Defending The Last Temptation of Christ

a short essay

Every now and then, I find myself wanting to defend a work of art that “mainstream Christianity” (whatever that may be at any moment) has attacked and misunderstood (but rarely experienced). Why? Not because you need to like these movies (or songs or books), but because the Body of Christ has been belittled and demonized based on the loud rantings of a few Christians as they attack something that Satan is using as a straw man distraction.

Today, I’m thinking about Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which caused great religious and civil unrest when it premiered in 1988. Christians hated it. They didn’t watch it, because they didn’t want to expose themselves to all the stuff they were told was bad about it.

The ultimate wailing wall for me is the essay included with the Criterion Collection blu-ray. (The Criterion Collection distributes important, hard-to-find, classic, and world films with the highest level of design and bushels of intelligent supplementary features and essays. They have truly catholic tastes, featuring a large number of solidly-Christian movies amid hundreds of others. They are perhaps the only mainstream media company I have encountered that truly respects films of faith, and they are the cinephile touchstone of greatness.)

Where most Criterion releases include rigorous academic essays, almost the entire booklet for The Last Temptation of Christ is devoted to recounting the culture war that came from politically reactionary Christians. How sad! We know the world will hate us, but do we need to make it so easy for them?

Given that the film is the product of a Greek Orthodox novelist, an ex-Calvinist screenwriter, and a Roman Catholic director, tensions were sure to rise. There’s nothing that makes Christians more nervous than the mixing of denominations and traditions. And, sure, the film portrays Jesus as discovering his divine purpose, which is theologically incorrect but at least allows for some themes on the nature of faith and an easier identification with Christ on the part of the fully-human viewers. In my mind, the biggest problem with the movie is that ubiquitous belief that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. We’re all familiar with—and sick of—that concept, and it does lead to nudity and sexual content that is unnecessary.

Most of the uproar from Christians in 1988 was based simply on misinformation, like that Jesus was a homosexual or a lust-driven creation or anti-Semitic (Some people have never understood that Jesus was a Jew.), or that the film was “truly horrible and completely deranged.” This last quote is from Franco Zeffirelli, whose Romeo & Juliet includes underage nudity without the actors’ consent. Just for perspective here. The real reason for the Christian attack on the film was what it always is: it was the thing to hate at that time in order to prove you were a Christian (like Harry Potter or COVID vaccinations or the affirmation or vilification of same-sex-attraction).

Let me tell you why The Last Temptation of Christ is on my list of 50 Spiritually Significant Films. The real core of the film takes place between “Why have you forsaken me?” and “It is finished.” This short interlude is stretched into a long passage of non-temporal temptation. (Yes, as in the title.) The film (and the novel it was based on) imagines Satan getting in one last desperate deception. While the Father turns his face away from the Son, an “angel” appears to Jesus and tells him that his trial is over. Just like Abraham and Isaac, the “angel” says, the willingness is all.

What follows is a vision of Christ stepping down from the cross victoriously still alive. He goes on to live an uneventful, normal human life, enjoying all that he has watched other humans enjoy: labor, marriage, children. This visions last long enough that we begin to almost believe that it is truly happening—but it is not! At the end, Christ rejects laying down his divinity, we flash back to the cross, and “It is finished” is full of so much more loss and victory.

Movies about Jesus are always movies about us. Because we can’t begin to represent Jesus. Often, they show what the artists feels is the ideal of humanity, but here it is about the core temptation we all face. Will we choose cheap “salvation?” Or will we die to all the things we think we could have, should have, or would have had? This holds so much meaning for me, especially in June. “Christ, I allow you to kill the things I think you owe me, so that you may truly own me.”