Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Jesus of Nazareth (Zeffirelli)

It's interesting watching films of the gospels...

This is probably the most critically acclaimed one, but not necessarily the best. For what it's worth, the Passion of the Christ is better in every respect from Gethsemane onwards.

Important points to note about this film:

  • Overwhelmingly white and British. Most characters have RP accents. Donald Pleasence as one of the Magi is particularly unsettling. And that also means they don't show enough emotion.
  • It's done in the style of a "film of the book" where they mess about with the plot-line quite a bit. They even mess up bits of the theology (Jesus on the Law, for example).
  • Lots of good incidental stuff - it actually looks like 1st century Judea for much of the film (geeky note - though they get the temple wrong. The stones are much too small, for one thing).
  • Very few special effects, which means very few miracles.

What's interesting on the subject of miracles is that the film actually seems to be telling the story in a sceptical way - kind of like >Shadow of the Galilean, but less extreme. Most films from books jazz the plot up a bit. This does the opposite. So the only miracles are the feeding of the 5000, raising of Lazarus and Jairus' daughter (done so there's questions over how dead they were), the healing of a man born blind (done with questions over whether he was blind at all, even before he is healed). There's no darkness at the crucifixion, not even a storm.

The Resurrection is particularly oddly done - you don't see Mary meeting Jesus, but you do see her telling the disciples. There's then a long scene where Peter seems to persuade everyone that Jesus is alive because they all betrayed him and so they have to spread his message (not sure how that was meant to work). Then you have the Great Commission scene, where after the previous scene you're not sure if it's fantasy or not. I honestly wasn't sure whether Zeffirelli wanted to say the Resurrection happened or wanted to try to explain how people might have thought it happened. He probably left it deliberately ambiguous.

I'd be happy with using clips from this in church - the Triumphal Entry, for example, is done well, and there's some good discussion over expecting the Messiah to be a military figure. And it's good to be reminded of large chunks of the gospel narrative. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's actually telling the same story as the gospels.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Christian greetings from a fair way away.

I would like to know ion what terms you justify portrayals of Jesus in regard to the second commandment. Don't you think that even viewing a film (or stage) portrayal of Jesus could be dangerous? The impressions you gain might be erroneous but because they were visual they might be astonishingly difficult to eradicate from your mind. In short, isn't the Bible the only picture of Christ we're supposed to have?

(That said, I don't know what I'd do with all those Rembrandts if I ruled the world. I couldn't do a Savonarola and burn them. I suppose I'd have to stick large notices on them: "This is not a picture of Christ", along the lines of "ce n'est pas une pipe"!)

Awaiting your response with interest, while wondering if anyone else is old enough to remember "Godspell"...

John said...

There's a very interesting discussion here if we ask what the Incarnation does to the Second Commandment. If someone had taken a photo of Jesus, would that have broken it? Does Jesus break it just by existing? Is it wrong to imagine Jesus on the cross? Is it wrong to draw what you imagine?

I think a film like "The Last Temptation of Christ" probably does break it, because it depicts Jesus very much according to a human image of him.

On balance, I don't think that a film which depicted Jesus in a way totally faithful to what the gospels tell us about him would necessarily violate the Second Commandment as understood in the light of the Incarnation.

Oh, plus I could always point out that the 10 Commandments were given to Israel as part of God's covenant with them. We aren't under the Sinai covenant, but we worship the same God.

Anonymous said...

Kia ora, Custard, I've been pausing on the brink before diving into this one.

You said:
"If someone had taken a photo of Jesus, would that have broken [the second commmandment]? Does Jesus break it just by existing? Is it wrong to imagine Jesus on the cross? Is it wrong to draw what you imagine?"

I think it's significant that though Jesus was born in an era when representational portraiture was highly developed in the Greek, Roman, Indian and Asian cultures, He was born to a position in life which made a portrait unlikely, to a people who were specifically forbidden representational art. So I think that, yes, a photo of Christ would break the second commandment, which is why the possibility was put out of court. A photo, whether "art" or "candid", is no different from any other image. It's all pixels, and could not represent Jesus in all of His humanity and divinity.

Does Jesus break the second commandment just by existing? No, obviously not. We're all God's image-bearers (Gen 1:26).

