For generations of film directors, the “Jesus movie” stood as both a challenge and as a lure. As early as Cecil B. Demille’s The King of Kings (1927), which was arguably Hollywood’s first blockbuster, filmmakers have sought to tell the story of Jesus in a fresh and captivating way—a propensity that will doubtless be revisited when Terrence Malick releases his own Jesus film later this year. Thus it is unsurprising (and perhaps even inevitable) that Martin Scorsese, regarded as one cinema’s great historians, would take on a movie about Jesus at some point in his career. Initially, Scorsese wanted to adapt King Jesus (1946) by the British novelist Robert Graves. However, in the early 1970s, he pivoted to The Last Temptation of Christ, based on Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel O Teleftéos Pirasmós (1955), after receiving the book as a gift. “I liked Last Temptation,” he once remarked, “because it dealt with the battle between the spirit and the flesh. I thought it was something I could understand.”
To be sure, what’s ostensibly fresh and captivating about Scorsese’s Last Temptation is that it dares to explore “the battle between the spirit and the flesh” through the figure of Jesus. In 1983, Scorsese met with a group of Christian theologians, including John Cobb, Rosemary Radford Reuther, and Fr. John McKenzie. The goal was to tease out whether or not Scorsese’s proposed film was theologically viable. After the meeting, he concluded that this question had no clear answer. Consequently, he forged ahead, trusting that his version of the story would make an important religious contribution—to show that growth in the spiritual life requires hard work, sacrifice, and even failure. In this sense, the Jesus (Willem Dafoe) of The Last Temptation of Christ is not all that different from Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) in Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980). As Scorsese explains:
I was trying for subjectivity. In Raging Bull, it was what a fighter fears or feels inside his mind. What do these punches sound like after fifteen rounds? And, in Last Temptation, when Jesus is sitting for forty days in the desert, day and night, and that snake goes by, I don’t care who you are, that snake is going to talk to you!
Thus The Last Temptation of Christ has to be understood in terms of auteur theory: it tells us more about Scorsese’s interests and cinematic vision than about Christ himself. But this is itself theologically relevant. Though cinematically vital, Scorsese’s Jesus is ultimately a cipher for the preoccupations of modern human beings, above all politics and sex. This does not render The Last Temptation of Christ uninteresting; it is too well made for that. And yet, despite the public outcry upon the film’s release in 1988, it is far from a radical reading of Jesus. On the contrary, it reflects a somewhat conventional modern approach to Jesus’ life and teaching. Indeed, the disclaimer that opens The Last Temptation of Christ—namely, that the movie is not based on the New Testament accounts of Jesus—admits as much. The film presents a Christology “from below,” related not just to Kazantzakis’ novel but also to works such as Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (Vie de Jésus, 1863) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003). In short, Scorsese’s Jesus is a mirror, not an icon. It will be fascinating to see if Malick can uncover a deeper dimension to the story of Jesus, while, like Scorsese, refusing to retrogress to the pious banalities of past Jesus films such as The Greatest Story Every Told (1965).
To what extent do you think that Scorsese's 2016 SILENCE, adaptation of Shusako Endo's novel, could be interpreted as somehow in response to "The Last Temptation" ? I am thinking especially of Scorsese's decision (which is not in Endo's novel) to include the crucifix in the priest's hand at the end? I have to admit here I've only seen Silence once, and that I am perhaps speculating beyond what acumen should allow without further study, but is the inclusion of the crucifix at the end somehow an acknowledgement of "Christology from above"...