Review #47 THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988, Martin Scorsese)

 

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Jesus of Nazareth faces the ultimate existential crisis: being the son of God (and knowing His plans) while having human desires.

Starring  Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie

Written by  Paul Schrader

Produced by  Barbara De Fina  

Duration  163 minutes     

I’ve argued on this blog that Ridley Scott has never made a genuinely great film, despite the inexplicably elevated position he inhabits for some.

The question that occurs to me now is, has Martin Scorsese ever made a bad one?

Across 26 features, there are six that have most regularly come in for criticism, or are just simply not as well known. So are these 'lesser Marties' deserving of their status as outliers? Let’s see!

– WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR (1967):  The director's debut, an Italian-American New Yorkers' tale and precursor to MEAN STREETS, it's appropriately rough around the edges. But the talent is there up on the screen and as far as first features go, it certainly makes you intrigued for what this young man might do next.

– BOXCAR BERTHA (1972):  Scorsese was one of several fledgling directors to cut their teeth under producer Roger Corman, such as (deep breath) Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles and James Cameron. He made BERTHA for Corman's American International Pictures, and the film is a trashy female gangster flick that’s a lot of sleazy low-brow fun.

– ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974):  Probably Marty’s most unfairly overlooked film. Central is a powerhouse performance by Ellen Barkin (who won an Oscar), and this affecting drama also has memorable turns from the pre-TAXI DRIVER pair of Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel.

– NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977):  I'm never going to be subjective about a musical; a jazz musical, no less. Moving on.

– KUNDUN (1997):  Um ... I’ve seen it. It exists. It's probably most remembered for that bit in The Sopranos where Christopher Moltisanti spots Scorsese in a crowd and yells out "Marty, KUNDUN! I liked it!"

– GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002):  This one is a bit of a slog. Leo was still maturing from teen heartthrob into proper leading man. Diaz was miscast. Day-Lewis was enjoyably big, but also distractingly so. Ultimately, it was never able to recover from all its production troubles. I do like the U2 song that plays over the end credits, though.

(In addition, THE KING OF COMEDY and AFTER HOURS didn't do much business when they were released but have both since been reassessed; I like the former but have never really warmed to the latter.)

 

So yes, I would say Scorsese has a batting average superior to most big-time directors, even plenty of those names listed above. And LAST TEMPTATION is firmly in the ‘definitely great’ camp.

The film was controversial for its depiction of a flawed Jesus. But anyone who bothered to absorb the opening crawl should have known to proceed with leniency: "This film is not based upon the Gospels but is a fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict."

(They should have put "based on a true story" – that would have really stirred the pot.)

Marty was using Jesus Christ the man as the starting point for an exploration of the struggles we all go through – heightened, of course, by JC's unique internal wrestling match between being both a deity and a flesh-and-blood human.

In short, he's a flawed hero who goes through a journey – an 'arc', to use a term that the KUNDUN-approving wannabe-screenwriter cousin of Tony Soprano would understand. Which should tell you everything: this is a movie, where Jesus Christ is the protagonist. It’s not a sermon; it’s not a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It has thematic depth and spiritual resonance, but it also needs to move and entertain us. And it does.

JC is cut from the same cloth as other Scorsese leading men. He suffers the sexual distractions of RAGING BULL’S Jake LaMotta. He is miffed by a world full of sin, like Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER. He appears to die at the climax but then doesn’t really, like Ace Rothstein and his exploding car at the start/end of CASINO ( ... er, OK, that one might be a stretch).

Let’s talk about casting. First, the obvious question: why not de Niro as Jesus? Ironically, at the time of filming he may have been busy off elsewhere playing the devil for Alan Parker in his movie ANGEL HEART.

Or why the hell not Harvey Keitel? He was on set and everything, playing Judas Ascariot (dyed ginger, for some reason). Yes, he's still second-billed and yes, Judas is pretty much the antagonist and a meaty role in itself. But come on, Harvey would have been amazing! Just look at what he managed to do shortly after as a tormented soul, sometimes in a religious setting, in Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT.

Anyway, the final casting choices do work well and are leftfield enough to fit in with the movie's slanted take on its subject matter, as is having many characters talk in anachronistic Noo Yoik accents. Willem Dafoe as the man (of God) Himself is as committed as you’d expect (and surely influenced Ewan McGregor); David Bowie is an icily callous Pontius Pilate; Barbara Hershey a suitably sexy Mary Magdalene. And putting Harry Dean Stanton in your movie (as Saul/Paul) never fails to elevate it.

So, another tick for Mr Reliable Marty. And SILENCE, his questioning-faith companion piece from 2016, is also excellent.

Five stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  On Earth, yes. Up in Heaven? Not sure it’s that kind of place.

What would a movie called THE FIRST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST be about?  Who can be sure that the temptations depicted here hadn't been part of Jesus's life for years already? The Bible is famously light on details about his teens and 20s, after all.

Previously:  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Next time:  LAST PASSENGER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #46 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971, Peter Bogdanovich)

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Teenagers in 1951 come of age in their dying Texas town.