Is it wrong to imagine Jesus on the cross? Well, strictly speaking, you are still making an image, aren't you? It's just that you're making it out of flaring synapses, and you're not proceeding to wood and stone. So here's the danger: you might be so distracted by/enchanted with your own imaginings that you miss something that you ought to be considering about the crucifixion. You might, for example, get so hung up on the visual, horrific, gripping image of the cross that you forget the essential thing - He rose again. I think some Catholic art might be slipping towards this.

As a sidebar, I think it's significant that the elements of communion are so very symbolic and non-representational: bread and wine to represent flesh and blood means that we keep firmly in mind that these are just symbols.

So, in response to question four, given that I've already made the image in my mind before I ever lay pen to paper/brush to canvas/chisel to marble/light to celluloid, the final part of the process might be the least blameworthy, especially since, given my skill level, I can be pretty sure that I'd never produce anything recognizable enough to be misleading to another soul!

Then you said:

"On balance, I don't think that a film which depicted Jesus in a way totally faithful to what the gospels tell us about him would necessarily violate the Second Commandment as understood in the light of the Incarnation"

But there could be no such film! Even a film which used only words and locations from the gospels would include huge amounts of guesswork. But the kicker would be that the director had edited the material, chosen the bits of the story that most appealed, and added emphases that might not even be verbal or obvious but which militated against scriptural truth. The devil would indeed be in the details.

Then you said:
..."the 10 Commandments were given to Israel as part of God's covenant with them. We aren't under the Sinai covenant, but we worship the same God."

Yikes! My understanding is that the ceremonial and sacrificial law were abrogated by Christ's work, but that the moral law is still in force, and is still the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

If you're using the flag of Christian liberty to sail past the decalogue, you're a good deal too close to the wind, aren't you? Which other commandment would you like to take lightly today? My prayer for you is that it's only number five, since if you're just a bit cheeky to your mum, she's quite likely to forgive you.

I really think you should revisit this issue and take extreme care with the films you see and the images you absorb/create. And here's an Awful Warning to back this up:

Years ago (1976?) I went to the film "Godspell". I'm sorry to say that I enjoyed it at the time. Nowadays, although it's hardly a daily problem, an image of the Lord Jesus with an afro perm and psychedelic trousers still dances through my head occasionally.

So there you are: in thirty years' time, do you really want to be embarrassed before Christ by the residue of images you picked up today?

Enjoying the blog, awaiting your reply with interest,
Jocelyn Jaquiery

John said...

Does Jesus break the second commandment just by existing? No, obviously not. We're all God's image-bearers (Gen 1:26).

Sometimes I wonder if it's blasphemous to say that something sinful is in God's image. I'm pretty sure we're not in the image of God - we're in a corrupted version of the image of God (better known as Adam's image), and we as Christians are being restored into the image of God, who is Christ. see here.

Is it wrong to imagine Jesus on the cross? Well, strictly speaking, you are still making an image, aren't you?

Yep. Ok then, was it wrong for Mary and John, who were at the cross, to remember the scene afterwards? Was it wrong for people who were around Jesus to look at him, given that that is making an image too?


But there could be no such film!

Hmmm. Maybe.

Yikes! My understanding is that the ceremonial and sacrificial law were abrogated by Christ's work, but that the moral law is still in force, and is still the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

A common view. A few quick questions...

Where do you get the civil / ceremonial / moral distinction from? It's common and at least a few hundred years old, but it's not Biblical.

Who gets to decide which category to put different laws into? Laws on not wearing mixed cloth or visiting temple prostitutes, for example?

You refer to Galatians. Is there any way to read Galatians honestly and still think that Paul expects Gentile Christians to obey the Jewish Law? Isn't that actually the whole point of the letter - that we don't? Why should Christians be under Sinai? In the "law as a schoolmaster", isn't the point that Christians have now reached adulthood and so don't need the schoolmaster?

I actually discuss the whole issue of OT law quite a lot more here. and here. It's worth reading some of the comments too.

Anonymous said...

"Sometimes I wonder if it's blasphemous to say that something sinful is in God's image. I'm pretty sure we're not in the image of God - we're in a corrupted version of the image of God (better known as Adam's image)"

Ouch. Yes, thank you, I made a bad slip there. The sinfulness of our human nature was essential to my next point, which was that no film could be made without its adding to or departing from scripture.

