Easter views

Easter films are like “Rashomon” (1950).

Akira Kurosawa’s classic film features four people who tell the same story differently. Most people know the basic story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. But versions of exactly how and why these events happened are different.

The devil is in the details. Sometimes literally.

Director Martin Scorcese (“The Aviator,” 2004) is a deeply religious man who entered a seminary in 1956 with the intention of becoming a priest. His excellent film “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) will make you think.

“Temptation” is based on a book by Nikos Kazantzakis, who also wrote Zorba the Greek. Kazantzakis created a self-doubting, open-to-temptation, quite human Jesus. At first some people objected to “Temptation” because of a scene where Christ is shown as married with children. But this scene is only a temptation of the devil and provides even greater depth to viewers’ understanding of the sacrifices Jesus makes.

Another thought-provoking “passion” film is Canadian Denys Arcand’s “Jesus of Montreal” (1989). It involves a group of actors who are asked to modernize the passion play that has been staged by a local Catholic church for decades. The actor in charge meticulously researches the latest information about Jesus. The play is hugely successful with the public but not the Catholic priests whom the film criticizes for being corrupt, hypocritical, and politicized. The movie also knocks modern society, especially the role of capitalism, as the actors take on some of the moral aspects of the characters they play.

One of the newest Easter films, “The Gospel of John” (2003) tacitly acknowledges varying narratives by focusing on the word-for-word testimony (Good News Bible version) of one of Jesus’ disciples. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are more similar to each other than to that of John.

I watched the abbreviated two-hour version of “John.” A three-hour disc included in the DVD set contains the entire gospel. All the words are direct quotes but John Goldsmith’s screenplay beautifully fills them out with coherently organized action and scenery. Henry Ian Cusick plays an assertive, accessible and thoroughly attractive Jesus with a buoyant stride and friendly smile.

Jesus gives lectures and performs miracles with energy and enthusiasm. He shows no signs of an identity crisis and thus is quite persuasive when dealing with followers and enemies alike.

John departs from other passion narratives in its depiction of the Last Supper where a woman is present among the disciples and Jesus directs Judas to “Hurry. Do what you must.” Jesus is not tempted by the devil in the garden just before the soldiers come. Instead, he prays for the protection of all who believe in him.

Pontius Pilate is presented sympathetically; the priests are not. The crucifixion scene shows Jesus suffering but goes by fairly quickly. The resurrection, more detailed than inother films, emphasizes Jesus’ compassion andforgiveness.

Of all the Easter films that I watched, John is the one that would appeal the most to a non-Christian who wanted to find out about the faith.

Philip Saville, the director of John, is now working on “The Gospel of Mark” (expected 2005).

Marxist director Pier Paolo Pasolini made “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew” in 1964, a film regarded by many critics as the greatest religious film ever made but it can be found only at Netflix (www.netflix.com) and is hard to understand. This black and white film was shot documentary style in barren Materra, Italy and features the poor people who live there. Pasolini did not believe in God but he was fascinated by the radical power of Jesus as a historical person and relied directly on Matthew’s words for the film.

I have thoroughly disliked only two films in my life. One is King Vidor’s 1956 version of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” with Henry Fonda terribly miscast as Pierre.

The other is Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” which I regard as a ludicrous slice-and-dice film. As I watched, I thought only about the rubber cement guys trying to find new ways to make more and more terrible wounds as the film ground on.

Gibson’s decision to show only Jesus’ suffering eliminated any opportunity for the audience to identify with the Christ or to understand why he was being punished so severely. People who are not Christians surely would not be brought to the faith by such a film.

A number of other films focus on the last years of Jesus’ life (e.g., Nicholas Ray’s 1961 “King of Kings,” Roberto Rossellini’s 1976 “Il Messia”) but they are not as interesting as those noted above.