It looks like Martin Scorsese’s “The Life of Jesus” is still in development, but he is still very much tinkering with the script and hopes to shoot it in the future—if there’s still “time.”
The Oscar-winning director is being honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where he has family roots. There, he spoke more extensively about “The Life of Jesus.”
“I’m still working on it, because I’d like to give a more contemporary approach to the project,” he says. However, he anticipates that “it will almost certainly be a black and white film.” Scorsese admits that he’s not rushing the film: “It takes time because I like that a work of this type is something that requires many years of study and research.”
The film, mostly set in the present day and independently financed, will be based on Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 book. It’s set to be one of the least costly projects for Scorsese in quite some time. For the last 25 years, he’s been helming big studio productions, and this one seems to be a much more intimate film.
Describing the project, Scorsese has said that it would be around 80 minutes and focus on “Jesus’ core teachings in a way that explores the principles but doesn’t proselytize,” adding, “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.”
The film, which is being written by Scorsese and Kent Jones, will be set mostly in the present day, although Scorsese has admitted that he doesn’t want to be locked into a certain period because he wants the film to feel timeless.
“I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion,” Scorsese says.
Last year, Scorsese mentioned that for years he’s been looking to make a film about the life of Christ. He wanted to make one in the early ’70s, in 16mm black and white. However, it was seeing Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” that made him decide against it. Looks like he’s now changed his mind, or at least as far as the monochrome is concerned.