Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 54

i i 1 i i PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS" Friday, -Aug. -19, "1988 Page 54 MM 1 'TEMPTATION' AN ENGAGING LOOK AT JESUS -hi -A I 'i I Jesus, portrayed by Willem Dafoe. speaks to a crowd of followers in "The Last Temptation of Christ" "well-adjusted." This, his "last temptation," is the material that has raised the fundamentalists' ire, and I can see how they might be upset by the notion of Jesus making love to Mary Magdalene, even if it's only in his imagination. Others, however, might see this vision and its eventual rejection by the man on the cross as a moving and inspiring metaphor for the ultimate sacrifice be has made. Christ" is the honorable, patently heartfelt work of a man who cares desperately about these issues.

But the film is at the same time different from anything else Scorsese has done. His work has always derived much if not most of its power from the use of urban American idiom, best seen in the speech of the quintessential Scorsese actor, Robert De Niro. In this film the screenplay is by longtime Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader the dialogue is deliberately flat, using neither the thees and thous of the typical biblical epic, nor the deses, dems and doses of the typical Scorsese film. On the whole, the language works, and sometimes Schrader's plain lines reach a surprising eloquence. "Do you love mankind?" someone asks Jesus.

"I see men and I feel sorry for them, that's all," he says. Later, Lazarus, newly raised from the dead, is asked how it feels. His reply is of surpassing beauty: "I like the light." (Only occasionally is there an instance of the unintentional humor this kind of material invites. "The foundation is the soul!" says Jesus. "The foundation is the body!" insists Judas.

Less light, less filling.) But the flatness of the talk drains much of Scorsese's energy, and there are numerous slow stretches. Since there's no suspense as to how the story will turn out, individual scenes succeed or fail according to how successfully they reinterpret the familiar material. Some, like the Sermon on the Mount, are startling and fresh; others, like the Last Supper, are disappointing. The actors all acquit themselves well, the standouts being Harry Dean Stanton as SaulPaul and Andre Gregory as John the Baptist In the lead role, Dafoe skillfully suggests Jesus' emotional growth, and he projects an interesting quality of vulnerability, emphasized by his slight lisp. But one still might have hoped for a more riveting performance.

There's just one sustained sequence of power in this film, and it's the only part that's not a variation on the Gospels. I refer to Jesus' fantasy as he hangs nailed to the cross, a sort of feature-length daydream in which he imagines what his life would be like if he suddenly disavowed his ministry. He marries, has a family, becomes THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST: A drama starring WtHem Dafoe. Harvey Keitel and Barbara Hershey. Directed by Martin Scorsese.

Screenplay by Paul Schrader, based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakrs. Running time: 160 minutes. A Universal release. At the Ritz Five Theater. Parental gutd Rated R.

By BEN YAGODA Daily News Movie Critic Dt is only one of the ironies surrounding "The Last Temptation of Christ" that the publicity and resentment generated by fundamentalist groups bitterly protesting the movie's release have turned it into a box-office smash. Here is another irony: Noone is better able to appreciate this movie than the devout Christians who are protesting it If you have a deep interest in Jesus, you may find the movie infuriating, but you will probably also find it consistently engaging and at times inspiring. If you dont have such an interest if. say, you are one of the atheists or secular humanists the protesting groups have accused of being behind the film you are likely to find "The Last Temptation of Christ" long, frequently puzzling and sometimes tedious. As everyone knows by now, "The Last Temptation of Christ," which opens today at the Ritz Five Theater, was directed by Martin Scorsese and is based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazan tzakis, which portrays Jesus as an extremely frail human being, a man continually torn apart by the two warring sides of his nature, the basely human and the ineluctably divine.

He at once desires Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey, in black ringlets and tattoos) and is ashamed of the feeling. He has strange visions and excruciating headaches; to get rid of them, he flagellates himself. The premise of the film is that Jesus knows the mission God has in mind for him, and resists it. The opening scenes portray Jesus (Wil-lem Dafoe, who played the saintly Sgt. Elias in as the only Jew willing to construct crucifixes for the Romans.

