| The Last Temptation of Christ | | Cast : | Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey | | Director : | Martin Scorsese | | Studio : | Criterion Collection | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | August 12, 1988 | | DVD Released Date : | April 25, 2000 | | Language : | English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 05, 2005 | | Summary | Last Craptation of Christ.......wait for it.......there it is | Content
 | For starters, I happen to know that the last temptation of Christ wasn't a woman. That's ridiculaous, he was gay. His last temptation was the drink. I should know, I was his personal bartender.
I know what you're thinking. "Christ could make water out of wine! He wouldn't have needed a bartender" No, he couldn't, and yes, he did. What he COULD do was make your eyes water with his whine, specifically whining about wanting a freaking drink. I followed his skirt wearing tuckus (yes, there were pants then, he just chose not to use them) around the desert for a long, long time putting up with the words 'hit me' every 20 minutes while he shook his glass (read: cup made out of leaves) at me. I knew the man. I even loved the man. Heck, he put my kids through slave school. But I will not lie for the man. He was a drunk, and a sloppy one at that.
Which is what bothers me most about the Scorcese adaptation. He blatantly glosses over the drunkenness. It clearly states in Revelations, Chapter 20, Verse 10, Subparagraph 4 "And He shall walk among you, and toast you, and ask you if you want to do shooters, and chant the words chug until thine eyes are filled with the dawning sun, for He is a drunkard, as was His Father, as is the population of Cabo San Lucas." Yet Scorcese chooses to go the arty route. Well FINE BY ME! I mean, I don't care. I wasn't put on this earth to watch artsy fartsy Hollywood liberal movies. I was put on this earth to serve drinks to Jesus. And sometimes to go down on him. As my Lord and Savior. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 29, 2005 | | Summary | Passover | Content
| It's well-intentioned, I'm sure, and it's certainly more interesting than the glut of Jesus-Lite movies on television every Easter, but beyond that...?
I've watched it several times since its theatrical release (usually in the company of someone who hasn't seen it), and always come away thinking it could have been so much better had someone done more than skim through the book and touch on the obvious points. As such, the cast has little new to work with (J.C. getting it on with Mary Magdalene, sheesh) and acts accordingly. David Bowie as Pontius Pilate was a pleasant surprise, though, bringing Empire sensibilities to the interview with Jesus. The weariness in his voice -- you can almost hear him thinking, "Oh, God...another messiah") -- is worth whatever they paid him.
But that's about as good as it gets. No epiphanies here, kid, unless you're desperate.
Read the book and listen to Peter Gabriel's soundtrack instead. You'll save a few bucks and you'll go back to both more times than you will the movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | A very spiritual film | Content
| No matter your religious affiliation this well done and well acted movie is quite amazing. Although I am not a christian I found the ending (self sacrifice) to be quite a powerful message. My only complaint, sometimes the modern day accents took you out of the story. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 23, 2005 | | Summary | Worship this movie | Content
| This movie is a direct portrayal of what happened in the bible. word for word, spoken by god himself. he mostly talked to the author of the book and then talked to scorcese just to help him out to make this movie as authentic as possible. since this is god's word, all of you must hail to this historical piece and light candles with the image of the virgin mary imprinted upon them.
thou shall watch temptation of christ should be the 11th commandment. watch it or go to hell!
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| Rating | | | Date | June 16, 2005 | | Summary | Read the Book Instead...or Not | Content
| This is one of those pieces of art, like Andres Serrano's "Piss-Christ", that never fails to inflame Christians for it's blasphemy, and never fails to find support from self-styled apostates, agnostics or atheists, despite the inherent weaknesses in the piece's artistic merit. This film should be judged not primarily by its thematic content but by both its quality as a film, (by which I mean acting, editing, pacing), and it's relationship to Nikos Kazantzakis' original story. Unfortunately too many reviewers seem to give the film negative reviews because they don't like the portrayal of Jesus sleeping with "Mary Magdeline": that's like saying I don't like "Hamlet" because the King, Claudius, slept with Hamlet's mother, and I believe that a king would never act that way. Well, that's the way the story is structured; you either accept the premises of the story, or you look for something else. Meanwhile too many reviewers seem to give the film positive reviews because they like the idea of a more humanized Jesus--one that adheres to what they learned about Christianity from "The DaVinci Code".
Neither type of review addresses the major flaws in this picture which are attributed mainly to the weak acting/miscasting of Harvey Keitel and Willem DeFoe. Though, to be fair, what modern actor could do much with a script so at odds with the premises of modern cinema? The bright spot of this film is Peter Gabriel's soundtrack, which I would argue is much closer to the spirit of Kazantzakis' story than this sad, failed experiment.
This brings me to my point that the book is much more worthy of attention precicely because the story works well in that genre--we should all keep in mind that Kazantzakis' first draft of this story was called "Christ's Memoirs"written early in the 1940's (LToC wasn't published until about 1953). This seems to suggest that Kazantzakis was looking to create a Gospel from the point of view of Jesus Himself--a very intriguing project given that we only have Gospels written about Him.
In the end, despite what you believe or think you believe about the film's theology, it doesn't change the fact that it wasn't very well written, or acted; it doesn't change the fact that maybe the editing wasn't so great in spite of the cool shots of the desert; and it doesn't change the fact that Scorsese was completely out of his native element and was better off filming a place & country he knew a lot better. |
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