For this week's entry I thought I'd talk about the opening sequence of a movie I enjoy: Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, based on Nikos Kazantzakis's novel of the same name. The director of photography was Michael Ballhaus.

I find this movie so interesting because the imagery of Christian mythology is very well-known to us in this country, and that fact is skillfully taken advantage of by Kazantzakis and then Scorsese to form themes and ideas that are not present in the mythology itself. The power of such poetic tools is evidenced by the extreme amount of criticism and anger this novel and the subsequent film produced.


This is the first shot of our protagonist, Jesus, played by Willem Dafoe. The color scheme of this shot is indicative of the entire movie: lots of browns and tans. I like the "earthy" (I know, obvious adjective to use) feeling generated by this color scheme because it reflects the realism of the Jesus depicted in the story. This story's Jesus is not so unlike the dirt and dried shrubs his clothing and skin match. This story's Jesus struggles with powerlessness; he is not a creator or giver but rather a struggler, barely able to stay alive under the weight of grand expectations. In fact, during this very brief opening scene and the next, Dafoe's voice-over narration tells of Jesus's desperate attempts to ignore any truth to their being a divine plan for his life and explains the intense moments of painful self-realization that sporadically torment his attempt at a self-important (and in the film's context, much healthier) existence. Not the Jesus from Sunday School...



Here in the very next scene is a startling visual depiction of one of the story's more genius elements. In The Last Temptation, Jesus is the only carpenter that is willing to build crosses for the Romans so that they may crucify Jews. This is him measuring the length of the cross intended for a heretic with the span of his own arms. Here Scorsese is toying with familiar religious imagery and foreshadowing the ending.

A couple seconds later into the scene, Judas, played by Harvey Keitel, comes in to accost Jesus for his willingness to build crosses for the Romans. The short argument between the two involves a dialogue with these two shots:



The shot that frames Judas emphasizes his character's role in the story. The camera's angle from the ground looking up at Judas's face gives him a commanding disposition both Jesus and we the viewers must respect. In The Last Temptation, Judas, noble and fearless in his physical combat against the Romans, is very much like a typical masculine hero. This comes in stark contrast with Jesus, who is sullen, desperate and more to be pitied than revered. This is emphasized with the top-down angle of the shot that frames him. Further, Jesus and Judas's relationship, in which Jesus tends to view Judas as the morally superior, is displayed boldly with Judas clearly looking down on Jesus. Sacrilegious stuff.