The last temptation of Christ
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The last temptation of Christ |
| Original title | The Last Temptation of Christ |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1988 |
| length | 164 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Martin Scorsese |
| script | Paul Schrader |
| production | Barbara De Fina |
| music | Peter Gabriel |
| camera | Michael Ballhaus |
| cut | Thelma Schoonmaker |
| occupation | |
| |
The Last Temptation of Christ is a feature film by Martin Scorsese based on the novel The Last Temptation (original title: Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός O telefteos pirasmos ) by Nikos Kazantzakis .
Jesus of Nazareth is depicted in the film, as well as in the book that served as a model, as a doubting man and wrangling with his fate who is exposed to various temptations . The framework of the action are the events as they are known from the New Testament (see Temptation of Jesus ), whereby the image of the man Jesus is expanded by various facets. Scorsese explains: "Until he finally understands God's commission, Jesus is a passive figure."
action
Jesus starts out as a carpenter who also works with the Romans and makes crosses for executions. But he is increasingly plagued by existential questions about the meaning of his existence. He retires to fast in the desert, where the voice of God reaches him, but he doubts whether what is happening to him is true. In the desert he also resists temptation from Satan , who however promises to see him again. He then wanders through the country as a preacher, accompanied by a group of men and women who gather around him, is baptized by John , performs miracles that even astonish him, and finally comes to Jerusalem on a donkey . His fate is supposed to come true here. To this end, he urges his loyal disciple and friend Judas Iscariot to betray him to the Sanhedrin , which he does only reluctantly and under pressure from Jesus.
When he is nailed to the cross after his conviction , a young girl appears to him, who reveals herself to him as a guardian angel. It explains to him that he has suffered enough, offers to save him from death, and indeed Jesus follows him. The girl takes him to Mary Magdalene , one of his disciples , who had once courted him and whom he also desired, but whom he had rejected. Now he is starting a family with her, living unrecognized and leaving his previous life behind as a preacher of God's word. Maria dies giving birth to their child. With two other wives, Jesus fathered three children.
Only at the end of a long life in the circle of his family did he meet his former disciples again, who in the meantime had preached his doctrine but were divided about what they had to say about his end on the cross. When he is dying, Judas also comes to visit him. Angry because he had betrayed Jesus at his own request, but who had stolen from death on the cross, he insults him as a traitor.
The guardian angel who saved Jesus from the cross is now exposed by Judas as Satan who tried to let Jesus die as a simple man, not as a Messiah. Ultimately, Jesus decides to complete his martyrdom in order to fulfill his actual destiny and finds himself again on Golgotha , on the cross. In the end, his life as a family man was just a dream, a vision - his last temptation.
Locations
The film was shot in Morocco. The production took place at Atlas Film Studios near Ouarzazate . Meknes and the extensive palace complexes of Mulai Ismail served as the film set for the scenes set in Jerusalem . The final 35 minutes of the film with the temptation scene were filmed in the Volubilis World Heritage Site .
reception
When it was released in 1988, the film provoked controversy and angry protests, especially among conservative Christians . The story of a Jesus who doubts his calling as Son of God, collaborates with the Romans, desires a wife and even evades death on the cross and starts a family, has been viewed as blasphemy . The controversy went so far that violent protests broke out, including an arson attack on a French cinema. The film was banned in Chile , but the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the ban was incompatible with the fundamental right to freedom of expression.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, the FSK received over 1200 and the FBW over 300 protest letters, some with extensive lists of signatures. 98 percent of all letters arrived before the cinema even opened, which was due to the fact that church newspapers had asked to protest against the film in order to obtain a ban. The director of the Filmbewertungsstelle, Steffen Wolf, sharply rejected this kind of criticism of a film that he had not seen personally. Most of the press was also unimpressed: On November 14, 1988, an article with the title Storm in a Holy Water Glass appeared in Spiegel magazine , and at that time Frank Drieschner wrote on November 18, 1988 under the heading Crucifix in front of the cinema that it was about the demonstrators around narrow-minded old women who, instead of watching the film, protested in front of cinemas praying the Our Father.
