Rendering Bible stories into film is a difficult task, but Pasolini's account of Matthew's Gospel is among the most successful. The narration of events in the Bible is generally quite sparse, with only the most salient details given; as a result, events are fraught with hidden depths and profundity. Medieval art gives a similar effect, using completely different techniques. Filmmakers of the Bible generally attempt to flesh out the stories to make them more "real," but the result is inevitably banal and overwrought at the same time. Pasolini uses a different approach. First of all, he adds almost nothing to the text of Matthew's Gospel, and all the dialogue and events are directly from Matthew. Next, it's filmed in black & white, and the acting, especially Jesus, is consistently understated. Many quiet shots of faces watching, reacting, or, in the case of Jesus, talking. In these ways, Pasolini succeeds, to some degree, in reproducing the effect of depth and transcendence found in the Bible. The music (from Bach, Blind Willie Johnson, and others) adds considerably to the power of the movie.
Pasolini's minimalist Jesus has an air of both humility and loftiness (as befitting one able to walk on water), but he is conspicuously lacking in emotion and expression. One might reply that Jesus (as God) doesn't share all our roller coaster emotions, but I see the New Testament Jesus as more of a Hamlet character, full of contradictory emotions. Pasolini's Jesus character's foreboding presentation could almost be seen as that of a young, conceited, dour, nihilistic Sophomore Philosophy student. A few quibbles: the Bible text describes large crowds of people following Jesus, but the movie only allows for a couple of dozen in most scenes. Also, in the movie, Jesus is often represented as preaching while he is walking, with his back turned away from his followers, who walk behind him. Finally, Mary the mother of Jesus is at most 20 when he is born, but she somehow becomes 70 years old during his ministry, when in fact she would have been only 50. With these reservations, then, I consider this the most successful Bible film I've seen.