"Was it wrong for Mary and John, who were at the cross, to remember the scene afterwards? Was it wrong for people who were around Jesus to look at him, given that that is making an image too?"

I wasn't talking about receiving or recalling sense impressions. I was talking about the creative component of making an image of Christ, which is tantamount to saying, "Now, what sort of God would I like to have?" when I should be looking in the Word to see what He says about Himself.

If I produced an artwork on the level of a Rembrandt, it would still be wrong of me to show it to anyone, since I might be making a stumbling block for them. Nor can you discriminate between "good" images (Rembrandt) and "bad" images (Scorcese's "Temptation"). All partake of the spirit of the age in which they were made, as I found to my cost with "Godspell".

I need to do some homework before I address the "law as schoolmaster" debate, so am leaving off here.

In Christ

John said...

I wasn't talking about receiving or recalling sense impressions. I was talking about the creative component of making an image of Christ, which is tantamount to saying, "Now, what sort of God would I like to have?" when I should be looking in the Word to see what He says about Himself.

So there's a difference between sense-based images and imagined images? Leaving aside the psychological difficulties with that (our brains process what we see rather heavily, consciously or subconsciously), doesn't that seem a bit of an unBiblical distinction? It suggests that if we'd been able to take photos of Jesus, that would be ok.

If I produced an artwork on the level of a Rembrandt, it would still be wrong of me to show it to anyone, since I might be making a stumbling block for them. Nor can you discriminate between "good" images (Rembrandt) and "bad" images (Scorcese's "Temptation"). All partake of the spirit of the age in which they were made, as I found to my cost with "Godspell".

I'll agree it would be wrong of you, because of the issue of conscience. One of the very interesting things about images of Jesus is that they almost all have the same colour skin as the person who made them...

But one could then get into the argument about whether that's bad because it dehistoricises the Incarnation or whether it's good because it emphasises his identification with the group which produced the artwork. Maybe the 70s afro-wearing types needed to see that Jesus could identify with them. I must admit, my leanings are strongly towards realism on this, but I can see the argument the other way.

Anonymous said...

So there's a difference between sense-based images and imagined images? Leaving aside the psychological difficulties with that (our brains process what we see rather heavily, consciously or subconsciously), doesn't that seem a bit of an unBiblical distinction? It suggests that if we'd been able to take photos of Jesus, that would be ok.

Again with the photo. No, the photo would still be deceptive and wrong because it could not show Jesus' divinity.

I agree with you that sight is a deceptive faculty. We see what we expect to see: Mary didn't recognize Christ in the garden, nor did the men on the road to Emmaus. That's why sight isn't an important route to faith and why it'll be the last thing added to our knowledge of Christ, some time after we've fallen at His feet.

That's also why we're not to go envying people who saw Jesus during His incarnation or go pining after a picture of His earthly body. We are better off already than anyone who saw Him in the street, and we're even better off than the disciples up to Pentecost. We know how the puzzle fits together and we have the Holy Spirit. Isn't that the meaning of Jesus' words to Thomas? ... "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Images. They're wrong. You know it.

Reading Galatians, mugging up the doctrinal standards, breaking out the systematic theology, heading out to sea,

In Christ,
Jocelyn

Anonymous said...

As a preliminary remark, I think that you're underestimating the power of pedagogy.

The schoolmaster doesn't pack up and leave when you finish school. He's in your head, forever. Example: I can't tell you how many times in life I've remembered and put into practice my maths teacher's famous dictum: "When faced with a problem you cannot solve, do any part that you can and look at the problem again." It's been useful on any number of occasions, though for calculus, not so much. Thank you, Mrs Furniss: you gave me a tool for life.

Still reading,

In Christ,
Jocelyn

Anonymous said...

Hi, Custard, I have written a small paper in response to your questions and left it poste restante with Glen Scrivener over at christthetruth.org.uk. His email address is glen@christthetruth.org.uk.

Thanks, this has been interesting and challenging. It's a long time since I last took my Bible to the bath to sneak some extra reading time.
In Christ,

Jocelyn

John said...

Agreed with the sight being deceptive. But where your argument seems to me to lead is to the conclusion that the disciples shouldn't have seen Jesus at all, or if they did, they shouldn't have associated what they saw with Jesus. But doesn't that just lead into docetism?