The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 41

ifliByniipinwwynyin LIVELY ARTS WEDNESDAY AUGUST 31 1988 THE MIAMI HERALD 3D Last Temptation of Christ profoundly moving Movie Review The Last Temptation of Christ (R) CAST: Willem Dafoe Harvey Keitel Barbara Hershey Harry Dean Stanton David Bowie Andre Gregory CREDITS: Director Martin Scorsese Producer Barbara De Fma Screenwriter Paul Schrader Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus Music Peter Gabriel A Universal Pictures release Running time 164 minutes Brief nudity brief sexual situations violence oore Playing in Dade Manna 6 in Broward: Fox Sunrise VIII Herald movie critics rate movies from zero to four stars Excellent wwwj Very Good Good Worth Seeing Fair Poor Zero Worthless Judas whom we try to fathom because we can Scorsese has Keitel keep the Brooklyn in and has his characters employ colloquialisms in situations where the King James version is expected at once an acknowledgment of the impossibility of his task (how are the movies to have Christ and Judas speak anyway? in Hebrew? in English with accents? the traditional echo-chamber Voice of God?) and own act of distancing from the epic tradition This is not a film about Sunday school or Cecil De Mille about a living God Photographed (by Michael Ballhaus) in hyper-saturated earth tones without the usual halo light-baths and scored (by Peter Gabriel) with a blend of exotic Middle Eastern strains but without the usual fanfares the film establishes its Christ as a figure of unique if human nobility against the backdrop of a culture longmg for a Messiah but increasingly skeptical that one might ever appear Then comes the final temptation From the cross Christ envisions fully what he must sacrifice living an entire mortal life from marrying through conceiving a child and raising a family to dying a satisfied man Scorsese thus examines an irony central to Christian faith: that most terrible temptation would not have been the lure of kingdom or the promise of earthly pleasure but the chance to marry and lead a conventional human existence the chance in other words to fulfill the mandate of God as a mortal man success and it is a bolt of brilliance is to tell this story with such intimacy and immediacy that the blood runs through it once more There has not been a movie on the subject of anything approaching this power and emotional charge Discrepancies of faith notwithstanding and I share beliefs by any means I was profoundly moved by 7 he Last Temptation of Christ struck by its passion The film works as parable and it works as drama It's brawny and daring and beautiful full of an eerie grace Willem Dafoe plays Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ The film opens today at the Marina 8 in North Miami Beach and the Fox Sunrise in Sunrise shapes these scenes with a startling freshness they have the snap of a brand-new story Authentic on the one hand and surreally illuminated on the other they take on a sense of the moment: Here in the midst of a culture that teemed with prophets most of them false and many quite mad came the one who was real not all that Scorsese is about of course but he makes even the most episodic of the retellings jump with life For once the movies which have been cluttered with back-lot biblical epics comes a story of Christ that seems muscular urgent alive Still it is not an easy film not at any point Early on while the story still has its familiar shape we must come to terms with the two central performances Willem Dafoe as Christ has a beatific smile but also a stricken frown and he uses the latter the most By contrast Harvey Judas all fire and Elimination and Brooklyn accent seems the stronger (hence all the concern about the portrayal of Christ as a an internal logic here: Evil is traditionally more interesting if not more appealing than Good a dialectic of which this Christ is surely aware before anyone And to the extent that Christ was divine no point in attempting to understand Him faith (or lack of it) Still not surprising that this film has angered some Christians and frightened others Like Jean-Luc Godard Hail Mary Scorsese has dared to draw a figure of the Divine that challenges us emotionally as well as intellectually No one for whom Christ is an immutable figure of perfection could easily accept this Christ an interpretation that suggests humanity in the Spirit as much as the converse The rest of us Christian or not are luckier There is so much in this film to admire so much both of Scorsese's art and his faith and something of his struggle with each The film opens on a Christ ho has yet to realize his destiny fully He is still a carpen ter building crosses for the Romans and holding anguished arguments with a Zealot acquaintance Judas for whom the only response to Roman rule is violent insurrection Already Jesus thinks he knows better But he is a man agony tormented by messages from a God who will not leave him alone Over the next two hours-plus Christ comes to understand what is expected of him (and Judas in his turn) The familiar outline of the life of Christ is filled in miracles the healing work the time in the desert and the initial temptations The moneychangers are driven from the temple John the Baptist is encountered Lazarus is risen Scorsese working from Paul adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis book By BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic One of the great themes Martin The Last Temptation of Christ is that the decision by the son of God to offer himself up in sacrifice for mankind was not easy It was agonizing the movie says And this seems a theme of thunderous if obvious import: The greater the sacrifice the more amazing the story and the more powerfully it binds man to God only one aspect of The Last Temptation of Christ that has utterly eluded its panicked critics but a crucial one because it speaks to motive The movie wouldn't have to be a testament of faith to be important artistically but it happens to be both devout important For the less forgiving among us attempt to show the size of the sacrifice is itself sacrilegious Ironically part of the problem is in the title itself which is semantically vague We may mean one of two things when we say that we are colloquially at least We may mean that we want to do something or we may mean that someone or something has tried to get us to