Candidly Speaking - 22/04/22

On the film "The Last Temptation of Christ"

This Monday, I saw Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”, a profound but radical retelling of Jesus’s life and death. The source material was not the four Gospels familiar to all Christians, but the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis’s book of the same name. The film opens with a quote from the novel:

“The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God…has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh…and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.”

Christ is played by Willem Dafoe, who plays villains and antagonists so frequently and so well that I grew up thinking that he only plays those roles. Of course, Jesus is not the film’s antagonist, but He seems determined to make himself his worst enemy. Among the many miracles of Christ, I find the greatest of them is that His teachings remain profound even when you are not a Christian. As such, you find His crucifixion at the hands of the Romans and Pharisees unjust even if you do not believe He died for our sins. Scorsese’s film, as well as its source novel, seeks to put that claim to the test by reimagining Christ as profoundly human. He is endlessly tormented by His role as the Son of God and the Messiah, His message of brotherly love is constantly betrayed by His thirst for vengeance, and His dual nature is threatened by various worldly temptations, including the biggest one of all: to live as a good man.

Of all the religious epics I have seen, “The Last Temptation” is the only one that shows Jesus being crucified in the nude. In every Catholic church you visit, as well as any conventional cinematic adaptation of the Gospels, our Lord is always crucified wearing a loincloth. Even in the midst of the gruesome violence of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, Jim Caviezel’s Jesus still has a loincloth around his waist. In reality, the Romans would not have spared a condemned man such decency. “Temptation” is also the only religious epic to show the Messiah engaging in sexual intercourse, the source of intense controversy among the American religious crowd. The likelihood is that those most angered by the film did not see it, and those who saw it would not categorize it as “blasphemous”. Allow me to provide the context. Spoilers ahead!

I believe the first 2 hours of the film are to set up the final 40 minutes, and Scorsese could not have done a better job. Vilified and crucified, the human Jesus is at his weakest, when a girl purporting to be his guardian angel rescues him from the cross. She guides Christ through an alternative reality in which he marries Mary Magdalene, have a child with her (hence the sex scene), mourning her sudden death, then taking the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha of Bethany, for his wives. Now a family man, He encounters the Apostle Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) preaching his spiritual awakening and the resurrection of Christ. Resurrection? He never died in the first place! Jesus calls him out on his bluff: “You cannot save the world by lies.”

“I created the truth,” says the Apostle. “out of what people needed and what they believed. If I have to crucify you to save the world, then I’ll crucify you.”

We fast forward to the elder Jesus, at His death bed, watching Jerusalem crumble. He is visited by his former apostle, among them Judas Iscariot. Even if I find Harvey Keitel miscast in the role of everyone’s least favorite apostle (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call Jerusalem,” a friend joked to me), Scorsese’s reimagining of Judas is a powerful one. Originally sent to kill Jesus, Judas is eventually convinced that He is the Messiah, then becomes His most devout apostle. We see his act of betrayal as one of intense love - Jesus asks of him to do so, for only a crucified Messiah can bring salvation to mankind. This explains his seething anger as he sees his Master growing old, fraternizing with women and spawning children, choosing to live a life of anonymity while humanity plunges deep into destruction. Then, the reveal: the girl who claims to be a guardian angel is in fact Satan, and Jesus was tempted all this time to abandon His calling as the Messiah.

It is worth noting that Judas was the one who revealed the truth. Here is a man who so loved the Rabbi that he abandons his original mission to assassinate him, who is so loyal to the Master that he follows Jesus’s command to betray him, and who remains faithful to the Savior that he cannot withstand the Son of God abandoning His heavenly Father. Of course, the name Judas, like those of Marcus Brutus or Benedict Arnold, will forever be associated with an act of gross betrayal. But Scorsese, a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church, seeks to understand Judas as well as Jesus in their most human forms. In a glowing review of the film, Roger Ebert observes:

Perhaps Judas is Scorsese’s autobiographical character… Certainly not the Messiah, but the mortal man walking beside him, worrying about him, lecturing him, wanting him to be better, threatening him, confiding in him, prepared to betray him if he must. Christ is the film, and Judas is the director.

Now let’s look at the “last temptation.” Those familiar with the Gospels may recall Christ’s 40-day sojourn in the desert, where he is most vulnerable to Satan’s tricks. The Accuser’s first attempt is to compel a famished Jesus to make bread out of stones. The second, to compel our Lord to jump from a great height: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up.” (Matthew 4:6, KJV) The third time, Satan shows Jesus all the earthly kingdoms, offering them all to Him if he would submit to the devil’s whims. Christ overcomes all three temptations, Jesus comes out of the desert a fully-formed Messiah, reconciling his dual nature of God and Man. In both the film “The Last Temptation” as well as the novel, both Scorsese and Kazantzakis ponders the question: What if our Lord has not been immune to temptation, as the Gospels have you believe?

All Christians know that Christ is both human and divine. But not all Christians are willing to confront the human side of Jesus, most powerfully written in his despair on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46) Here in the film, Scorsese confronts it in all its troubling facets. Scorsese’s Jesus is a man plagued by fear, doubt, rebellion, anger, despair, lust. But most of all, He yearns to be like everyone else - living a righteous man’s life, surrounded by family and friends, growing old and die peacefully. Alas, that modest picture carries such a heavy cost: if the Messiah abandons the cross, who’s going to bear it? Perhaps Paul the Apostle was correct: that only a crucified Messiah, not an aging Jesus, can save mankind. Just as Abraham trusts that the Lord would not let him slay his only son, the Lamb of God learns to trust that His heavenly Father has not forsaken him. So the elderly Jesus struggles to take up the cross again: “I want to be Your son! I want to pay the price! I want to be crucified and rise again! I want to be the Messiah!” And true as the Lord’s Word, He returns to the cross, uttering: “It is accomplished,” before drawing His last breath.

Now, as I have watched this masterpiece of cinema, I finally understand the significance of Good Friday. The crucifixion appears as an act of wrongful conviction, but is really a noble act of sacrifice. Christ did not only submit to die; He also endured the pain of betrayal as well as the barbarous Roman torture. And He went through all that so that mankind can be redeemed, and He rose from the dead to vindicate our faith in the Lord. Far from an act of blasphemy, “The Last Temptation of Christ” is the most faithful treatment of our Lord’s great sacrifice.