Last Days in the Desert is simultaneously a naturalistic, oneiric and surrealist approach to imagining Jesus’ days of temptation in the desert. Last Days in the Desert stars Ewan McGregor and has four other actors with speaking roles, including Ciaran Hinds, who recently appeared in Game of Thrones, Tye Sheridan, who has an impressive resume, but has yet to distinguish himself as anything but a serviceable actor, and Ayelet Zurer, who did an amazing job in Man of Steel as Superman’s birth mom and is a famous Israeli actress.
I was initially really excited to see Last Days in the Desert because I hoped that like Risen, the excellent cast signaled a sleeper hit of a movie about Jesus instead of the usual epic schlock that just capitalizes on the fact that Christians are willing to watch anything if it has a Christian theme (I am including myself in this group). Last Days in the Desert is no Risen, and it is not a low production quality Christian produced film. Last Days in the Desert takes a more humanistic approach to Jesus and effectively explores universal themes of clashing dreams and hopes within a family that has communication issues and great love for each other. Last Days in the Desert takes an existential approach to Jesus’ prelude before He enters the world stage and cleverly uses the time after the devil tempting him to be able to take artistic liberties with the story of a well-known figure.
When you are making a movie based on a Biblical character, you have two choices: faithful adaptation or authentic in the spirit of the characters. Unfortunately Last Days in the Desert fails to successfully translate the character Jesus from the well-known written stories to the screen. Please note that I am a Christian, but my problem is not with deviating from the text, but it is like when you are very familiar with a franchise or series of stories and suddenly the creator has a character do something that as a long-time follower of the story, you know the character would never do so while the misstep may not make it a complete failure, it is not a success.
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Last Days in the Desert does many things well. First, Jesus spent the majority of his life being an ordinary human being so it was entirely possible that there are tons of untold stories of people just chilling with him. It would never occur to them to ask Jesus for a miracle, which is why his mom had to prod him into action. They would just talk to him as they would talk to anyone and probably think that he was just wise beyond his years. Last Days in the Desert effectively captures how people would feel comfortable to share really personal aspects of his or her life to Jesus. Based on Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well and Nathaniel, his perceptive words were as impressive as any miracle. I like that Jesus in Last Days in the Desert prioritizes his carpentry and interpersonal skills.
Second, I have not seen anyone suggest this theory, but suppose the family in Last Days in the Desert is not real, but an externalization of Jesus’ internal thoughts about his dual nature as both fully God and fully man? There are many scenes where Jesus is clearly seeing something that no one else is seeing, but there is plenty to suggest that the entire movie is a depiction of his internal struggle with spiritual forces. Like his prayer in the Garden of Gethasamane, Jesus may have ultimately stood strong, but he certainly felt like he would prefer a different life than the one that his Father wants him to have, which is similar to the conflict between the father and son. His mother did have a son for someone other than his legal father, Joseph. The son likes riddles, and many of Jesus’ parables sound like riddles to his listeners. Jesus and the son feel like the father does not speak to them. Obviously Jesus’ issues in the movie are not completely in line with what he is recorded as saying in the Bible. Jesus in Last Days in the Desert is hungry for details about his Father, but Jesus in the Bible knew him well.
Third, even if the family is real, it is still a neat, though depressing twist on The Gift of the Magi without Jesus bearing witness to their crisis. The father does his best to depart from the ways of his father and appeal to his son’s interests, but he is still harsh and alienates his son with his desire for his son to stay in the desert. The father tries to please his wife and take great risks so his son can learn a trade in Jerusalem and leave the desert. The son only thinks that his father is unreasonable and too demanding and is actually preventing him from going to Jerusalem. The son is tempted to kill his father, but effectively does by bringing the knife that cuts the rope. The mother dies alone so her son can go to Jerusalem. So while no one gives in to their worst instincts and sacrifices so the other person can have what they want, no one is entirely happy when they succeed in getting what they want, and everyone ends up alone.
