The Last Temptation of Christ

A literal Passion project, Martin Scorsese developed and sought funding for this intimate adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s controversial novel over fifteen years. With quiet, grinning joy and grimacing anguish, Willem Dafoe plays an all-too-human Jesus Christ, touched by divinity. Harvey Keitel portrays a streetwise, Brooklyn-accented Judas, feeding Christ’s already palpable uncertainty about his station in life (and death) and challenging his indecisions: “Every day you have a different plan.” Scorsese, who had teenage aspirations to join the priesthood, found himself on the receiving end of protests and death threats for the blasphemous titular “temptation,” where Christ revels in earthly pleasures.