If I was a woodcutter, I'd cut. If I was a fire, I'd burn. But I'm a heart and I love. That's the only thing I can do.
I have always said that Martin Scorsese makes amazing, flawless movies about people I don't care about. This movie is really the one big exception. It combines his near-perfect filmmaking with the person I care about most in the history of mankind, Jesus. The first thing that one needs to understand about this movie is that it is not just a retelling of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, it isn't even based on the gospels of the Bible. Instead, it is a conceptual vision of what it must have been like for a human on Earth to carry the power, responsibility, and mission that Jesus had laid upon him by his father. The first big shock is that Jesus is makes crosses in the movie. This actually makes sense since he was a carpenter by trade, but using this as an act of defiance by Jesus against God's mission is pretty insightful. Also, Harvey Keitel's Judas is cast as more of a "right-hand-man" than a conniving betrayer. Then, in those last fateful moments of his life, Jesus envisions what his life would be like as a normal man with a home and family. In my opinion, telling the story in this way, gives the viewer a greater appreciation and empathy for Jesus' struggles than any amount of graphic flogging could grant (I'm looking at you Mel...).
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