Starring  Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn

Written by  Larry McMurtry, Peter Bogdanovich

Produced by  Stephen J Friedman

Duration  118 minutes

I can’t talk about THE LAST PICTURE SHOW without starting with Stephen King.

In his novel Lisey's Story, titular protagonist Lisey has recently lost her husband, Scott, and is going through his journals. She learns from them that when her hubby used to stay up late and drop off in front of the TV, he would fall into a catatonic state and be literally transported to a magical alternate universe, where he found peace and healing from his debilitating mental health issues.

But it wasn't any old programming that used to whisk him away. The Shopping Network or repeats of Magnum PI wouldn't do it – in order to travel to that wonderful healing place, Scott had to be watching his favourite movie, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

(And if you think I’m going to now delay getting to the actual review by going off on a tangent about Stephen King books, constant reader, you’ve got another thing coming. So not my style.^☆)

Now, I can't be sure exactly why King gave this particular film the power to mentally teleport people to a far away land; he never makes that explicit. But since the reason Scott would embark on those journeys was to recuperate, 1950s-set coming of age classic THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is therefore portrayed as a vessel with which to break free from inner torment.

So, is this movie ‘escapism’? I've always found that a bit of a limiting term, usually eluding to fantastical, good vs evil battle stuff, or love-wins-in-the-end fairy tales. Forget your troubles and immerse yourself in something idealised and totally removed from reality for a couple of hours.

But there’s another kind of escapism: a wallowing kind, when you reach out for something that affirms the pain you’re going through. Diversions like the type in the previous paragraph can feel like they’re taking the piss by portraying something unobtainable; what you really want is a Radiohead album on repeat and MELANCHOLIA or REQUIEM FOR A DREAM playing with the sound off.

In the case of PICTURE SHOW, it doesn’t put the viewer in a world of orcs and elves or shiny romcom land. But it does take them somewhere: back to the ’50s, that lost time of Boomer nostalgia so frequently visited by the generation of King (most notably for IT), Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE), Steven Spielberg (THE FABELMANS), and many other creatives born following WWII. But PICTURE SHOW'S tone is far from carefree and enchanting; instead we get moribund, ennui-laced melancholy. The opening goddamn shot is a pan through a deserted town with dust blowing everywhere, a place that makes the shithole from LAST MAN STANDING look cheerful and prosperous. The very first words spoken are "you're never gonna amount to nothin’!"

The local kids we meet are thoroughly disillusioned. They have none of the collegiate spirit that their elders expect, shirking tackles on the football field and only singing the school anthem mockingly while driving away from it. They pass the time making out in the back row of the town’s only cinema, being sure to take out their chewing gum first. They experience fleeting liberty by skinny dipping at unsupervised parties, in a famous scene with Cybil Shepherd that discloses to the viewer the exact moment when director Peter Bogdanovich decided to ditch his wife (who was working on the crew!) and run off with her.

It’s a not a film that's heavy on plot. It’s more of an atmosphere piece punctuated by minor incidents, a few shattering events and a whole bunch of loaded exchanges heavy with unspoken emotion, moving forward like the unhurried flow of water, lapping over you and soaking into your bones.

That Ben Johnson and Clois Leachman bagged acting Oscars for so little screen time (10 and 16 minutes respectively) tells you all you need to know: as we all learned in Physics class, pressure equals force over area. Their strong performances delivered within such brief pockets of time create a huge impact, and I'd say the effect has only ever been bettered by Judi ‘eight minutes’ Dench in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.

What I’m getting at is that the movie is dreamlike – at once intense and casual, amorphous yet precise, and, ultimately, transporting.

I think I see now what King was going for.

Five stars out of five.

^☆ … What? OK fine, since you won’t stop going on about it. The masterpieces are IT, The Stand and the Dark Tower series; other personal favourites are 'Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Roadwork, Pet Sematary, Misery, The Dark Half, Duma Key, and pretty much all of the short story collections.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  That’s how the movie finishes: the town cinema that was one of its few features is forced to close down due to lack of business. Final screening: RED RIVER, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift.

What would a movie called THE FIRST PICTURE SHOW be about?  Same thing as Scorsese’s HUGO? Something about Georges Méliès, certainly.

Previously:  FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST 

Next time:  THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #45 FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST (1992, Bill Kroyer)

 

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Deforestation threatens the creatures who dwell within the magical realm of FernGully.

Starring  Samantha Mathis, Christian Slater, Jonathan Ward, Robin Williams, Tim Curry 

Written by  Jim Cox

Produced by  Peter Faiman, Wayne Young   

Duration  76 minutes

    

Myth: Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis have only co-starred in two feature films.

Reality: Between teenage rebellion fable PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990) and muted but fun John Woo actioner BROKEN ARROW (1996), they both lent their voices to FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST. Slater and Mathis play a pair of fairies, zipping in mild flirtation around an idealised rainforest of bright colours and anthropomorphised animals.

