66. The Last Temptation of Christ

Martin Scorsese, 1988

Jesus Christ! No. Really. Seriously though, this is the best film exploration of the life of Christ I have ever seen. The story is pretty much what you expect. We catch up with Jesus somewhere in his early thirties. He pals around with the apostles, Mary Magdalene, and the like, preaches a bit, is betrayed, and dies on a cross. What sets this movie apart from something like The King of Kings (either version), though, is the portrayal of Christ. Scorsese is not interested in covering the ground covered so often before, giving us a perfect messiah. This is not to say that he does not believe in Christ as God and man; I really don't know what he believes specifically, nor is it really any of my business. What he does do, though, is offer a Christ who, for the first time, we can really sympathize with. In some ways, it's a lot like what Mel Gibson said he was trying to do with The Passion of the Christ: giving us a sense of what Christ went through for us. Yet, while Gibson does this in a rather brutal, explicit way (i.e. look, he's getting the shit beat out of him!), Scorsese takes a different road. The suffering endured by Scorsese's Christ is emotional. It is a suffering of the life he cannot have.

You see, in The Last Temptation of Christ, Willem Dafoe plays Christ's human side. By and large, his divinity is set aside so that we can examine a Christ who is, in many ways, like us. True, Christ performs miracles like water into wine and the raising of Lazarus and he is capable of both beautiful rhetoric and extraordinary compassion, but he is also a man, with doubts and desires. In fact, the sense you get from this film more than any other is that Christ would like a normal life. The human part of who he is wants nothing more than to settle down and raise a family. That, then, becomes his last temptation and the source of the controversy that surrounded the film upon its release eighteen years ago. This Christ understands that what he must do is to die willingly on the cross. Obviously, he would just as soon go on living, but, even though he knows the betrayal from Judas, portrayed by Harvey Keitel as Jesus' best friend, is coming, he does nothing to avoid it and indeed finds himself nailed to a cross. It is at this point that an angel appears to Jesus and tells him that he has done his bit. He can now use his power and step off the cross and lead a normal life. Christ does as the angel asks and is rewarded with that normal life which seems so ordinary to you or I, but which is so special to a man like Christ. So, Christ goes about his life, first marrying Mary Magdalene and then, when she tragically dies, living with Mary and Martha and raising a slew of kids. This is where we start to spiral into It's a Wonderful Life territory, though. Jesus eventually comes into contact with Saul/Paul, Judas, and Peter, but things are not the way they are supposed to be. They preach the tale of a dead and resurrected Lord, but know it to be a lie. They preach not for the betterment of other, but for their own reasons, killing those, including Lazarus, who know the truth of what they say. It seems that without the reality of Christ's saving sacrifice, nothing is as it should be. Eventually, Christ realizes the truth, although part of him has known it all along. This is not his real life, but a glimpse of what could be. The angel is also not what she seems, but is, in reality, Satan. This is his final temptation. All Christ has to do is step off the cross for real and he can have a normal life and the love of a wife and children, but Christ also knows the consequences and that his life up until now will have meant nothing. So, he stays and dies on the cross, sacrificing not just his life, but all of the simple but all too important desires we take for granted. At least, that's where the movie stands for me. Personally, I don't believe in a human Christ, but I believe that part of him was human. I don't know what that would be like. I have absolutely no concept of that. Still, I adore this movie, which does have its flaws, although I haven't really gone into them here, for offering a different interpretation of his life and who he was. Dafoe's Christ is a beautifully compassionate man and the only film Christ I have ever really cared about. This particularly portrayal effects me in a way films like The Passion simply cannot. It shows me not merely Christ, but what he could have had and what he really gave up.