Reviews
| source | rating |
|---|---|
| Rotten tomatoes | |
| critic |
 
|
| audience |
|
| Metacritic | |
| critic |
|
| audience |
|
| IMDb |
|
“Not as a transfer of the biblical material, but as a film adaptation of the novel by Kazantzakis, an attempt to deal with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, his preaching and his struggle up to the crucifixion. Jesus is portrayed in his humanity [...] The film, which is striking and disappointingly flat in several representations of biblical episodes, is fundamentally at odds with the Christian message of salvation through its image of God and the drawing of Jesus Christ. In their iconographic character, the images appear without spiritual power and miss the central aspect of Christian faith, the redeeming participation of God in the existential existence of people. Spectators who misunderstand the portrayed Jesus as Jesus of the Bible can rightly take offense. "
“One must imagine the role of the Messiah as an imposition for the common man Jesus, an imposition that begins long before the Passion story. And if this Jesus dreams before his death that he could have been happy with Mary Magdalene, then that is not blasphemy, but only the result of a very serious reading of the Gospel of John , according to which the word became flesh. "
In a ZEIT controversy between Walter Jens and Ulrich Greiner, Walter Jens writes :
“Nikos Kazantzakis' novel 'The Last Temptation' ... the controversial book that the Catholic Church, led by the Pope, Pius XII, put on the index. Rightly controversial, but in no way worthy of prohibition, neither aesthetically nor theologically. Kazantzakis takes Jesus' humanity seriously ... And now the film 'The Last Temptation' - a barbaric adaptation: coarse, clumsy, superficial and devoid of that dialectic that could show 'the one and the same' in its dual nature. Jesus of Nazareth has become a wildly gesticulating Rambo: preferably in action, with a dramatic facial expression, rolling eyes, distorted mines or - a part of involuntary comedy - with a smirking smile. "
Awards
Director Martin Scorsese was at the Oscars 1989 in the category Best Director for an Oscar nomination. In the same year Barbara Hershey was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and the album of the same name by Peter Gabriel for Best Original Film Music.
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
synchronization
The German dubbing was based on a dubbing book by Horst Balzer and under his dialogue direction on behalf of Berliner Synchron .
| role | actor | speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Jesus Christ | Willem Dafoe | Lutz Mackensy |
| Judas Iscariot | Harvey Keitel | Christian Brückner |
| Mary Magdalene | Barbara Hershey | Evelyn Marron |
| Pontius Pilate | David Bowie | Frank Glaubrecht |
| Simon Peter | Victor Argo | Hermann Ebeling |
| John the Baptist | Andre Gregory | Harry Wüstenhagen |
| Paul of Tarsus | Harry Dean Stanton | Joachim Kerzel |
| Zebedee | Irvin Kershner | Heinz-Theo branding |
| James the Elder | John Lurie | Hans-Jürgen Dittberner |
| John | Michael Been | Claus Wilcke |
| Lazarus | Tomas Arana | Mathias Einert |
| Martha of Bethany | Peggy Gormley | Kerstin Sanders-Dornseif |
| Mary of Bethany | Randy Danson | Regina Lemnitz |
| Nathanael | Leo Burmester | Detlef Bierstedt |
| Mary of Nazareth | Verna Bloom | Barbara Adolph |
| Guardian Angel | Juliette Caton | Caroline Ruprecht |
Film music
A year later , Peter Gabriel released an album entitled Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ , based on his compositions for this film. He worked with then unknown artists from Africa and the Middle East (including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan , Youssou N'Dour and Baaba Maal ) and was thus able to enormously increase the popularity of so-called world music .
literature
- Nikos Kazantzakis : The last temptation. Roman (original title: Ho teleutaios peirasmos ). German by Werner Kerbs . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-548-22199-8 , 511 pp.
- John Ankerberg, John Weldon: Viewpoint: "The Last Temptation of Christ" . Schulte and Gerth, Asslar 1988, ISBN 3-87739-672-0 , 79 pp.
- Steffen Wolf (red.): Martin Scorsese's film “The Last Temptation of Christ”. Documentation / analysis of letters to FBW and FSK . Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden (FBW) and Voluntary Self-Control of the Film Industry (FSK), Wiesbaden 1989, 19 (7) pp.
- Anja Wißkirchen: Gaining identity with Maria Magdalena. An examination of the mythological narrative structures in the biblical texts and their reception in “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” . Pontes (Volume 6). Lit, Münster / Hamburg / London 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4976-7 , 141 (X) pp.
- Jürgen Kniep: “No youth approval!”. Film censorship in West Germany 1949–1990 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0638-7
Web links
- The Last Temptation of Christ in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Last Temptation of Christ at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- The last temptation of Christ in filmzentrale.com
- The Last Temptation of Christ at moviepilot
Individual evidence
- ↑ Interview with Martin Scorsese. In: taz , January 19, 2005
- ↑ Tony Reeves: The Last Temptation Of Christ film locations. (No longer available online.) In: website movie-locations.com. The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, archived from the original on April 12, 2013 ; accessed on April 24, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Lorenz Gallmetzer: Mittagsjournal from October 24th, 1988. Terrorist attack on cinema in France because of Scorsese film. In: www.journale.at. Austrian Media Library , October 24, 1988, accessed April 22, 2016 .
- ↑ (judgment, PDF; 495 kB) - decision of the Court of Justice
- ↑ Jürgen Kniep: No youth approval! Pp. 330-331
- ↑ a b The Last Temptation of Christ at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed October 20, 2014
- ↑ a b The Last Temptation of Christ at Metacritic , accessed October 20, 2014
- ↑ The Last Temptation of Christ in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ The Last Temptation of Christ. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Christ only came to Hollywood . prisma-online.de, March 18, 2005
- ↑ Walter Jens : The Last Temptation of Christ - Pros and Cons . In: Die Zeit , No. 46/1988
- ↑ The Last Temptation of Christ. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on October 18, 2019 .
