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-playing-himself 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 appreciate. 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 ( ... 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 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

THE LAST THING HE WANTED (2020, Dee Rees)

 

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While investigating something really important, other equally important things happen to a journalist during the course of her important investigation.

Starring  Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, Willem Dafoe

Written by  Marco Villalobos, Dee Rees

Produced by  Cassian Elwes, Dee Rees   

Duration   115 minutes

  

OK, so we’ve all been there. You’re watching a movie, and realise you don’t know what’s going on. If it’s within the first 10-15 minutes, then that’s fine: things are being set up, questions are being asked, you’re settling into its rhythm.

By the end of the first third, you can expect to know what those questions are, and won’t be surprised that they are developed further into act two. You’ll want to be surprised as to the exact ways they develop, but what the things that are developing are should come logically from what was set up in act one – and which will be resolved in act three (again, hopefully hitting that magic balance of surprising yet inevitable.)

OK, but what if you’re halfway through the movie – deep into act two – and you still don’t have a handle on things? And this far in you’re getting the sinking feeling that it’s unlikely comprehension will ever arrive?

There are times when this is acceptable. For instance. You’re on a date and the date is going well, extremely well. You may glance up at the screen every now and then and have no idea what its showing you – and not care in the slightest. Similarly, if you’ve gone to the movies in the early throes of an exciting new relationship, where the two of you feel contentedly cocooned in your own world where nothing outside matters, then you may intentionally lose track of what’s going on. Not following the plot becomes another of your hilarious in-jokes, since it's just another part of an outside world that's irrelevant to your loved-up interactions.

Other examples. Where being so convoluted is kind of the point, and the pleasure comes from watching the characters untangle the mess they’re in. Private eye stories come to mind, particularly the Howard Hawks/Bogart THE BIG SLEEP (1946) and, more recently, John McNaughton's trashterpiece WILD THINGS (1998).

Also. Movies where the plot doesn’t matter or isn’t the priority, where the regular conventions of narrative are not necessarily adhered to. These films could be purely allegorical, or follow a dream logic, or be artistic experiments in the form. See Andre Tarkovsky, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, etc.

So fine, it can happen and not matter. Other causes can be the viewer’s fault: keeping half an eye on their phone; falling asleep mid-movie.

But then there are films that have a lot of plot, and want you to follow it, and really try to get you to follow it, but which fail and leave you baffled and frustrated.

Films like THE LAST THING HE WANTED.

I wrote in my review of THE LAST SUMMER that not recognising anyone at all from the cast or crew can be a bad sign – not always, but it rarely bodes well. With this film, it's a case of recognising people (A-listers Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck! Character acting legend Willem Dafoe! Dee Rees, director of critical darling MUDBOUND!), but never having heard of the movie. And it only came out three years ago!

OK, so you’ve got Ms Hathaway. She’s a journalist of some kind, being led into a jungle by an armed escort, presumably here to report on something. There are dead and burned bodies – alright, so she’s not here to study the local fauna for Botanical Monthly. She wears no makeup, another sign that this is a ‘serious’ role. And she smokes – that never happens anymore! She must be serious.

Cue Hathaway’s reflective voiceover, saying things like "I wanted to know why" and "I see now that the clock was ticking" and, um, "weightlessness seemed like the mode where we could be both time and the effect itself" – all over shots of classified papers. Then she’s grilling this politician type in a press conference, something to do with trade disputes, I think? Is this film a remake of STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE?

Then Ben Affleck turns up, looking a bit chunky, playing some kind of political aide who's getting told off by his boss, the same man who Hathaway just pissed off. Hathaway, meanwhile, is on the phone to ‘kiddo’ – so her job makes her an absent parent, too. Of course it does. And then she argues with her boss (editor?) who tells her to drop the story, for whatever reason, whatever the story actually is.

But then Willem Dafoe, playing her Dad, calls and they meet for a drink, him wearing sunglasses indoors and a maroon suit, and spouting homophobic barbs at bar patrons while munching handfuls of almonds. He delivers a lot of backstory, and possibly present-story, too; it’s hard to tell. It becomes apparent that the director has instructed the actors to speak extra fast, too, which just makes it even harder to keep up. It feels like about 40 minutes of story is hurtled at us in the space of 5 minutes.

THE LAST THING HE WANTED is a bit like when you’re on holiday and skipping through the channels in your hotel room and you start watching a movie in another language. You can follow what’s going on (it’s a thriller, she’s in danger, there’s a cover-up) but the details remain elusive.

It’s the kind of film that would benefit from turning the subtitles on – but I hate doing that, it’s distracting and shouldn’t be necessary if the filmmakers have done their job properly.

It’s also the kind of film where you get so much information that none of it sticks, and at the end you don’t really remember anything. It’s a tactic politicians use: instead of giving straight answers to complicated or thorny questions, they resort to obfuscation.

I tend to hold my movies in higher esteem and expect more from them than that.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I don’t really know who ‘he’ is supposed to refer to, let alone what it is he wants and whether or not he went on to want any other things or not.

What would a movie called THE FIRST THING HE WANTED be about?  Watching this movie, a stiff drink comes to mind.

Previously:  THE LAST STARFIGHTER

Next time:  THE LAST HORROR MOVIE 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com