In honor of the Christmas season, my father gave me what felt in the moment like Biblical homework. We were to watch “Jesus of Nazareth,” a 1977 miniseries directed by Franco Zefferelli, the man behind the 1968 adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” and other notable Shakespeare adaptations. The runtime of “Jesus of Nazareth” is a staggering six hours and twenty-two minutes, and you feel its length in typical ‘70s epic fashion. Undeniably, however, the film made me connect with my God.
I am a Christian, and my family is, too. In some ways, I am fortunate to know my faith in many different ways. My father is strict in his adherence to the word of the Bible. He is traditional. He is dedicated. His faith is fierce. In a separate house, my mother used to be a Catholic, but is now much closer to Episcopalian. I never go to church with my father, however me and my mother will go to the Episcopalian church right by Hellgate from time to time. It is there where I feel God more than any place in Missoula, besides maybe the pool my friends populate on a 100-degree day, or the view at the top of Spartan at Snowbowl.
I adore stained glass windows. Reportedly, they have been such an integral element of church design because the commonfolk of previous centuries could not read. They had no scripture by which to base their faith, and so they relied on the words of their priests and the images tempered in stained glass. And what a beautiful way to visualize that is, scenes that often feel so perfectly partial between objectivity and heightened emotionality. The further we separate the emotions of the Bible, the further we get from the point of it all. By casting light through these windows, Jesus Christ became radiant, powerful, and human to the common man. Only the elite who were able to read his sermons on their own time. Instead, over the textbook like consumption of the Old and New Testaments so commonplace today, Jesus simply smiled at you, and let you know that you were gonna be alright after all.
As we’ve moved away from artisan glass, however, things have become more complicated. Now, there seem to be countless Christs running around, all different depictions begging for some spotlight in the realm of legitimacy. 2,000 years and counting after His death, the need for a personal understanding of Christ has become the most important it has ever been.
In this pursuit of identifying the nature of Jesus Christ, many different depictions of Christ have found themselves in the pantheon of ‘Jesus movies.’ By my mention, a Jesus movie is simply a movie that depicts Jesus Christ in a central role. Yes, from “Jesus of Nazareth” to “Jesus Christ Superstar,” all movies that more or less star Jesus can be said to be Jesus movies. While I considered watching many more depictions of Christ for this article, absolutely including “Superstar,” I settled on three films, each with their own very different depictions of the life of Jesus Christ.
In the most certain terms, historians have come to the conclusion that a man by the name of Jesus did indeed exist, preached about the Kingdom of Heaven, and was crucified under the rule of Pontius Pilate. The history books don’t give a director too much to work with. Much more can be found in the Bible, though, with the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) giving a greater insight into Jesus’s life and His many deeds. Obviously, the account of the Bible cannot be taken by academic historians at face value without being biased, but if you are sitting in the director’s chair of a Jesus movie, it’s fair to say that the Bible is most likely believed to be true by you.
Still however, the account of Jesus’s life by all four apostles is surprisingly sparse in detail. Many details that are massive plot points in any respectable depiction of Jesus’s life are little more than nondescript sentences in the Bible. From walking on water, to the sermon on the mount, to the last supper, all the big theatrical elements of Jesus’s life are most likely running through a multitude of different depictions that are certainly separated from the Biblical canon.
Every single film I will analyze takes many liberties on the life of Jesus, and none of them are entirely accurate. Instead, they use the life of Christ to make a statement about the nature of Christianity; the reason Jesus matters, the context of his teachings, and the way that a Christian should worship. None of these Jesuses are Jesus. For one, all of them are white, an aspect of every film that is almost certainly wrong. For another, creative liberties are both slyly and ostensibly taken to validate a film’s director’s beliefs. In this, three distinct Christs are invented.
The Miracle
The first Jesus Christ is the undeniable Son of God. Until recently, this was almost the only way that Christ was ever depicted. In films like “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” or “King of Kings,” and in the focus of this portion of the article, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jesus Christ is as godlike as possible, almost emotionless and otherworldly. He is never uncertain or very emotional. Instead, he is the prime peacemaker. In “Jesus of Nazareth,” Christ’s eyes are as blue as sapphires, often piercing through the eyes of his doubters and believers alike. In those eyes, the answer to every question reveals itself, and Christ rarely needs to open his mouth for resolution.
When Jesus does open his mouth, however, his lines are delivered by Robert Powell as if everything he says is preordained. Jesus never thinks before he speaks in “Jesus of Nazareth.” Instead, He is powerfully predictive and confident, never elaborating on his meanings or answering questions in a worldly way. Instead, He nearly floats between scenes, a specter of the Will of God, rarely ever seen as a human being.
The script provides no room for a doubtful or imperfect Christ. In the Bible, well into Jesus’s crucifixion, he cries out, asking, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This moment has always been profoundly powerful to me, the most powerful faith imaginable still tested under the crushing weight of His suffering. In “Jesus of Nazareth,” He still cries out this line, but it is in Hebrew, the only time a line is spoken in Hebrew in the entire miniseries. Directly after, members of the Sanhedrin remark that he is quoting the prophet Elijah in astonishment: “Even now he quotes the Scriptures!” What was initially a human moment is canonized once again as a half-miracle, a proof to Christ’s perfect devotion to scripture.
