Following the successful premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon at the Cannes Film Festival 2023, director Martin Scorsese has unveiled his new film project, a new movie about Jesus Christ. The news was released by Variety and other media following a meeting between the filmmaker and Pope Francis at the Vatican, where Scorsese gave a lecture and announced his new film.
After a brief meeting of the director and his wife Helen Morris with the Pope, the conference, organized by the Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica and Georgetown University, took place. Antonio Spadaro, an editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, said the director of Gangs of New York (2002) was moved by the Pope’s call to “let us see Jesus.” “I have responded to the Pope’s call to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a script for a film about Jesus. And I’m about to start making it,” said the legendary filmmaker.
Martin Scorsese’s Films and Religion
His words indicate that this film will be what he will be working on for the next few years, although the director’s manager, Rick Yorn, has not responded to questions about the new project. This is not the first time Scorsese has tackled religious themes in his work. From one of his earliest films, Mean Streets (1973), we could see his concern about how we internalize religion, in this case, glimpsed in Harvey Keitel’s character, tormented by Catholic guilt.
The first was The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis, which generated enormous controversy, as it was a portrayal that moved away from the Gospels and the traditional image of Jesus. His other film about religion, Silence, came in 2016 and is based on the book by Shūsaku Endō, which is about the last Jesuit missionaries in Japan. It was screened at the Vatican.
The figure of Jesus has been depicted in cinema on numerous occasions, and in some cases has been approached by well-known directors. One of the most critically praised works is The Gospel According to Matthew (1964), by Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, which was rated by the Vatican in 2014 as the best film ever made about Jesus.
According to Variety, Scorsese cited Pasolini’s film as one of the major influences for his new project. The main difference between the two is that the Italian was an atheist, but became fascinated by Jesus when reading the Gospels; while Scorsese has declared himself a Catholic. In 2016, after presenting Silence at the Vatican, he told a Jesuit media outlet:
“My path has been and is Catholicism. After many years of thinking about other things, dabbling here and there, I feel more comfortable as a Catholic. I believe in the principles of Catholicism. […] I am certainly not interested in the politics of the institution. But the idea of the Resurrection, the idea of the Incarnation, the powerful message of compassion and love, that’s the key.”
In his recent visit to the Vatican, Scorsese explained that, after the release of The Last Temptation of Christ, he thoroughly researched the figure of Jesus, and it is a fact that the version he will offer about this character in his new film will be far from the adaptation of Kazantzakis’ novel.
In the long list of film and television productions about Jesus Christ, Martin Scorsese’s new proposal will undoubtedly be an interesting addition. In recent years, the main films about Jesus that were released were Son of God (2014), Last Days in the Desert (2015), The Resurrection of Christ (2016), and Mary Magdalene (2018).
Story written in Spanish by Verónica Sánchez in Cultura Colectiva News