"You're a Jew killing Jews," shouts the Zealot Judas (Harvey Keitel, with red hair and a putty nose). "You're a disgrace." (The suggestion that Judas knew Jesus at this early stage in his career is only one example of the liberties the movie takes with the Gospels.) To which Jesus replies, speaking of God, "I want Him to hate me. I make crosses so Hell hate me." But it won't work. Jesus cannot escape his calling. At first accompanied only by Judas, he accumulates disciples one by one.

He grows from a tortured mass of anxiety to a commanding leader. And he performs miracles. The film makes it very clear that the miracles did take place, but they are rather understated, with a minimum of thunder and lightning and special effects. (This spare-ness characterizes the movie as a whole. The most elaborate scene, Jesus" driving the money-changers from the Temple, used only 135 extras.) Not having read the novel, I cant say how faithful the film is to Kazan tzakis.

But I can say that it is very faithful to the work of Martin Scorsese, who from "Mean Streets" through "Raging Bull" and Taxi Driver" and up to "The Color of Money" has been obsessed with the themes of debasement and redemption often employing unmistakably Christian imagery i ist Temptation of IT HELPS TO KNOW THE STORY The Rev. Fergus A. Smith is the minister and head of staff at First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. At the Daily News' request, he attended a preview of "The Last Temptation of Christ." By the REV. FERGUS A.

SMITH Special to the Daily News 2 he Last Temptation of Christ" is a film for the theologically literate. Throughout the viewing, I found my-se'f from time to time sitting on the ery edge of my seat, watching with from the first decade of this century, that undergirds a substantial portion of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel and Martin Scorsese's controversial motion picture. Was Jesus, like Judas, a Zealot, anxious for the expulsion of the Romans from Israel? Did he believe, until the last, that God would intervene personally and dramatically to rescue him from the Cross and remove the Romans in one apocalyptic moment from the Holy Land? Was Judas' betrayal an attempt to force the hand of God in order that a political, earthly messianic era might begin? These difficult and unanswerable questions are explored with imagination and thoroughness in "The Last Temptation of Christ." Following the public furor of hysteria and gossip which greeted an early preview of the film in Los Angeles, it comes as a surprise to discover how faithfully the action follows much of the New Testament narrative. Discrepencies from the received chain of events have poetic purpose and usually work well. There is, however, one unlikely encounter, part of the famous hallucinatory sequence from the Cross, where Jesus and Paul meet in a town square, where Paul has been proclaiming the dead-and-risen Christ.

Paul speaks with an educated west-See SMITH Next Page with Jesus and the other disciples before the betrayal? Was Mary Magdalene really a prostitute, as some of the Gospel narrative suggests she was? What was the nature of Jesus' relationship with women? What went through Jesus' mind as he hung on the Cross, immediately before his death? These and other questions, which can never pass beyond the speculative at theological college, are explored with sensitivity, discretion -and imagination through the course of a long film graced at its end by a cathartic and indisputibly orthodox conclusion. Although the film is theologically elitist, it does not fail to reflect the fundamental fact that, humanly speaking, the life of Jesus belongs at once to everybody and to no one. The Jesus-of-history remains ever elusive and retains his own mystery, for no matter how vividly he emerges from the pages of the New Testament, there are many things about him of which we know nothing. The Gospels are not preoccupied with how he looked or what his dietary preferences mighf have been; We do not know how he relaxed or what characteristics made him the friend and I i u. Barbara Hershey ts Mary Magdalene fascination as competent and convincing actors dramtized the very arguments which, for most of this century, have been part and parcel of everyday debate in the divinity schools across the globe: What if Judas really played a companion of the varied and colorful group who surrounded him.

These gaps in our knowledge have been the preoccupation of historians and artists throughout the centuries; successive pseudobiographies have simply presented a contemporary Everyman, whether enlightened rationalist, romantic idealist or, as in the case of Albert Schweitzer's reconstruction, mistaken apocalyptist. It is this last interpretation, dating Smith responsible part, from God's point of view, in the betrayal of Jesus? What was the relationship of Judas.