do something and that we have resisted All stories about Christ including clearly intend the latter interpretation But much of the criticism of the film has insisted that the former is at issue that when Christ on the cross dreams of marrying Mary Magdalene of bearing a child by Mary of Bethany of enjoying pleasures of the flesh Scorsese means to suggest that Christ would rather have done these things Quite the reverse is true: 7 he Last Temptation of Christ shows him rejecting the very sacraments that mankind holds most dear and transcending earthly temptation favor of the Kingdom of God In short the film is an affirmation of the story of The Passion more the film shows these events with unique power It is impossible to watch the scenes which they occur without being shaken by them regardless of Hot to Trot: unspeakable By JUAN CARLOS COTO Herald Entertainment Writer Hot to Trot is such a poorly executed comedy it boggles the mind Even a mind This Mr Ed knockoff is based on the same yuppie trend that resurrected Diagnet last summer and that will reportedly reunite Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in ISpv The movie does little for the talking horse genre and much less for its star Bob Goldthw ait He plays a daffy and recently orphaned son whose stepfather (Dabney Coleman) is trying to take over the family brokerage At the family stable he meets Don (the voice of John Candy) a talking horse with a bad one-liner for everything Don gets some stock tips and helps his new friend make tons of money at the brokerage The performance is standard Goldthwait as false as the bucked-teeth Coleman wears Mr Ed was more literate than this and much funnier Every joke is rammed down your throat like bad oats Even the talking effects on the show were more convincing Most baffling is why the sultry Bob Hot CAST: Madsen Candy) CREDITS Peters Steve time Virginia chose she some this MU! Venice fest debates Temptation Nowin A great selection of bags from Pradaand Renaud Pellegrino And some terrific separates from Bybios Golden Lion award One was Encore (Once More) by director Paul Vecchiali the story of a middle-class Frenchman who breaks up with his wife takes a homosexual lover and contracts AIDS The second was Dear Gorbachev by Italian director Carlo Lizani an account of the 1938 purge and execution of Soviet revolutionary Nikolai I Bukharin by his friend Josef Stalin The controversial Last Temptation is not competition here Instead it would be presented here as one of a number of movies shown in special events Neither the censorship nor controversy has been a stranger to the Venice Festival It began in 1932 as the Fascist era grew and endured early movie-sponsoring patrons such as Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels In its latter years the festival has thrived on sporadic accusations of blasphemy and overdone eroticism but what is different this year is the attention focused on a movie that has not yet arrived "Never has there been a festival so talked about before it opened Never has there been a film so few people have seen that was so said Paolo Poroghesi chairman of the Venice Biennale under whose auspices the film festival is being held This year about 50 new films were selected from around 300 international candidates for the festival Of them 22 are competing for the Gold Lion including four from the United States: Things Change directed by David Mamet The Moderns directed by Alan Rudolph Haunted Summer directed by Ivan Passer and Madame Sousatzka directed by John Schlesmger which is listed as a joint US-British production American films being shown in other categories include Who Framed Roger Rabbit directed by Robert Zemeckis Mister North directed by Danny Huston Good Morning Vietnam directed by Barry Levinson Big directed by Penny Marshall Hitting Home directed by Robin Spry and Dominick and Eugene directed by Robert Young By WILLIAM MONTALBANO Los Angeles Times Service VENICE Italy Venice tempted moviegoers Monday with French sexual tragedy Stalinist political drama and off-screen imponderable legalism a la Italiana The 45th Venice International Film Festival opened without a hitch but with a nagging question: Will Martin controversial The Last Temptation of Christ be shown? Scheduled for festival presentation Sept 7 the film that is the target of some religious groups in the United States is the subject of an Italian lawsuit that must be resolved before it can be shown at the festival But festival director Gughelmo Biraghi believes the show will go on "It is an important movie I like it and I am pleased to have selected Biraghi said certainly not a blasphemous movie a very respectful film in its own way Sure have protests the day shown but they be Uncertainty over the film directed by Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader stole the opening-day spotlight from the first two movies in competition for the Goldthwait: F'alse performance Movie Review to Trot (PG) No Stars The Twenty-Four Collection Bal Harbour and Town Center Boca Raton Bob Goldthwait Dabney Coleman Virginia and Don the Horse (the voice of John Director Michael Dinner Screenwriters Stephen Neigher Hugo Gilbert Charlie Story by Neigher Gilbert Producer Tisch A Warner Brothers Release Running 100 minutes Profanity Madsen a quality actress this project Her acting shows have been interested If performances are phoned in was sent morse code -fa Place SALE PRICES GOOD WED AUG 31st THRU SAT Sept 3rd OPEN DAILY 930-930 SUN 10-6 WEST PALM STORES DAILY 9AM-9PM SUN 10-6 PROUD SPONSOR OF THE 1988 A OLYMPIC TEAM rGet a $100 CASH REFUND (by mail) when you buy Clairol HI condition Shampoo or II After Shampoo 125 Treatment 15 Ox yOl CHOICE 1 10 1 fiu infwu St tip jnfli umC Oi On Owcudvl on Sn npooo xvoViiuo II Ann Snampoo Veaiment I lose I Th amp ttif mf JOk-i wi oi pu -umiondwi Ahampoo Of coWion II Attn Uyripoo treaHwnt Oik'mI A tnevi th purcha pf er tP oof part baa- it up pout tnrt mp the tip appro vh he top and tape to pm o-pupe Unfln th Hp le I he UPC cooe ntirirv toundon I fie bL oi ire bull hr Ma4 fo (la rol condition 1 90 (ash Bftvnd PO 8o Bf ball mote MD I 259 A Touch Of Sun JLO Regular Final Net 12-oz Pump Hair Spray (n one Cl oltondtion Keiund Otter pet hen ehoid Otter ori whet prontfeied la edo fr tt fled lx la Pie je tot 8 tvl icx i lrw- a re mat tun? 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