6. The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese, 1988) [LE]

I do not come from a Christian background. Apparently, if I did, I would have a big fat problem with this movie. But I don't. Come from a Christian background, that is. Or have a problem with this movie. Apparently I'm supposed to have a problem with this movie, but I'm not entirely sure why. Frankly, the Jesus of this movie is way more interesting than the Jesus in most movies. If this Jesus is bad, then maybe I'm just not a Jesus kind of guy.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm sure I've got a messiah complex just as much as the next fellow, but honestly, I'm watching this and I'm thinking, "Yeah, that's how I feel half the time. You know, J.C., buddy, you're like...me." In this film, Jesus asks himself the same kinds of questions I ask myself: What kind of life is the right one for me? What if I make a mistake? What if I'm meant to do one thing and I do something else instead, and I've made the completely wrong decision? Or, in the words of Whitney Houston, "How will I know?"

We all feel that it's important to be right about that sort of thing. But how are we supposed to get it right with such piecemeal guidance? Jesus is like, "God, please, what you want, bro?" I mean talk about guessing games. "Am I the messiah, am I not the messiah, should I just hang out and do the carpenter thing or get busy with the thorns?" God's a real pain in the ass, that's no news to us. But apparently he's just as much of a pain in the ass to Jesus as he is to the rest of us.

Willem Dafoe gives the performance of his career as the Nazareth Cat. Harvey Keitel offers an infamously Brooklynesque twist on Judas, a casting choice that bothers a lot of people but hasn't really bothered me. Even stranger, at least on paper, is David Bowie as Pontius Pilate, but he's quite effective and almost unnoticable. In fact, the only questionable decision on Scorsese's part is the World Beat score by Peter Gabriel. I mean, I'm sitting there watching Jesus buckle under the weight of the cross as he's forced to carry it up the hill where he'll be crucified, and it's really powerful and agonizing, and then suddenly all these Senegalise people start singing. Senegalise? We're in the Middle East. Yeah, I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but, whoa, man. Did Phil Collins not have any room in his schedule or something?

Finally, one last note on the controversy. It's all misplaced, because of the big disclaimer at the opening: "This film is not based upon the Gospels but upon this fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict [Nikos Kazantzakis' novel] ." So there you go. "We are departing from Christianity here." "It's a metaphor." "We are not saying that Jesus was actually like this." Therefore, even if you feel that the depiction of Jesus here is blasphemous (which I don't), the film isn't going for accuracy anyway. What's blasphemous, I guess, is simply toying around with the Jesus story at all. Well if Jesus was some pristine figure of certainty who never had a doubt in his entire life, then I can't relate. But if Jesus had doubts and fears and questions and temptations, and overcame them, then I can understand what that would have meant, and I am much more moved and inspired by his story.

It's just too bad I already knew the ending.