Martin Scorsese's Next Movie Sounds Like It Could Be His Most Personal Project Yet
Martin Scorsese is 81 years old, but thankfully has no plans to retire. Last year he released the massive crime-drama "Killers of the Flower Moon," and it looks like he's gearing up to shoot his next film (or picture, as he'd call it) sometime this year. In 2023, Scorsese visited the Vatican and came away announcing that he was planning a new film about the life of a guy you might have heard of — Jesus H. Christ, or Jesus, as he's commonly known. We now know more about this project thanks to a profile in the L.A. Times.
Per the profile, Scorsese has put together a script with Kent Jones, the director of the documentary "Hitchcock/Truffaut." Scorsese says he and Jones are "swimming in inspiration" and still "figuring things out," but the plan is to shoot the film sometime this year. Scorsese has, of course, made a movie about Jesus before — his controversial classic "The Last Temptation of Christ," a masterpiece of a movie that was met with protests when it arrived in 1988.
But what will this new Jesus movie be about?
A Life of Jesus
For his new Jesus movie, Scorsese is drawing on Shūsaku Endō's 1978 book "A Life of Jesus." Scorsese has adapted Endō's work before — the late Japanese author penned the book that inspired Scorsese's underseen "Silence." Also: Scorsese says the plan is for the "Life of Jesus" movie to be about 80 minutes long, which is a change of pace from his most recent 3-hour-plus movies.
As for "A Life of Jesus," here's a synopsis:
Novelist Shusaku Endo intended "to make Jesus understandable in terms of the religious psychology of my non-Christian countrymen and thus to demonstrate that Jesus is not alien to their religious sensibilities." He argues that his people would be more open to the motherly side of Jesus: the religious mentality of the Japanese is –just as it was at the time whba the people accepted Buddhism–responsive to one who "suffers with us" and who "allows for our weakness," but their mentality has little tolerance for any kind of transcendent being who judges humans harshly, then punishes them. In brief, the Japanese tend to seek in their gods and buddhas a warm-hearted mother rather than a stern father. With this fact always in mind I tried not so much to depict God in the father-image that tends to characterize Christianity, but rather to depict the kind-hearted maternal aspect of God revealed to us in the personality of Jesus.
When it comes to this new movie, Scorsese says he plans to set the film in the present day, although the L.A. Times adds that "Scorsese doesn't want to be locked into a certain period, because he wants the film to feel timeless." Interestingly enough, when Scorsese was first planning "The Last Temptation of Christ," he considered a present-day setting before changing his mind.
More accessible
Religion has played a big part in much of Scorsese's work. The filmmaker was raised Catholic and even considered becoming a priest before turning to film. Many of his movies deal with Catholic guilt, so it's understandable why he's drawn to the topic of Jesus for his next movie. "I'm trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion," he told the L.A. Times, adding:
"Right now, 'religion,' you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it's failed in so many ways. But that doesn't mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let's get back. Let's just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it. Don't dismiss it offhand. That's all I'm talking about."
I grew up Catholic (just like Marty!), and while I'm no longer a believer (and never really was much of one, to begin with), I remain fascinated by the subject matter and am always curious to see a new film covering the topic. I also think Scorsese is our best living filmmaker, so anything he does gets an instant watch from me. In other words, I'm very excited about this project, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.