Word: roman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Brian" gets smarter at the crucifixion, when 139 people are to be crossed up, and this perpendicular Golgotha gang displays all manner of traditional English class snobbery, transported to Palestine. "Under the terms of the Roman occupation, we're entitled to be buried in a purely Jewish area," sniffs one man, whose wife (crucified next to him), says me too. Eric Idle has a few good bits as various incorrigibly sunny prisoners. "See," he tells Graham Chapman's Brian as their crosses are planted, "not so bad when you're up." Idle tops this with the immortal music-hall cheerer...
...Samuel Bronston reinvented the epic for the '60s. Actually, he exploited the popularity of other people's late-'50s Biblical spectacles ("The Ten Commandments," "Ben Hur") to acquire financing for grand frescos of national heroes ("El Cid") and collapsing monarchies ("The Fall of the Roman Empire") in smart, stately films from screenwriter Philip Yordan and ace auteurs Nicholas Ray and Anthony Mann. Ray's "King of Kings" has Jeffrey Hunter, who was gorgeous and effusively manly in "The Searchers" a few years before, as a Jesus with star quality to spare - which the original must also have had. In orange...
...action from a subservient distance, as if Jesus were too magisterial to approach within 100 paces. On the soundtrack, the heavenly choir trills away earnestly. The Passion segment (44 mins.) couldn't be less so. Connoisseurs of intentional camp treasure "TGSET" as the movie where John Wayne, as a Roman centurion, glowers and says, "Truly this was the Son of God." Pilgrim...
...script by Anthony Burgess and top Italian filmwriter Suso Cecchi D'Amico ("Open City," "The Bicycle Thief," "Big Deal on Madonna Street," "The Leopard") makes clear the legal grounds for killing Jesus. Under Mosaic law, blasphemy ("I'm Yahweh") is a capital crime; under Roman law, calling yourself King of the Jews is treason. The writers' touch is especially careful and coherent in the trial scene. The Sanhedrin is no lynch mob; they are a group of elders searching for common ground, trying to understand a young rebel who gives them no quarter. ("I beg you, bring peace...
...with melodrama and metaphor. This Jesus (Willem Dafoe) is not God born as man. He is a man who discovers - or invents - his own divinity. And he is both tormented and excited by the revelation. This Judas (Harvey Keitel) is a strong, loving activist. He wants to overthrow the Roman occupiers, while Jesus wants freedom for the soul. To fulfill his covenant, Judas must betray not Jesus but his own ideal of revolution. He must hand the man he most loves over to the Romans...