Mathis (the lead) plays the stock kids’ animation character of the youngster who dreams of a life outside their restricted community. Seriously, when will they drop this trope? It’s still going strong today, in things like SMALLFOOT (2018) and STRANGE WORLD (2022).

In this particular case, despite being warned to "never go above the canopy", Mathis can’t resist wondering what’s really out there and takes regular peeks, specifically wondering if human beings really exist or if they are merely the stuff of bedtime stories.

Slater, meanwhile, gets the short shrift in a disappointingly small part – he should have insisted on the role ultimately played by Jonathan Ward (see below).

Myth: FERNGULLY has an ecological subtext.

Reality: What’s it called when the subtext is actually on the surface and not at all buried underneath? Oh, that’s right. No, there’s no ecological subtext here – it’s FERNGULLY’S actual text.

You see, it had been assumed by the forest-dwellers that if human beings were actually real and not just the stuff of legends, they would be no threat to them. Then reality comes crashing through in the shape of enormous bulldozers, hellbent on reducing the trees that the adorable (and in some cases make-believe) creatures use as homes into someone’s dining room set.

Myth: Robin Williams made his animated debut playing a hyperactive genie in ALADDIN.

Reality: Before he signed on to be the blue lamp-dweller, he’d already agreed to play Batty Koda in FERNGULLY, a bat who knows that humans do exist because he's come from outside the forest where the two-legged ones have been using him as a lab rat.

Williams is (surprise surprise) the comic relief, and definitely used this as a warm up for the higher-profile part – he's all non-sequiturs, celebrity impressions, shouting, accents and anachronistic pop culture references.

Mercifully, his performance never reaches the irritating ‘heights’ of his more famous Disney role, where he would display so many symptoms of ADHD you wanted to force-feed him Ritalin through the screen.

 

Myth: Only Bart Simpson was saying ‘don’t have a cow’ in 1992.

Reality: Jonathan Ward, as a human lumberjack on whom Mathis uses her forest powers to shrink down to fairy size when he accidently wanders into FernGully, sprouts this nonsensical catchphrase at least once. He also has wavy blonde hair, rides a leaf down a tree trunk like a snowboard, and uses words like ‘bodacious’ and ‘tubular’.

Did I mention that this film was released in the early ’90s?

Myth: FERNGULLY is an American feature.

Reality: Actually, it was a co-production between the USA and Australia; primarily Yank voice talent but set in an Aussie rainforest.

It joins the ranks of other lauded Australian animations, in the great tradition of ... um ... well … did they ever do a cartoon version of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo?

Myth: Tim Curry essayed a wide variety of roles in ’90s movies.

Reality: He always played a snooty shit.

And unlike the meddling hotel concierge in HOME ALONE 2 (1991), or Cardinal Richelieu in THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1993), or Mr Jigsaw in LOADED WEAPON 1 (also 1993), or the duplicitous Romanian philanthropist in CONGO (1995), or Long John Silver in MUPPETS TREASURE ISLAND (1996), here he is literally the embodiment of evil: a dark spirit of the forest or somesuch, resembling a sentient oil spill in appearance, whose role in this affair is to encourage the humans to destroy FERNGULLY ... for reasons I never quite discerned.

As ever, Curry has a great time hamming it up as the dastardly antagonist, and even gets to belt out a musical number like he’s still in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

Myth: DANCES WITH WOLVES was James Cameron’s biggest influence for AVATAR.

Reality: Plot-wise, AVATAR is DANCES, for sure. But the same basic story is present in FERNGULLY, with the addition of the tree-hugging sensibility. Although it comes from a different perspective this time: we follow one of the natives, not the interloper.

Fellow animated effort EPIC (2013) is also cut from the same cloth, as is Ed Zwick’s 2003 Tom Cruise-starring THE LAST SAMURAI.

Myth: FERNGULLY was a flop.

Reality: It actually did modestly well, plus it birthed a no-stars sequel.

And there were rumours recently of a live-action remake, allegedly set to feature Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jim Carrey and Emma Thompson, which turned out to be bollocks. But someone went as far as to knock up a fake poster, so the desire is clearly out there.

Myth: FERNGULLY is a pretty mediocre and inconsequential cartoon feature film.

Reality: Look, it’s no THE LION KING or BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, or even a ROBIN HOOD or a THE SWORD IN THE STONE. And yes, it piles its agenda on with a shovel.

But it’s a charming enough yarn that has more on its mind than the standard be-yourself-and-find-your-own-path tedium that represents the usual thematic depth that young viewers get targeted at them.

And so, when it ends with a title card saying, ‘For our children, and our children's children,’ the sentiment feels properly earned.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I’m all for using hyperbole to help make a point and deforestation is clearly a very real thing. But there are definitely still at least some rainforests left out there.

What would a movie called THE FIRST RAINFOREST be about?  According to the National Science Foundation (that nation being the USA): "Ancient Denvers [was] the first rainforest. Time period: 64 million-years-ago in the Early Paleocene (Cenozoic)." Little chance that it was under much threat from JCBs back then.

Previously:  THE LAST HOUSE

Next time:  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com