Days Of Ire and Brimstone

By Richard Lacayo

Judas Iscariot as the most loyal of Christ's disciples. Mary Magdalene as the former girlfriend who still tempts the Saviour and haunts his fantasies. John the Baptist as the center of a hysterical cult. And Jesus himself as a reluctant leader, subject to paranoid visions, uncertain if he is heeding the call of God or Satan. These are the unorthodox interpretations to be found in The Last Temptation of Christ, a new film directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the 1955 Nikos Kazantzakis novel.

Though the movie is not scheduled for release by Universal Pictures until this fall, a storm of protest has already begun. At a press conference last week, a group of conservative Christian ministers demanded that the studio destroy all copies of the film. The ministers, who had not seen the film but had read a version of the screenplay, charged that it portrays Jesus "as a mentally deranged and lust-driven man." Said the Rev. Lloyd John Ogilvie of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood: "It is the most serious misuse of film craft in the history of filmmaking." An ad placed by 61 Christians in the Hollywood Reporter declared, "Our Lord was crucified once on the cross. He doesn't deserve to be crucified a second time on celluloid."

Fundamentalists are upset by scenes in which Christ (Willem Dafoe) is shown as tormented and self-accusatory ("I lied, I am afraid. Lucifer is inside me") and in which he persuades Judas (Harvey Keitel) to betray him because it is God's plan. But what has them fuming is a portion of a final dream sequence -- meant to be Christ's hallucination while on the cross -- in which Jesus is shown briefly engaged in sexual relations with Mary Magdalene, played by Barbara Hershey.

Scorsese, the director of Taxi Driver and The Color of Money, has tried for years to make a film of The Last Temptation. Paramount had planned to produce it in 1983 but backed away, fearing pressure from Fundamentalists. When Universal undertook the project, it hired born-again Marketers Tim Penland and the Rev. Larry Poland to help allay concern about the film among their fellow conservative Christians. The pair marked 80 out of 120 script pages where they thought dialogue or action would be unacceptable, then resigned, they say, after concluding that Universal would not respond to their objections and had used them only to head off protests.

When Universal arranged screenings last week, conservative ministers refused to attend. Representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church complained that they were not invited, despite requests to discuss their reservations. Roman Catholic leaders have yet to offer any comment.

Some more liberal church leaders who viewed the movie at a New York screening came away wondering what all the fuss was about. "The film will help people understand their own commitment to Jesus," said the Rev. William Fore of the National Council of Churches. Author Kazantzakis, who died in 1957, was himself a man of deep, if idiosyncratic religious belief. But that did not prevent the Greek Orthodox Church from censuring him or the Vatican from placing his novel on its since-abandoned Index of Forbidden Books. In response, Kazantzakis sent the Vatican a wire that borrowed a line from the early Christian writer Tertullian, calling upon the judgment of a higher authority: "Ad tuum, domine, tribunal appello" ("To your tribunal, Lord, I make my appeal"). Universal's only appeal may be the tribunal of the box office.

With reporting by Brooke Masters/New York and James Willwerth/Los Angeles