Last Days in the Desert Official Trailer 2016
Making the project even juicier is that McGregor plays both Jesus and Lucifer. If this were Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” (1957), Max von Sydow would be playing chess against himself. As the Rolling Stones sang, “As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer,” suggesting two sides of the same coin.
“I [was] very daunted by playing Jesus … and thinking about how to portray somebody who’s known personally in a very deep way by so many people in the world,” McGregor said. “Then I realized once we got down there in the desert … that I hadn’t given The Devil very much thought at all. But he seemed to come a little bit more naturally to me anyway. I don’t know what that tells you about me.”
Joking aside, the prospect of playing Christ is daunting no matter the angle. Do you go traditional like William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur” (1959), Nicholas Ray’s “King of Kings” (1961) or George Stevens’ “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965)? Do you disguise it like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Ordet” (1955)? Do you spark controversy like Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)? Or do you infuse violence to become brutally bludgeoned like Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” (2004)?
Arguably the closest depiction remains Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (1964), painting Jesus Christ as a Pope Francis-style marxist avant-la-lettre (before you scoff like some Pharisee, think of Jesus turning over the money tables in the temple and it makes total sense).
“I [was] very daunted by playing Jesus … and thinking about how to portray somebody who’s known personally in a very deep way by so many people in the world,” McGregor said. “Then I realized once we got down there in the desert … that I hadn’t given The Devil very much thought at all. But he seemed to come a little bit more naturally to me anyway. I don’t know what that tells you about me.”
Joking aside, the prospect of playing Christ is daunting no matter the angle. Do you go traditional like William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur” (1959), Nicholas Ray’s “King of Kings” (1961) or George Stevens’ “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965)? Do you disguise it like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Ordet” (1955)? Do you spark controversy like Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)? Or do you infuse violence to become brutally bludgeoned like Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” (2004)?
Arguably the closest depiction remains Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (1964), painting Jesus Christ as a Pope Francis-style marxist avant-la-lettre (before you scoff like some Pharisee, think of Jesus turning over the money tables in the temple and it makes total sense).
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Short film