In a Sight and Sound interview, Martin Scorsese describes his upcoming movie about Jesus, which he says is maybe a film, definitely not a documentary, but possibly some kind of unique hybrid?
I’m working on an idea… I think I’m finally getting around to what it could be. It’s kind of a film, but it wouldn’t be a straight narrative, it wouldn’t be a documentary, it’d be a combination of things. And I think it may have to go back to Shūsaku Endō [author of the novel Silence] and his Life of Jesus [1973], which I found to be interesting because it takes Jesus as a… figure of thinking, and a question of Jesus from a point of view that’s not Western. And so I’m finding that comfortable in a way. And I’m wondering how I can pull some of my questions over the years and thoughts and attempts together and make it some kind of a film. And so, during this period, I’m working on that myself.
Maybe he’ll end up adapting the Endō source material, it sounds like it might play a key role in the whole thing.
This project started in the summer when Scorsese, visiting the Vatican, was told by Pope Francis to "show us Jesus" onscreen and that “moved” the filmmaker as some sort of higher calling.
When asked on details about the film, Scorsese was very vague, but it seems as though he’s in a very spiritual mindset for this one:
“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus. And I’m about to start making it.
Scorsese added that for years he’s been looking to make a film about the life of Christ. He wanted to make one in the late ‘60s, in 16mm black and white. However, it was seeing Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St Matthew” that made him decide against the idea.
Of course, he did direct “The Last Temptation of Christ,” but, when asked about it, Scorsese says that the film brings out a lot of misguided anger in people and that this isn’t the film that he now wants to make.
Scorsese, 80, has a bunch of projects lined up. We’ve already tackled some of them like “Home,” “The Wager,” and “Roosevelt.” At this point, he’s not resting easy and that’s wonderful news for us to hear.