I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I love movies, but I hate going to movies. When you go to the movies in 2010, you are voluntarily subjecting yourself to scumbags with cell phones and H1N1 infestations… at best – I still maintain that someday I’ll design and sell a t-shirt reading: “I Saw Twilight at Comic-Con, and All I Got Was This Lousy Impetigo.”
So for me, Netflix’s streaming video service on the XBox 360 is a Godsend. They provide hundreds of (usually) HD movies from every age and genre of film for real-time viewing. Sure, it’s no Blockbuster Video… but these days, neither is Blockbuster unless you want to watch an understated yet classic For Lease sign.
Streaming Netflix gives me the vibe of an old-school 80’s video store, back in those heady days when any dipshit with decent credit and enough friend-of-a-friend Mafia ties to score porno tapes to stock behind the swinging saloon doors at the back could open a video store. As you enter, you see a “New Releases” section that looks like a polypropylene-entombed monument to the past eighteen months of unmitigated box office failure, offering satisfaction only to those who either love, or want to perform sudden and rudimentary dental work upon, Michael Cera and / or Jack Black.
Further up, there’s an action-adventure section custom-made for the discerning gentleman who wants to spend Friday evening doing some Van Damage. Finally, there’s the Sci-Fi / Horror section, stocked with titles that all seem to be about masked chaps interested in spraying red goop into the cleavage of terrified blondes, marketed to pre-pube boys with the same interests (short the “red”).
And just like those proto-video stores, sometimes you come across what seems to be an old gem that you never got around to seeing for whatever reason that you pick up on impulse. Which is exactly what I did last night with Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which I missed the first time around because, well, I was seventeen so I was probably at Nightmare on Elm Street 4 instead, hoping to spray goop into NAME REDACTED TO PREVENT LIBEL SUIT OVER THE IMPLICATION THAT SHE KNOWS ME‘s cleavage.
In reviewing Last Temptation of Christ, Roger Ebert wrote:
Here is a film that engaged me on the subject of Christ’s dual nature, that caused me to think about the mystery of a being who could be both God and man. I cannot think of another film on a religious subject that has challenged me more fully.
Roger has also written that he is a long-time member of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the only possible explanation for such a glowing review of the most Goddamned schizo, self-congratulatory jacking off onto expensive celluloid I’ve since I got whiskey-shitfaced and videotaped myself watching Wings reruns while scratching my scrote and calling Crystal Bernard “The hottest bitch on television except for two or three others” for two straight hours.
The flick starts with Jesus, living in poverty and working hard on a contract gig making crucifixes for the Romans, which immediately punted my suspension of disbelief since there has never been a contractor that finished on time without skimming ten percent off the top before subcontracting the actual work to Mexicans (And don’t give me any shit about this being Israel 2,000 years ago. He was Jesus. If Jesus wanted Mexicans to handle the scut work, there would be Mexicans, you fucking blasphemer).
Enter Judas, who starts shrieking at Jesus that he’s the only one making the fuckers for them and that he should stop… as if the culture that created aqueduct plumbing would have to throw up their hands at the architecture behind nailing two sticks together. Shit; I can’t replace a sink washer, but even I can nail something to a board.
Then, Jesus complains that he has terrible headaches, fainting, seizures and hallucinations, which led me to think, “Aha! So Scorsese’s working the ‘Jesus thought he was the son of God due to epilepsy or a brain tumor or from watching too many reruns of Wings’ angle! Interesting!” The theory gets some legs when Jesus goes to a monastery and is greeted by an old guy who tells him that the Main Monk is dead, but that Jesus should just get into bed… only to find out the next morning that the guy he talked to was the Main Monk… making Jesus the son of God, a raging hallicinator or, depending on the context you throw into the movie to keep it interesting for yourself, a necrophile.
Jesus eventually decides to play amateur neurologist and cure himself of his headaches and seizures in the time-honored medical fashion of spending a week or so sleeping in the desert with no food or water. And sure enough, that cures it… but to be fair, that method cures everything. Including respiration.
Somewhere in there, Jesus decides to pay his childhood buddy Mary Magdalene a visit at her workplace, which is the bar-none dumbest whorehouse I’ve ever seen. Mary’s doing her business on a combination straw mat / stage in the front of the place, while customers wait and watch her finish off each dude in turn. This scene was wrong and tone-deaf in a couple of ways. First off, you get a bunch of dudes in one place with their wangs out, two things are gonna happen:
- Someone’s gonna get uncomfortable and start joking around, yelling something like: “Hey Matthew, son of Jacob! That looks like a penis, only smaller! And thanks to your frequenting of prostitutes and the lack of yet-to-be invented penicillin, lumpier!” which is an all-around boner-killer, or:
- Due to the spotty nature of Internet coverage in 33 A.D. Jerusalem, A lot of guys who are broke and shameless are gonna take advantage of the free live sex show to rub one out and sneak away without paying. Meaning that when it was Jesus’s turn, it should have taken three strong men and a gallon of acetone to unstick him from the floor.
Anyway, after Jesus cures his tumor he rolls back to Jerusalem and tells people that he’s the son of God, and people immediately believe him, since contractors working for an oppressive occupying army are nothing if not trustworthy. In fact, after preaching for only three minutes, two fishermen abandon their elderly father to follow Jesus, giving Jesus the still-standing land speed record for attracting unthinking acolytes without the use of performance-enhancing E-Meters.
In short order, Jesus gets himself a bunch more followers. We know this because Scorsese shows Jesus walking toward the camera in Reservoir Dogs-style slow-motion with his posse, which grows every four or so seconds, with Peter Gabriel synth music blasting in the background… and I know Last Temptation was shot in the mid-80’s, but is there a worse style of music to set the Greatest Story Ever Told? Every time Pete’s score swelled, I expected less to see Jesus wash Mary’s feet and more to see him grab Judas to chase after a rapidly escaping Cigarette boat, screaming, “CALDERONE!” and firing a Walther PPK into the air. There was one synth-music cue where I swear Jesus was gonna stick a banana into a camel’s tailpipe.
Part 2 of this vicious little rant can be found here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was edited after the author sobered up and realized an innate inability to spell “Scorsese” or “Magdalene.”
[tags]Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese, Netflix, dark humor, satire[/tags]
