The Last Temptation of Christ
im not sure if i can communicate how this movie makes me feel. when i watched this for the first time i had recently been exploring the idea of reclaiming my christian identity, and this movie really spoke to me where i was and made me feel much more comfortable with the idea. i have personally really really struggled against what feels like a mass denial of the humanity of religion in the communities i grew up in. it always felt particularly ironic, and very wrong! but this movie is a striking and bold counterpoint to that, and i found much more comfort in it than i ever expected. Christians are usually not encouraged to make challenging art. the culture i come from taught me to conform. and yet i have a powerful spiritual relationship with my art and my god, how should i stay silent? how am i supposed to hold it in, or if it must come out how can i in good conscious sand off the rough edges? faith, doubt, Emotions, are visceral and to express it is the most important part of my christianity. to be able to express my humanity, and give myself fully to the experience of myself and the world and god. this movie resonates with me in this very specific and hard to communicate way.
it is so very specific, and so very universal. its hard for me to imagine how this movie must feel for someone without my exact set of paradigms and fascinations, and my exact religious/theological experience. it strikingly brings to life the powerful imagery and emotion that sit just behind the metanarrative of the story of christ. this is how it Feels to me, it deviates from the gospels in ways that i think seem like more of a stretch to others, but sing with my emotional experience of being a christian, and with all of the research that i have done on the new testaments formation and the history that shaped it. my god is the god of blasphemy, but if you really really pay attention to the source material and its context you might start to see that any controversy that this movie drew was quite unfounded. i think that it is far and away the Most Truly and Honestly Christian depiction of this story ever put to film. it expertly holds Everything at once.
the idea of truth is a hard thing to reckon with. many turn to religion to find structure and rigidity, philosophical answers. but when we truly engage honestly and fully, often we only find more questions. and yet there is comfort to be found, in exploring ourselves and our relationship to the human experience of god and life more generally. this is not something to flinch at, this is not blasphemy. this is the heart of religion.
I can only hope that most people who watch this movie can Feel what its doing even if they dont have the same frame of reference as me. even if you aren't sympathetic to adoptionism like me, even if you think its wrong to depict Jesus as Touching sin, even if you arent a Christian, i hope you can Feel what im talking about. because it is So incredible. I love this movie.
(03-09-2025)