The Last Temptation of Christ

Willem Dafoe plays Jesus Christ in this extraordinarily controversial adaptation of Nikos Kazantzaki's novel. The film depicts a sometimes reluctant, self-doubting Jesus, gradually coming to accept His divinity and the inexorability of His ultimate fate. The much-maligned sex scene with Mary ...more

Canceled in 1983, finally made in 1987, and embroiled in controversy, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis' -The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) is the ultimate labor of love and a singularly thought-provoking take on the life of Jesus. Though fundamentalists loudly protested a brief scene featuring Willem Dafoe's Christ procreating with Barbara Hershey's Mary Magdalene, the real "offense" was portraying Jesus as fully human as well as fully divine, and thus subject to doubts, ...more