BONUS OPPORTUNITIES: The Last Temptation of Christ

As the American film critic and screenwriter Roger Ebert said about the movie:

“Paid Christ the compliment of taking him and his message seriously, and they have made a film that does not turn him into a garish, emasculated image from a religious postcard. Here he is flesh and blood, struggling, questioning, asking himself and his father which is the right way, and finally, after great suffering, earning the right to say, on the cross, 'It is accomplished.”

This movie is about a humanized Jesus, the one alike to human beings in many ways. As a contrast to the other movies about Jesus life and history, this film showed us a human being named Jesus who is a sinner like us and who experiences every feeling and behavior characteristic to homo sapiens; such as depression, confusion, fear and struggling before accomplish the right way in life.

Scorsese’s use of cinematic elements to show us a vivid play of this million years old story hardly contributes to transport us to that setting. Mise-en-scene and sound makes us feel the duality of Jesus feeling throughout the movie. On one hand, there are soundtracks representing accomplishments, and on the other hand there are the kind of soundtracks used by Scorsese in order to make us feel sadness and confusion every time the character experiments failure. The open frame composition, characteristic of this director, allowed the characters to move freely in every scene, guiding our attention to their behavior and action, instead of the exaggerated use of costumes, decoration and other artistic touch that took away the importance of the characters themselves.

As a conclusion, I should say this is an artistic film. The message transmitted through it it’s up to the viewers, as religious values and ideals vary in each person, but no matter which are your personal beliefs, you should appreciate this piece of art.

Martins Scorsese Ideology expressed throughout his films

As many things in life, moral values or ideologies vary from person to person. A way to appreciate person’s ideologies is through his “works of art”. Throughout his movies: Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino, we could analyze the personalization of his thoughts, beliefs or ideologies hidden in his characters.

I think Scorsese’s purpose towards the genre is to show us the real and vivid face of the underground obscure world called: “mafia”. As we could appreciate throughout these movies, he presents to us the duality or the both extremes faces of mafia. On one hand, there is the world of wealth, power and millions. We could see this very clear throug Robert De Niro’s character; Sam and in the character: Nicky. Sam bought his wife’s heart with money as if it could buy love. But at the end of the story we could see she never fell in love with him, so what apparently could buy anything (money), resulted in a not useful weapon.

On the other hand, Nicky has a millionaire life in which he could manage everyone’s life or death with his power, but throughout the movie we could see how this character degenerates into a powerless man who died suffering in a cruel murder after seeing his brother deliration before death.

So, we could see how Scorsese demonstrates the consequences and suffering alive in this world. In other words: justice will always catch you, as we used to say: “eye for eye, teeth for teeth”. This fact is also seen in Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. At the end of Taxi Driver, we saw how Travis took revenge of the owners of the little prostitute and the man who abused her, ending up as a hero for all the country. On Goodfellas, we saw how Henry told all the truth to the authorities and all the members of the gang end up paying for their consequences in jail.

As a conclusion, Scorsese’s ideology is against the mafia world. He accepts is a “cool” world for some time; a world in which we gain a lot of money in an easy way, a world of beautiful women in love with you or, in simply words; a word of money, wealth and power, but he also show us the sad end of these people who will always pay the consequences of their actions.

Goodfellas; much more than a crime movie

There are 3 main things that are essential in order to categorize a movie into a genre; the setting, mood and format. Concerning to the setting, this is definitely a crime genre movie. The previous observation is based on the fact that the main character, Henry, and his gang were placed in underground places where criminal activities such as drug trafficking and murder compose the day to day routine. It is not a simply “crime film”, it is much more than that. It highlights the life and development of a crime figure, in this case Henry, pointing out every achievement or failure his gang passed through, including all the conflicts between them and other gangs, characteristic of criminal-gangster films.

Goodfellas is under the subgenre of mafia or gangster films. We can prove this with many facts. It is relevant for this discussion to highlight the fact that the term “mafia” is present in the world since the nineteenth century with the name of “Cosa Nostra”. It was born in Sicily, (an autonomous region of Italy in Europe). Scorsese makes emphasis on one requisite to be a part of the “made men”, or the men who are highly ranked and considered leaders. They should be 100% Italians, which symbolizes that this organization grew up in this country, and explains why Henry and Jimmy could not be made man. This contributes to the fact that we were dealing with the mafia world. At the same time, one of the most important requisites to pertain to a certain mafia was to obey a law of silence, as the film constantly showed us.

During the scene in which Henry was in a trial because the police caught him sending cigarettes, he denied everything about his “gangsters friends”. By his actions, Henry represents in a very clear manner that loyalty and respect are absolutely necessary to form part of the gang. At the time the jury was off there was a characteristic Scorsese shot. Henry appeared in the middle, and all the members of the gang embraced him in a unifying hug, filling the complete frame. It creates unity between them, and at the same time, sound contributes to make the scene a happy one in order to emphasize their loyalty as members of this violent crime organization.

In conclusion, gangster films involve a type of “society ideology”. It presents gangsters as poor people who transform themselves into criminals in order to achieve success and demand respect. Goodfellas clearly shows us the transitory transformation of a child who grew up in a religious, overprotecting family and the manner in which he constantly admired the men with power, wealth and authority which overtime lead him to become one of them.