Jesus of Nazareth

Having been born and raised in the twentieth century, film as an art form has had a particularly hard time with religious subject matter. It’s ironic in a way. No other medium is better equipped to produce wonders: on film, as in religion anything is possible. And yet, when film-makers have wandered with their cameras and special-effects teams into the domain of the sacred, the results have been, in the main, pretentious and embarrassingly naive. Neither religion nor film has been served by the effort.

Contemporary attempts like Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar (not to mention The Exorcist or The Omen) are as vacuous and artificial as their forerunners — The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Robe or Quo Vadis? While each of these films is based at least indirectly on biblical themes, their producers seem to have gone to the sources intent on demonstrating a thesis to their author: “Anything you can do, we can do better!” The films are infested with the very hubris that religion proposes to eradicate. As a result, what have been passed off (and marketed) as religious films have been, in the main, demonic.

It is for this reason that Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, aired in two 3½ hour segments on United States television during Holy Week, is a triumph. It is a work of faith. It does not stand in the tradition of Hollywood pap epics, it transcends them. Zeffirelli evidences kinship not with Cecil B. DeMille or Galt Dermott, but with his Renaissance fratelli, who, master craftsmen like himself, sought to explore the mystery of Christian faith through their respective art forms. How would Botticelli have portrayed the birth of Jesus if he were a film-maker instead of a painter? How would Michelangelo have conceived the Pieta had he been a director, not a sculptor? Zeffirelli is aware that the medium with which he works (and before which he is humble) is as alive with religious potential as those of his forefathers. He has tapped that potential and unleashed a cinematic masterpiece.

What is most significant about the film is that Zeffirelli tells his story straight: it is a story remembered, not interpreted with theological sophistication. A less confident director would have succumbed to the temptation to modernize the characters and events — to make them more “relevant” to the skeptics of the modern world. Zeffirelli does not demythologize or remythologize; he avoids the insights of form criticism; he does not explain away the miracles; he doesn’t portray Jesus as a political revolutionary. By telling his story as it is remembered, he locates, with deft precision, its pulse. His faithful memory doesn’t play him false. The story takes on meaning and relevancy precisely because it is remembered and recounted with compassion. Zeffirelli works with the conviction that the sense of Jesus of Nazareth is revealed only when the story is sensitively told — not when it is explained or defended.

Its importance as a religious film doesn’t derive so much from its subject matter as from the mode of perceiving the subject matter. The facts and details of the 2000 year old story are secondary to the way they have been remembered through faith. By focusing upon memory as the faculty that gives life and meaning to the events — a device Fellini employed with success in Amarcord — re-membering emerges as a holy act. The film is not religious because it deals with biblical events — The Ten Commandments did that! It is religious because it perceives those events with more than the eye of the camera lens. C.S. Lewis writes that a pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. Zeffirelli has moved beyond facticity to maturity — to the full grown pleasure of memory, the essential component of every religious act.

In so doing, he unlocks the story’s credibility: Life is good, it derives from a loving origin and has purpose; all men are brothers; this insight is revealed in the sayings and doings of Jesus of Nazareth; by betraying this revelation, men are led to see its truth. The simplicity of this vision is never lost. The incredible becomes credible. The simple becomes profound.

Zeffirelli’s genius lies in the fact that he has subordinated his highly stylized technique to the faith that gives life to his material. Both are enhanced by the approach. The film is sensuous without being sensual; it is lavish without being pretentious; it is deeply personal without being self-indulgent. Though working with a sixteen million dollar budget, Zeffirelli avoids the pitfalls of cinematic sensationalism. The miracles are portrayed simply, never trumpeted; the cast of superstars in cameo roles does not overwhelm the film, but defers, without exception, to the action that lives within the narrative.

Reasons abound why the film should not have worked: Zeffirelli has walked through a field laced with explosive mines. The greatness of the film is attested to by the fact that none of them explode. With Jesus of Nazareth Franco Zeffirelli has created a compelling film that marks a significant turning point in the history of religious cinema.

Dan Cawthon teaches in the Religion Dept. at the University of Manitoba. He is a regular theatre reviewer for the Eric Friesen Show and The Morning After The Night Before.