Jesus gets the sense that both sides of this conflict want to make a pawn of him, and he’s torn between wanting to remain unaffiliated in the affairs of men and the clear moral imperative to put an end to persecution.Ĭhristians protest outside the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, at the portrayal of Christ in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. As he sets out on the path of his destiny, he remains committed to his principles of love, compassion and forgiveness above the politicized stance forced upon him.
The radicalized Judas sways his intellectual peer to the cause of the Israelites’ liberation, and even then Jesus falters in his mission. Paul Schrader’s script introduces a sinewy Dafoe lugging crucifixes around in his work as a carpenter, effectively collaborating with the Romans in their persecution of the Jews. Uncertainty runs rampant through the nearly three-hour sprawl of Christ’s life and times, in turns tormenting and compelling him. They followed the primary teaching of Scorsese’s Jesus: he who claims to know the mind of God is farthest from it. Those disciple films sacrificed a broader audience by eschewing the comforting clarity of organized religion for doubt, challenging their characters’ faith rather than blindly affirming it. They also hold dominion over the box office, while the exceptions to the trend – the recent First Reformed and Scorsese’s 2016 drama Silence – languish in obscurity when not actively losing money.
The likes of The Case for Christ, I’m Not Ashamed and the God’s Not Dead franchise move with a sense of black and white assuredness, dealing in Manichean absolutes from which the good is simply chosen over the evil. In the compact realm of explicitly religious cinema, the behemoth known as Pure Flix has flooded the market with morally clear-cut pabulum guaranteed to offend nobody except movie lovers. Thirty years later, and the tongue-cluckers have largely won the battle.
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