MERRY CHRISTMAS! (or I should say Cristomas)
And... this largely lived up to the hype as a remarkable work of art.
Gospel According to St Matthew is so fulfilling and kind of in its (at times) unassuming presentation so awesome to experience from Pasolini as about Jesus Christ and his times that not only is he steeped in making this a full-bodied CINEMATIC experience of this man's life and teachings, writing with the camera much more than just working off of a script, but that it needs to be so rooted in the reality of people who live in the world of the poor and downtrodden so that the idea of understanding, the poetry of it and those faces, rings so strongly.
Look it, I don't believe in the God of Christianity or do the whole "Jesus is my savior" thing (us lapsed Jews have a thing about that), and I am closest to Agnostic. Yet personal belief doesnt matter to me so much with a film about a subject like this so long as a) the filmmaker doesn't rub my face in the muck of spectacle (I'm looking at you, Mel Gibson), or b) try to overpower me with spectacle. What matters to me is if the filmmaker can use ideas through technique, location, and empathy, and one need not to be a believer to feel something about what Jesus spoke of to mean lots of things. In fact, it takes a cinematic treatment precisely like this to make those teachings of be enlivened.
I think if you take much of what Jesus said, at least of what Pasolini presents here as a word for word translation of this part of the Bible, it is so much about seeking what is both good and in reality potentially good (will you be the rich man trying to get into Heaven? Fat chance, pal).
It is about the message of simple while not being so simple (or I should say not dumbed down for an audience like in a Sunday School presentation); compassionate while also not acquiesing to the structures of power (hence the whole, you know, "sword" talk); and that at the core if you have real love for humanity, for those that do and even dont deserve your love and compassion, and don't take for granted the time you have on this plane of existence then you'll not be taken for granted yourself (and that's putting aside the, you know, heaven business).
But all those messages are redeemed by the frank style; this is stripped down to not be this bombastic spectacle, and while all in Italian the atmosphere feels closest to what raw and unfettered existence it might have been like at the time of Jesus and his group's existence. That sounds like it could potentially be drab, but that's far from the case.
Thanks to Tonino Delli Coli's precise camerawork, Irazoqui's laser focus through mostly his eyes but also his soft and equally ferocious voice, it is breathtaking to watch many times - even when it's operated and presented in hand-held, in some moments like a documentary crew was there listening in on his speeches, there are many others like when Jesus delivers the "thy kingdom come... lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" trip, something about how he is lit and framed, how this man Irazoqui plucked from a college and made to be Pasolini's 'Cristo,' gives this figure grandeur but never with prevention - and this performer is surrounded by scores of unique, unvarnished, working-class, young and old, faces. Souls.
These are not faces most other filmmakers of Pasolini's time or I'd wager even years before with the core Neo Realists like Rossellini would consider for any film, and that's what makes it extraordinary to me. They're locked in like us into a world that is unkind and rocky and rough and dry as a desert, and there's no escape into the fantasy that so many movies usually give us. Even Last Temptation of Christ, which is still for me the more substantial and unique and formally daring of films about this person and idea of this person as a character, still shows us Actors from an industry and faces we recognize somewhat. Pasolini gives no such recognition; he's saying through these scenes of Jesus and his apostles meeting and talking with the citizens of his world *this is it.*
Dont avert your eyes. And thus the miraculous Walking on Water moments are no less "real" in feeling than those parts where he is among others or in the villages. Jesus is a guy who is too focused on saying his Word to pluck that unibrow to do much else. In other words, this is serious as a heart attack, but it's not a dry sermon or something that is Eating Your Vegetables homework. It's a rousing intimate epic because it prioritizes how an "Average" person living off the land is not so Average, he or she is worth much more than that. Yes, there are many shots showing Jesus talking and preaching to the masses, but more often he shows those people listening to him, surrounding him, filling out the frame around him and surrounded by those real locations and structures.
Gospel According to St Matthew is forceful and, sure, didactic, but alwayd wonderful because it is a radical film (shot with clarity and poetry hand in hand), made by a Radical about a Radical... and so what if not everything he says you or I believe in? What matters is that the film stays true to the subject and is as passionate as it is honest about the point of view.
And when the film branches out from Jesus to cover, say, the saga of John the Baptist, notice how Pasolini builds up a scene like with those wealthy women and the girl who says so deadpan (I am paraphrasing) "bring me his head on a platter." These are also shot more locked down while those with Jesus and the disciples are more immediate and in-your-face. This is before it became a "style" choice or affectation.
I could go on, but you should just go watch it, preferably in its new 4K restoration via Criterion channel. It's pure.