While respectful and relatively faithful, the depiction of Christ in “Jesus of Nazareth” and its contemporaries make Jesus an almost entirely unrelatable character. He is gawked at like an alien in some scenes, separated by a barrier from the other characters. In these films, he can hardly be called human. This can be interesting, but grows increasingly grating as the runtime begs for a main character that an audience could latch onto.
The Martyr
In many ways, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” is the polar opposite to the approach of “Jesus of Nazareth.” Instead of a slow-paced, epic contemplation of the entirety of Jesus’s life, “The Passion of the Christ” takes place in just the last twelve hours of Christ’s life. It is a horror film.
In almost every scene, Jesus Christ is made to suffer to His limits. In extrapolated and self-indulgent scenes of heightened viscera, the intentions of the film are made clear. It seeks to make its audience feel guilty.
In ways completely undescribed in the Bible, Jesus is put through a crucible of torture and humiliation. As Jesus is escorted to Jerusalem, he is beaten by a legion of sadistic Roman soldiers until he collapses on a bridge. He is then promptly knocked off of the bridge, and he falls for what feels like an eternity before his restraints snap his body into shape, catching him dangling feet from the ground. The fall would surely shatter bone and kill a man in reality, but “The Passion of the Christ” has not had enough with Jesus’s body yet.
In the most famous scene of the film, Jesus is flogged by Roman guards for his punishment, Pontius Pilate looking for an alternative way to punish Jesus other than crucifixion. In the Bible, this scene is described in one sentence by all of the apostles who even find the event important enough to describe. In the film, however, the scene is masochistically brutal. Anyone who has seen the film will probably have a certain shot etched into their brains; where a barbed whip rips into the flesh of Jesus, and tears off a massive part of skin, leaving bone and gnarled tissue gaping at the camera. In these scenes, there is nothing more to be said other than, “that must be painful…” At the time of its release, it was acclaimed for helping Christians understand the suffering that Jesus went through on their behalfs, however this level of suffering is manufactured by the film, made excruciating to watch so the film can serve as another prong of the branch of Christianity that does all it can to rule through fear and guilt.
Jesus in the film is silent like in “Jesus of Nazareth,” but not in a divinely powerful way, but in a way that calls to mind certain action heroes, unflinching at a villain’s attempts to break them. To Mel Gibson, Jesus Christ is macho and unflinching, speaking the most rarely out of all other depictions of Christ I have seen, because to Mel Gibson , Christ’s words don’t matter as much as his pained yelps.
The Man
The final Christ is the most wonderful and believable to me, and He caused raucous anger on His debut. When the film was released in 1988, it was scorned by the Catholic church, and was the source of protests and attacks. One nun called it “the most blasphemous ridicule of the Eucharist that has ever been perpetrated in this world.” According to the church, the film was a puppet of evil, and its director, Martin Scorsese, was a hellish being.
In “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Jesus cowers in fear from his responsibilities. We open on Him carving crosses for the Roman Empire to crucify his neighbors on. He lusts, and envies, and shows unmitigated rage. He wants to kill his oppressors, and baptise the world in fire. Eventually, however, he understands His place in the world. Unlike the miraculous Jesus, or the divine martyr, Willem Dafoe’s Jesus is an unsure man of undeniable flesh and blood. He is far from perfect, and in fact, His faults are severe and often unforgivable by the standards of His time period. He is a Jesus with blood on his hands.
His humanity, however, makes for the most touching depiction of Jesus that I have personally ever experienced. His soft spoken but vindictive sermons are incredibly believable, and His struggles only make them hit harder. By not making Jesus a cardboard cut-out of all of the cut-and-dry recounts of His miracles, the film finds the true heart of Jesus in His messages, in His teachings. The Jesus of “The LastTemptation of Christ” faults and stumbles as much as He is a savior. To me, the fact that He struggles with the same desires of ordinary men provides more validity to His call to not cast the first stone than any of the other depictions of Christ will ever possess. If I met “Jesus of Nazareth’s” Jesus, I believe that I would be weary of his presence, feeling unease at his overly commanding presence, an unreachable monolith more than a true leader. In “The Passion of the Christ,” there is simply no leader to latch onto, more a bag of meat to bleed. In “The Last Temptation of Christ,” however, I feel the draw to follow Him to the ends of the earth. If Jesus was the shepherd guiding us into the Kingdom of Heaven, then this is the only Jesus I believe I would have followed.
Returning to the scene of Jesus on the cross, crying out “Oh God, oh God, why have you forsaken me,” this scene happens in “The Last Temptation” as well. But it doesn’t end with Jesus’s question. God provides an answer.
As Jesus ages, the world ends, cast darkly into a grim and twisted nightmare world, a world forgotten by God, a world without a savior. The sky grows a sickening color, and humanity enters an age of deep disparity.
Dafoe’s Jesus snaps out of it. He has His answer. Through the pain, He nearly smiles, and lets the Romans desecrate the imperfect perfection that I strive to follow every day.
It is so easy for the domineering clutch of theocratic power lust to drive out my desire to pray to God. When Christianity is commandeered into a weapon, it fails to bring me peace. Instead, I feel as if I am another cog in a holy machine devouring compassion. Jesus can be made to be emotionless, to be unapproachable by the common man. He can be made to only gleam with radiance. He can be terrifyingly powerful. His power can be made the reason you should worship Him. It is shockingly easy to do so.
As the sickening sky returns to us, however, I can cast those bronze vignettes aside, and cast my hand out to love, my savior, my Lord, who was just as scared as me.
