The Gospel According to Saint Matthew movie review

Dear Readers,

I recently watched The Gospel According to Saint Matthew directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was very good, and I recommend it.

I first heard about the film a while back on a History Channel program that briefly covered a lot of movie versions of the story of Jesus, and I’ve wanted to see The Gospel According to Saint Matthew ever since.

I went into the movie vaguely remembering that the History Channel program had mentioned something about Pasolini being a communist and a homosexual and an atheist, so that probably altered the way I looked at the film. But honestly, knowing that about the director made me want to see the movie more. Controversy sure is great marketing.

I started reading things into the movie that maybe weren’t there. Maybe Pasolini wasn’t trying to emphasize some stuff as much as I emphasized some stuff in my mind. Like I noticed there were a lot of shots of the poor and oppressed and the working class, and these types of people were portrayed as the heroes, and then the Scribes and Pharisees, the Roman soldiers, the government officials, the bankers and such were portrayed as the bad guys.

Of course, that’s often the way it really is in the New Testament. Jesus himself was a blue-collar type of guy- he was a carpenter. And he mostly called blue-collar type of men as his apostles. And Jesus overthrew the tables of the moneychangers… it’s similar to one of my previous posts about Jesus Christ being portrayed by Woody Guthrie as a social hero and not so much as a God.

Jesus looked like a harsh union organizer when he turned away his mother and his brother. It seems to me that the director was trying to say that Christ abandoned his family for the social good, much like communism disassembles families in the name of social good.

In communism, self-improvement and family improvement is written off as selfishness. But caring for the faceless masses of your comrades, that’s a lot better, you see.

I found the theme of abondoning family for the greater social good running through John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. As the plot unfolds, the Joad family gradually fell apart. Some family members died, some deserted each other, and the Joad family is in shambles by the end of the novel. But at the end, even though the immediate family is not doing well, the human family of comrades is doing better… or at least the human family of comrades has an idea of which direction to head in...

In the final moments of the novel there is a glorious vision of the future- a communist utopia where people care for strangers as much as they care for themselves and their families. That vision comes when Rose of Sharon Joad breastfeeds a stranger. (Hmmm… who else do we know who is sometimes called the Rose of Sharon? Hint: His initials are J.C.) I would argue that Rose of Sharon Joad can be seen as a Christ figure. Both Christ and Rose of Sharon gave of their bodies to help their fellowmen.

Rose of Sharon gave her milk, which was designed for her baby’s consumption, to a complete stranger- she was a compassionate, good communist. Instead of giving it to a family member, she gave it to a stranger. Likewise, Christ denied his mother and his brother and instead went after the lower-class strangers that nobody else seemed to care about.

And so in the Grapes of Wrath, Rose of Sharon is the quintessential good communist, and in The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Jesus Christ is the quintessential good communist.

And when I say “good communist,” I’m talking about the pie-in-the-sky type of communist that well-intentioned liberals like Oscar Wilde want us to believe in. I’m not talking about the actual communists like Stalin and Mao Zedong that have hardly any compassion and don’t mind killing lots of people.

Hmmm... Jesus Christ as good communist... don't you hate it when people thwart Jesus's message?

But then again, maybe I was reading all this stuff into the film that really wasn't there. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Sometimes even homosexual atheist communists want to pretend to be Christians, just for a little while. Maybe the director really just wanted to faithfully record the wonderful story he found in the first book of the New Testament.

It's a lot like Bob Dylan's new Christmas album, you know? Just because Bob Dylan is a deep deep deep artist, that doesn't mean he can't do an innocent Christmas album. Just trust him. It looks and sounds just like a Christmas album- get it settled in your mind that it's just a Christmas album, and a charming one. There are no hidden messages. Take it at face value. Enjoy the Christmas songs. Get it settled in your mind, and you will be at peace.

Returning to The Gospel According to Saint Matthew- it looks like an innocent, well-done Jesus movie. That's what it is. Get it settled in your mind, and you will be at peace.

Blah blah blah.

Here are a 5 observations about the movie:

1. Boredom alert!

Warning to teenagers with ADD: The Gospel According to Saint Matthew is black and white, subtitled, and old. Sometimes shots go on for dozens of seconds without cutting to another shot! It's crazy! Those elements- black and white, subtitled, old- sort of make me think that films are better than they really are… or maybe they really are better. One of my problems with subtitled foreign films in general is that I can’t tell if the actors are acting well because they’re speaking a different language. I can’t the hear voice inflections that reveal so much. But I still like subtitles more than dubbing.

2. Jesus never smiles!

I think there was only one brief scene in which the corners of His mouth turned upward. But most of the time Jesus looks ticked off. Righteously ticked, off, though. I personally like to think of Jesus as a friendlier, smiley-er man. I like to think that he enjoyed watching butterflies flap their wings with happy little children.

3. Pasolini got the baptism of Jesus wrong!

The movie showed John the Baptist by the Jordan river pouring handfuls of water on people’s heads, instead of immersing them in the water.

4. The dialogue was great!

It was like somebody inspired by Heaven wrote all the lines! Ha ha ha. The dialogue was taken straight from the King James Version of the Bible. They cut out a little bit of Scripture, though- mostly parables and sermons that didn’t advance the action of the movie.

5. Shocker!

The scene depicting Herod’s men killing all the male children around Jerusalem was intense!!! I don't know if I've ever seen such a straightforward depiction. The women and babies were running from men with knives... the killings happened on a sunny hillside...


Overall, great movie. Five stars.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa