Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: Jesus Gets Down Off the Cross to Get Down in 'The Last Temptation of Christ'

<< Blog | Editorial Features Tuesday, September 17, 4:00 PMTue, 17 Sep 2019 @ 4:00 PM by Thrustin' Hoffman

In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around them, and their legacy. This week, Martin Scorsese faces the biggest controversy of his career when he has Jesus get it on with Barbara Hershey's Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ.

When they made Boxcar Bertha together in the early 70s, Barbara Hershey gave Martin Scorsese a copy of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel "The Last Temptation of Christ," and the director spent the better part of the next 15 years trying to get the film made. The author's works had been translated to American film twice before, in the 50s withHe Who Must Dieand again in the 60s with Zorba the Greek, so bringing his work to the screen wasn't out of the question. However, his 1955 novel "The Last Temptation of Christ" had been banned by the Catholic Church and got Kazantzakisexcommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church.

The entire project wasn't without its own fair share of controversy. Scorsese passed off adaptation duties to his Taxi Driver partner Paul Schrader, whose own directing career had taken off in the early 80s, and in 1982, Scorsese announced the film as his follow-up to The King of Comedy. He attempted to mount the film atParamount the following year with Aidan Quinn in the role of Jesus, Kinks frontman Ray Davies as Judas, and Sting as Pontius Pilate, on a budget of $14 million.

Paramount eventually got cold feet and cancelled the film, and Scorsese went on to make After Hours and The Color of Money, before finally convincing Universal to give him half his original budget to do Last Temptation as his next film. The only cast member he retains from the earlier incarnation is Hershey as Mary Magdalene, but Scorsese assemblesasomewhat bettercast this time around including Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas, and David Bowie as Pilate. The film is shot in just under two months in Morocco, wrapping at the end of 1987 and released by the studio in August 1988.

From the minute it was first announced, the word of mouth narrative was that Jesus *gasp* has sex with a woman in this movie. It was quite literally all you heard about the film. I remember clearly my mother going to see the movie and nine year old me thinking that it was so cool that she got to go see this super controversial movie. I wanted to see Jesus have sex, for crying out loud, is that so weird for a nine year old? Finally seeing the film several years later on VHS, I finally got to see the controversy for myself.

Scorsese teases you early on when Jesus goes to see Mary Magdalene and finds himself waiting in a long line of men who are themselves waiting to see Mary. Unlike Jesus, though, these men aim to pay her for sex. After all her customers leave and Jesus has watched her boink, like, at least thirty dudes, he tries to reason with her and she tries to seduce him...

Nobody ends up getting what they wantand Jesus goes back about his business. The film then more or less follows the story of the gospels up until the crucifixion. Scorsese delivers what is probably the most brutal depiction of the passion play put on film until that point. He figured he had the R-rating anyway, why not go for it? It's fairly innocuous compared to the Jesus torture porn flick Mel Gibson would deliver 16 years later, but the practicality ofthe effects give the crucifixion a visceral impact.

However, the film now diverts from scripture and beforeJesus dies an angel appears at the foot of the cross in the form of apre-teen girl. She tells Jesus that he has passed God's test and, like Abraham before him, he proved himself willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. He can now come down from the cross and live a normal life, like a normal man, just as he always wanted. The angel helps him off the cross, kisses his wounds, and informsJesus that there is only one woman in this world and she has many faces, a saying she will repeat many times throughout this section of the film.

She brings him to his home where he is to marry Mary Magdalene and live a life of peace.It is then that we cut to the wedding night, which starts with Mary giving Jesus a rubdown, tending to his wounds, and being the Biblical wife that men at the time craved. They then have very vanilla sex, missionary style—appropriately enough—and the entire endeavor last about thirty seconds, just as it would being his first time and all. Take half a minute to watch it in GIF form...

As you might have noticed, the angel is there as well, just hanging out while Jesus gets down with his wife. Time becomes fluid at this point and now Mary is pregnant, but she dies before the child is born. The angel informs Jesus once more about one woman with many faces and tells him to check in on Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha. Before long, Jesus is basically married to both and has fathered many children. On his death bed, Judas barges in to tell Jesus that he's been deceived. The angel is not an angel but rather the devil, sent to tempt him just before the moment of his death.

Jesus repents and we flash back to him on the cross at the moment before his death, the preceding thirty minutes having been the titular "Last Temptation of Christ." Jesus realizes he has passed the final test and cries out "It is accomplished" before muttering it again and dying. End of movie.

So what's the big deal about the sex scene, you wonder? Well, frankly, I wonder the same god damned thing. This is likely a case of people hearing about the movie and getting outraged rather than, you know, seeing itand then forming an opinion. It's the same problem that has plagued society since the beginning of entertainment. A powerful few decide that something is immoral, encourage their followers to paint it with that same brush, and no one actually sits down to see what the creator's intent actually was.

In this case, Kazantzakis, Scorsese, and Schraderall want to show the audience that Jesus faced temptation like no one else has ever known. Naturally sex would be a part of the equation, but it consists of precisely 1/60 of the totallength of the temptation. There's obviously more to it than the sex scene. The shame is that the people who would most benefit from seeing this concept accurately portrayed are the very same ones who have decided the film is blasphemous without ever laying eyes on it for themselves.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...

—The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now

—Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut inUnder the Skin

—The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct

—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball

—HowMulholland Dr.'s Legendary Lesbian Scenes Deepen the Film's Mystery

—Showgirlsand the Dangers of High Camp

—Rosario Dawson Laid Bare for Danny Boyle'sTrance

—Katie Holmes MakesThe GiftWorth Remembering

—Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot

—Lisa Bonet's Bloody Nude Debut inAngel Heart

—Monica Bellucci Gets Brutalized in Gaspar Noé'sIrréversible