jesus in Last Temptation as a metaphor for humanity’s
struggle to become divine. Although perhaps the right path for
many of us involves the domestic life which Jesus longed to enjoy
and could not, the example of a fully human Jesus also provides
a template for all heroism, all self-sacrifice, all acts of beauty
and power that work to transform and liberate humanity. For the
contemporary viewer, the Last Temptation film may well
hold the key to empowering believers and non-believers alike
to follow Jesus, not as an unreachable ideal or as the emblem
of a rigid religious orthodoxy, but as an example of how a human
being might become the vessel of divinity.
Notes
1 William R. Telford, “Jesus
Christ Movie Star: The Depiction of Jesus in the Cinema,” Explorations
in Theology and Film, ed. Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997), 129.
2 The Last Temptation of
Christ, DVD, directed by Martin Scorsese (1988; The Criterion
Collection: Universal Home Video, 2000).
3 Martin Scorsese, Scorsese
on Scorsese, e/ David Thompson and Ian Christie (London:
Faber & Faber, 1989), 124.
4 Lee Congdon, “Ascent:
The Spiritual Trajectory of Nikos Kazantzakis,” The World & I, http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2004/march/writerspub.asp (accessed
March 30, 2004).
5 P.A. Bien, “A Note
on the Author and His Use of Language,” The Last Temptation
of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis, trans. P.A. Bien (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1960), 501.
6 Last Temptation of Christ, DVD.
7 Last Temptation, DVD.
8 Telford, “Jesus Christ
Movie Star,” 137.
9 Nikos Kazantzakis, The
Last Temptation of Christ, trans. P.A. Bien (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1960) 1.
10 Daniel A. Dombrowski, Kazantzakis
and God, SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1997), 47 .
11 Kathleen M. Sands, Escape
from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1994), 168.
12 Last Temptation, DVD.
13 Robin Riley, Film,
Faith, and Cultural Conflict: The Case of Martin Scorsese’s The
Last Temptation of Christ (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers,
2003), 49.
References
Congdon, Lee. “Ascent: The Spiritual Trajectory of Nikos Kazantzakis” [online]. The
World & I [cited 30 March 2004]. Available from World
Wide Web: (http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2004/march/writerspub.asp).
Dombrowski, Daniel A. Kazantzakis and God. SUNY Series in
Constructive Postmodern Thought. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1997.
The Last Temptation of Christ. Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988.
DVD. The Criterion Collection: Universal Home Video, 2000.
“The Last Temptation of Christ” [online]. Internet
Movie Database [cited 13 March 2003]. Available from
World Wide Web: (http://us.imdb.com/Details?0095497).
Miles, Margaret. Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in
the Movies. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Riley, Robin. Film, Faith, and Cultural Conflict: The Case of
Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Westport,
Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2003.
Sands, Kathleen M. Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in
Feminist Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.
Scorsese, Martin. Scorsese on Scorsese. Ed. David Thompson & Ian
Christie. London: Faber & Faber, 1989.
Tatum, W. Barnes. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred
Years. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1997.
Telford, William R. “Jesus Christ Movie Star:
The Depiction of Jesus in the Cinema.” Explorations in
Theology and Film. Ed. Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz. Oxford: Blackwell
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