Opening with an apologia (from the Nikos Kazantzakis novel?) to anticipate accusations of blasphemy, we’re told upfront this is not a tale of the Christ from one of the Gospels. But it is: The Gospel of Martin. And Scorsese acolytes have long bent over backward to praise the film and spread the Not-So-Good-News: Jesus not only sacrificed his life to save mankind, he also gave up a putative home life as suburban dad with wife, kids & carpentry business. (Or at least thought of doing so, a la Ambrose Bierce.*) That’s the bit that got Scorsese in advance trouble with the usual suspects (Conservative/Evangelical Christians who hadn’t seen the film . . . and never would), but St. Martin didn’t help his cause with barriers that kept ‘friendlies’ away, too. Jesus as expert crucifix carpenter (such irony; and think of the shipping fees from Nazareth); Harvey Keitel’s Judas as henna-haired BFF; scripter Paul Schrader’s streetwise locutions (plus not a single line of dialogue given to a person of color . . . in the MidEast?); and in Willem Defoe a Christ more Scandanavian in looks than Max von Sydow’s Jesus in George Stevens’ dismal THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD/’65. (At 2'44" this one only seems as long as TGSET’s full-cut of 4'20".) Oddest of all, with all the echoes of rough-hewn religious bio-pics from Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini*, Scorsese’s endeavor, doesn’t feel so different from those mercenary, commercially-oriented Hollywood epics; and the religiosity even worse.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Get a lot closer to the subject with Monty Python’s THE LIFE OF BRIAN/’79. Really. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/life-of-brian-1979.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Specifically, Bierce’s short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,’ appearing here as An Occurrence at Golgotha Heights.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *But the poster following a different director; Otto Preminger from his classic Saul Bass period.
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