While encountering Jesus may mean death and pain for many of his followers, my quibble with Last Days in the Desert is that no one who spoke to Jesus felt depressed, just energized, if they heeded his words. He pissed off the religious leaders that thought Jesus was blaspheming and depressed the rich man when he realized that he loved something more than God and was not ready to change. Otherwise Jesus inspired joyous change or at least radical departure from daily life when he saw them for who they were-good and bad. I love a bleak ending. I can even accept everyone dying, but Last Days in the Desert forgot an important element of any story with Jesus: joy and energy. I even preferred the sensationalistic Hollywood twist suggested by one imdb user called ronineditor that at the end, we should find out that the son is Judas Iscariot. So Jesus’ final temptation would be whether or not to help Judas get to Jerusalem and thus guarantee his death. Last Days in the Desert is more a movie about the prevalence of doubting and dissatisfaction in human life, including for Jesus, not plot advancement, so that twist would not have been faithful to the plot.
Last Days in the Desert makes Jesus’ intervention in this family’s life the most depressing success in his career. Either give me Jesus talking at the well, Jesus walking on the water or Jesus flipping tables and pissing people off so much that they then want to kill him, but don’t give me Jesus as middle management with lackluster results. Jesus changed lives even when he just asked for water. Give me a movie where Jesus is at a diner, anything, but this overly dramatic, unearned final act that does not really fit with Jesus while it may stand on its own.
Also I hate insects, and if I was God, I would not make them, but I think that Jesus would like them since he did, and McGregor looked understandably grossed out. Side note: many viewers hated that Ewan McGregor played Jesus and the Devil. I felt like Last Days in the Desert took a page from The Prince of Egypt that when a person interacts with the spirit world, it sounds like their own voice. I actually enjoyed this aspect of Last Days in the Desert and preferred saucy, better-groomed and bejeweled Devil McGregor to Jesus McGregor. Jesus McGregor felt like he was in the ancient version of 127 Hours playing the James Franco part. Frankly the only actor that should have been in Last Days in the Desert is Zurer, and she is probably of European descent too, but if you want people to see your movie, you cast McGregor as Jesus. Just ask Don Cheadle (Miles Ahead).
Dear Last Days in the Desert, please make your opening text large enough so I can read it. When I focused on it and blew it up, it still was a blurry mess. Thank you.
The final scenes are simultaneously tonally dissonant and in line with everything that preceded it. Last Days in the Desert depicts Jesus on the cross. Then from Jesus’ perspective, the scene as the rock moves from the mouth of the cave complete with audible rumbling. This scene is as close as Last Days in the Desert gets to more conventional epic films about Jesus’ life. Then the last scene shows the site in the desert thousands of years later as tourists take photos.
The final scenes in Last Days in the Desert makes the film a success by refusing to solely appeal to secular or Christian audiences. Secular audiences cannot simply conclude that Last Days in the Desert about the existential despair and madness of human existence and ignore the divinity of Jesus as revealed by the Resurrection. Christians cannot dismiss Last Days in the Desert as simply a fantasy that ignores the supernatural nature of Jesus’ existence. Last Days in the Desert could have ignored the supernatural, but it juxtaposes the supernatural with a contemporary shot of the quotidian tourist in the middle of the desert. Earlier the devil asked, “Do you think anyone will care? Men of a thousand years from now?” Ultimately every movie about Jesus, whether or not it is a faithful Biblical adaptation, is a creation of the filmmaker. Rodrigo Garcia, the writer and director of Last Days in the Desert, answers the devil by expressing his own doubts and despair in how he relates to the Gospel, but ultimately answers in the final scenes that Jesus’ actions matter to him and many others two thousand years later and more.
Garcia’s Last Days in the Desert refuses to separate the messiness and turmoil of Jesus as a human being and his divinity and defiance even in the face of death. The father says that he lives in the desert “Because the desert is ruthless … it strips away all pretense … it makes you see yourself for who you are.” Garcia’s Jesus emerges from the desert alone to die and rise again. He goes in the desert as a human being, but ultimately is stripped of his humanity through a dehumanizing act of violence only to emerge as God and fast-forward in time to make the desert a more hospitable place for families instead of a place of turmoil. While the film may be flawed, Last Days in the Desert’s ultimately depicts an optimistic quotidian image of redemption to conclude the ordinary despair of erasing self-doubt in moving forward in life.