- Interative Menu
- Scene Selections
- Production and Publicity still
- Custom Design
- Talent Bios : Martin Scorsese, Williem Dafoe, Barbara Hershe
- Interview with Peter Gabriel

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 Magdalene (Barbara Hershey) occurs as an hallucination experienced
by Jesus as he suffers on the cross. This particular sequence was what
infuriated the film's most rabid critics (few of whom wanted to confuse the
issue by actually seeing the picture), but in fact it is just one of many
iconoclastic musings to be found in the film and its source novel. Equally
volatile are the intimations that, as a carpenter, Jesus indifferently shaped the
crucifixes for other condemned prisoners long before his own fate was
sealed, and that Judas (Harvey Keitel) was literally manipulated into betrayal
by a Christ whose preoccuption with his own destiny compelled him to "use"
others. None of these departures from the normal interpretation of the
scriptures are offered as any more than theory; as such, it was accepted as
food for thought by the more open-minded clerics and Biblical scholars who
recommended the film.