Ahhhhh....now THAT was lovely.

Just in case you were wondering, I didn't die or contract leprosy, I merely took a week off to hang with friends and family. Highly recommended. Unless you don't like yer friends and family, of course, in which case all the usual caveats apply. But, really, if that's the case, stop reading me blog and get on w/ mending those fences and re-building those bridges. Life's too short, and all that.

Onward and upward we go...


The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Italy, 1964, Pier Paola Pasolini) AKA The Power and the Glory

Ever wonder what sort of Jesus that a gay, Communist, atheist Biblical interpreter would find? Well, if you spend 140m with Pier Paola Pasolini’s The Gospels According to Saint Matthew, you’d have one possible answer. Looking just a little pissed about the state of his faith in a world that seems to have lost its way, Jesus is something of a shit disturber in Pasolini’s interpretation of Matthew’s gospels.

The film’s dusty cinematography conveys the dusky and inhospitable Mediterranean setting; Jesus is decidedly not preaching to the converted here, which is surely part of the film’s point w/r/t standing by your principles, however unpopular they may be. Pasolini is able to wedge his personal politics into Matthew’s Gospels well, for as a champion of the poor, the sick, the infirm, Jesus has our empathy and support. Furthermore, the rural landscape of the film’s first half is populated with both Jesus and Pasolini’s constituency, the poor and the suffering, and it is only when the story moves into the urban setting of Jerusalem, peopled by the target of Pasolini’s disgust, the petty morality of the petit bourgeoisie and the self-interested hypocrisy of the upper levels of religious hierarchy, that Jesus first encounters people’s cynicism and their eventual violent hostility. Matthew’s Jesus is not just a spiritual advisor, but something of a rebel as well. Once in Jerusalem, Jesus places repeated emphasis on the hypocrisy of the church elders, scribes and clerics, purposefully provoking those who have the power to smite him. Pasolini frames the scene when Jesus blasphemously refuses to deny his divinity and is condemned to death in long shot, with no visual detail of Jesus’ or his condemners’ reactions, and only the verbal clues of the multitude accompanying the spectacle.

The film’s central weakness is the source material. Clearly, the Biblical scholars who wrote this stuff were not strong on narrative, and Pasolini’s near-slavish adherence to the words of the Gospels of Matthew leaves a lot of gaps in the story. The resultant poorly-linked and choppily-edited "greatest hits" structure ("Look! He’s giving the sermon on the mount! Walking on water! Curing lepers!") is particularly annoying in the film’s middle section, as Jesus gathers his flock of followers. Fortunately, Pasolini is able to rescue the film by presenting a fascinating contrast of prosaic and poetic. The movie’s emotional engine is driven by a sometimes completely anachronistic score that spans American blues-tinged gospel ("Sometimes I feel like a motherless child") African spiritual ("Gloria" Missa Luba) as well as the works of Bach (Matthew’s Passion), Mozart and Prokofiev; the soundtrack is an absolute stunner, emphasizing the multi-cultural heritage of the man under this cinematic microscope. Stylistically, TGASM is an unorthodox and sometimes uneasy juxtaposition of documentary-style almost found footage-like material and the immaculately framed, polished and detailed shots which are sprinkled liberally throughout the rest of the film. Pasolini’s film sometimes plays like cinema verite, as if we just happened to stumble upon this eccentric rabbi as he wandered the countryside preaching to the assembled rabble, and other times it has all the visual elegance of the fine films that obviously influenced it, like Dreyer’s Passion (not to mention the films that TGASM itself must have influenced, such as Tarkovksy’s Andrei Rublev.)

A final note. Mel Gibson shot his film on the same streets of the same Roman-era southern Italian town of Calabria, but in striking contrast to MG’s Fistful of Nails, Pasolini’s film gives the crucifixion very short shrift. Not only is there no depiction of the scourging of Christ, but most of the 2 or 3 minutes of screen time that Christ is on the cross are spent focusing on the reactions of those witnessing the event, such as the Roman soldiers, the disciples, and most effectively, the Virgin Mary (played with angelic agony by Pasolini’s own mother). Pasolini chooses instead to direct us to the Gospel’s messages, which are sometimes oblique and occasionally contradictory, but most often provocative and intriguing. It is interesting to see a non-believer like Pasolini making such a passionate plea to listen to the words of the man, rather than focus on the deeds of his oppressors.


Score: 82/100