Surreal at times, slow-moving, and revelling in the atmosphere of a small town, it’s an avant-garde film that won’t be for everyone, but it has moments of great charm – not least Jesus with a strong Welsh accent referring to the weather as “bootiful.” 20. The area has been taken over by a company called ICU who become increasingly aggressive towards the man leading the town into rebellion and telling the authorities “I make you unnecessary.” He’s the “teacher” – a man who pops up on a beach, is baptized (read: dunked under the waves without preamble), and gathers quite a following, despite not being able to remember who he is.
Michael Sheen returns to his motherland in this ambitious project: an updated passion play filmed in three days in the streets (and beaches) of Port Talbot over Easter 2011. Watch The Greatest Story Ever Told on Amazon. The good news: while there are plenty of the kind of polystyrene studio sets you’ve come to know and love from 1960s movies, there are also some stunning sweeping shots of the (mostly Utah) landscape and beautiful lighting. This is your bona fide old school, all-star Biblical epic. The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)ĪKA the longest story ever told. Not to be confused with Il Messia (1975), the last film Roberto Rossellini directed and a more conventional take on Jesus (played by the lovely Pier Maria Rossi). It may not have the highest production values, but it’s certainly a version of the story I haven’t seen on screen before. Instead, he is saved from his fate by God, and the unfortunate Judas finds himself changing “amazingly in face and speech to be like Jesus” just in time for the Romans to arrest him. Using stories from the Qur’an and the non-Biblical Gospel of Barnabas, we still get the virgin birth and various miracles, but this time we have an alternative ending where Jesus isn’t crucified. Played by Ahmad Soleimani Nia, this is Jesus’ story told from the Islamic perspective. (Sorry, Zalman King.)Įven Iranian Muslim Jesus can’t escape being blonde.
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(And better casting – John the Baptist is weirdly elderly.) Jesus preaches in the screechy manner of an angry TV evangelist, his message of love at odds with his mean little face. There are some interesting re-interpretations (Jesus causing a ruckus in the temple as a pre-meditated strike rather than a genuine overflow of indignation, Judas being a friend of Barrabas and trying to combine all the rebels for maximum impact) but the film itself could have done with more polish.
It seems a bit risky to me, but then I’ve always found the most haunting horror films are the ones where pranks go wrong. Despite his disciples’ warnings of “rusty nails and splintered bones,” Jesus is determined to fulfill the prophecy of a Messiah who rises from the dead.
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While The Da Vinci Code popularized the theory that Jesus was married, another conspiracy had emerged decades earlier: what if Jesus “came back to life” because he’d never really died? Based on a 1965 bestseller, the plot centers on a drug which can simulate the appearance of death. It’s not the greatest film on the life of Jesus, but the addition of jaunty country music makes it enjoyably original.īuy Gospel Road: A Story Of Jesus on Amazon. While we now ridicule the image of a light-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, it was de rigueur in 1973, and Elfstrom is so Caucasian he’s positively Nordic.
Cash’s wife, fellow singer June Carter, plays Mary Magdalene (and is the only actor with lines).ĭirector Robert Elfstrom also doubled up as the lead. The relatively low budget forced some creative solutions to certain scenes: Jesus is never surrounded by crowds, but instead sound effects are used along with the music to produce the right atmosphere. He appears as narrator and his songs provide the soundtrack. Here are the top 25 movies about the man we can thank for the enormous amount of chocolate we eat at various intervals throughout the year: 25. Gospel Road: A Story Of Jesus (1973)Īn enthusiastic convert to Christianity, Johnny Cash dug into his own pockets to make this film on location in Israel. Religion can also make for contentious filmmaking: too earnest and the movie feels sanctimonious and dull, too irreverent and you risk making “a holocaust movie that has the power to destroy souls eternally,” as a nun once told Martin Scorsese about his 1988 film, The Last Temptation of Christ. At the beginning of the last decade, we saw big movie star vehicles based on Old Testament tales in Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings, and when those didn’t pan out, we still got Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara trying to bring an indie sensibility to Mary Magdalene. The Biblical epic keeps appearing as if it’s on the cusp of a resurrection.
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