The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 236

10N ARTS bN I bti miinmcini r--r- a mi iriiT THE SUN SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 1988 'Last Temptation' speculates on what Jesus' human emotions might have been 'The Last Temptation of Christ' Starring Willem Dafoe and Harvey Kietel. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Released by Universal. fixion and the pain a man would teel (and that a God could ignore) brings the movie almost to the point of physical agony. This is crucifixion not as murder but as torture.

The irony in all this is that "The Last Temptation of Christ" falters, or so It seems to me, in that one area where it is most crucial that it not falter: on the issue of the title, the last temptation. As the novel by Niko Kazantzakis has it. and as Scorsese and Schrader develop it, the emotional crescendo of Christ's dilemma comes upon the and he saw how important his life had been. In "The Last Temptation of Christ" an extraordinary man at the point of ruin Is offered a vision by a celestial being of the world without his death; and he sees how important his death had been. It's become, "It's a Wonderful Death." To me at any rate, this feels too cheap and tidy and diminishes the work's considerable passion.

Still, it's a powerful if flawed film, made not to blaspheme but to explore. It's a Christian film in the best sense of that word. cross. There, in the delirium of his approaching death, he Is once more tempted: a vision is cast up before him of the life he might have had as the son of man, not of God. It's immensely difficult to imagine, and Scorsese's imagination has failed.

The already infamous sex scene Is hardly the problem: five seconds of toes and thighs in soft focus, so bland that you're thinking "That's it?" Rather, it's that the intensity, the furious thrust into Christ's mind, suddenly vanishes; you feel the whole thing going limp, and we are offered instead a chummy little essay on the pleasures of ordinary life as expressed in a cinematic vernacular completely devoid of visual or thematic distinction. The movie begins to lose its grip and feel kitschy. And in a horrible way, the movie almost comes to seem like a parody-reversal of Frank Capra's grand old banquet of corn, "It's a Wonderful Life." In Capra's version an ordinary man who'd come to the point of ruin was offered a vision by a celestial being of the world without his life; thunderous boxing segments of "Raging Bull." Here his gift for evoking the physical sensations of cruci TEMPTATION, from IN than politics (which it despises) or commerce, which it holds In contempt. a portrait of giving, through pain and blood, the greatest gift of all. which is love.

In thenarrative sense, it's quite a traditional film, following Christ's ministry much in the way the pious biblical spectaculars such as "King of Kings." and "The Greatest Story Every Told" do, and you can anticipate shopworn moments such as the raising of Lazarus. Yet Director Martin Scorsese finds ways to reinvent these moments: When Christ Willem Dafoe, who's generally brilliant rescues Lazarus from the dead, one feels him literally tearing the decaying body out of one universe and back Into another, almost with a karate movement. It's not a miracle so much as an act of will. But at the same time, what will trouble people about it is the portrait of Christ in the early stages of his development as a classic neurotic, riven with doubts and self-loathing, desperately uncertain of the godhood in him. He doesn't even trust these miracles; they frighten him.

In the early going, he's an all too human man tormented by lust, drawn to violence, as is any man, terrified of his own mission, which he dees not quite want to comprehend, trying to shut out the voices. He is unsure of his peculiar power to convince, and when Judas (Harvey Keltel) Zealot (that Is, a Jewish guerrilla sworn to overthrow Rome), comes to kill him, he welcomes the blade and the death. But Judas, his own terrible fate sealed, cannot. Finally, Christ confronts that which is inside him. "Do you want to know who God is?" he barks in a sweat-drenched moment of existential terror, to the questioning Judas.

"Fear. That's all that's inside of me." The Paul Schrader screenplay's most astute way of expressing Jesus' humanity is in the words it puts Jn-his mouth this is a Christ shorn of lyricism. If the gospels are poetry of the soul, the key to the film is to realize that it's prose. Where in the Bible, Jesus says, "The meek shall inherit the earth," here he says, in lumpy, waxen rhy-thmless English, "The meek they're the ones who'll be blessed." Where in the Bible, he says, "Let he who among you is without sin cast tftirfirst stone," in Scorsese's grub-bjfpagan Judea he merely, and pro-sajcally, wonders, "Who here has not: sinned? Which one of you peo- l' 12 10 fX 4l 51 KV 8 9 I0 II t2 I 2 3 4 5 6 jyt.i. 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 i jlLi Xjl jlXJm iXi jll ilililihlilijijlililili.

7 8 9 10 II ililihlihmii Sq.Y4 12 3 4 5 6 ill! Mm-) Sq.Yd. I i I a PS Kfl kl P'3b2 73 Dramatic Multi-color Nylon Carved Plush. Commercial Look 1veed Carpet. if HIM I lit mm IlflHW Sq.Yd. JJjVnd he begins the Sermon on the fflcuLint by saying, "Ahhhhhhhh," as if feeis improvising.

(And in fact, he's 9(jCMjig down on a grubby little hill, frounded by a listless flock of peasants, who no more want moral Instruction than they want to buy Typperwear.) tScorsese has set the film in a truly frightening universe. We're cer-tdirijjjrajong way from the traditional Hollywood costume drama, that jtel1bd. and proscribed world characters, in Alfred -JitcJwsock's memorable phrase, look a t2RcS never have to go to the bathroOTn: This is a universe where eleeta3 matters biological "fanEBSaS; the innards of the ani-mats-rotrtinely consumed, the dirt thadings to the aching muscles are eXEChere, as ls casual death. The-Crucifixlon, particularly, is a hoary agony, a grim and banal exe-cutljjlEjLipon a spindly cross upon a crummy-hill. Scorsese has always hadStLallinity for the excruciatingly phySJSJjtas he demonstrated in the Rich Nylon Plush in Fashion Colors.

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6x9Approx. ss. pv KjturiiLJj, rid. rviuHuuy rci- kins will make a new "Psycho" movie; and new "Lassie" and "Beaver" television series will be shot when Universal Studios begins production at its new Orlando home, the company said last week. Universal, competing with the new Disney-MGM Studios, said the 444-acre studio complex will begin filming 8 episodes of "The New Leave It to Beaver" for cable Oct.

1 0. The new episodes filmed in Florida will appear first on Atlanta Super-Station TBS and will then be syndicated by Qintex Entertainment. Perkins, a native of Orlando, will step- into a familiar role in the studio's first feature-length IV," which continues the saga of motel operator Norman Bates. Work on it starts this winter. The revival of "Lassie" begins production early next year, studio officials said.

The start of production "is the culmination of years of planning and development by MCA Inc. and Cine-plex Odeon to create an unrivaled facility on the East Coast for film and television production," Sid Sheinberg, president and chief operating officer of MCA parent company of Universal, and Cineplex Odean Chairman Garth Drablnsky said in a joint statement. Production at the Disney facility began in June, and its first big TV series will be "Superboy," the teenage adventures of the character Superman. Production of the half-hour series is to begin this month. 1 5 DEFERRED PAYMENT To qualify, Bill's Carpet Warehouse must install your carpet, with a minimum purchase of $300.

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