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49 out of 58 people found the following comment useful :-
There is no better film about Jesus Christ, 7 September 2001

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

Well, maybe there is, but I've never caught a glimpse of it. Most movies about him are fundamentally wrong. In a religion which has totally turned its back on the line "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of Heaven" (in fact, I am surprised that some pope or other did not officially removed that line from the Bible; be sure that this film retains it and has it come right out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, who, I assume, was its speaker in the Bible), movies about Jesus are generally overproduced messes that do nothing but retell the story with much less effect than the Bible itself has. Even Martin Scorsese's version of the story, The Last Temptation of Christ, suffers from this. Although, despite its flaws, it has a lot more power than most films about these same events.

I do not understand why Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was a Marxist, a homosexual, and an atheist, made this film. But, despite his reason, it has turned out to be a great masterpiece. No one has ever attempted to set the story in its proper setting, at least not to my knowledge. The characters here are certainly semitic and Middle Eastern, unlike the entirely Anglo-Saxon casts of every other Jesus film or even any other religious film. Also, the cast, made up of unprofessional actors including Pasolini's own mother as the elder Mary, has not one beautiful face amongst it, except for maybe the actress who plays the younger Mary; she is quite beautiful. These faces and bodies are real: unattractive, harsh and worn. Teeth are not straight and white, but crooked and discolored as they certainly would have been before dentists were around. Clothing is not beautifully colored, but plain and tattered. Only the richest people could afford dye for clothing. Pasolini has also forsaken the traditional look of Jesus Christ. While the facial hair remains similar, although maybe lessened, the long hair is dropped in favor for shorter hair, which is the way that people wore it at the time. The image of the long-haired Jesus is a case of syncresis, that is, the mixing of religions; that image was adopted from the ancient Greek depictions of Bacchus, the god of wine.

What results is an account as straighforward as can possibly exist. With Pasolini's own personal convictions, the audience does not have to feel like they are being preached at. Christians, unless they are so foolish as to believe that Jesus WAS an Anglo-Saxon, should be moved to tears. Nonbelievers (anyway, those who appreciate film) will reel at the marvelous use of classical music (including, strangely enough, Prokofiev's music from Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky), the greatness of the actors, especially the man who plays Christ (I've heard that he was a Marxist truck driver), and the beautiful simplicity of Pasolini's direction, sort of a perfect mix between Italian Neorealism and French New Wave. I myself, a staunch atheist, found it very powerful. 10/10.

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43 out of 47 people found the following comment useful :-
Pasolini's passion and Irazoqui's eyes, 10 August 2005

Author: axlgarland from London, England

I must say, as a new IMDb user I find this place to express one views a rather welcome find. Cathartic to say the least. Certain films haunt me. "The Gospel According to St Matthew" is one of them. The only possible explanation is the passion of its maker. Everything about it is so real that I remember the first time I saw it, I felt I had met Jesus. My relationship with Jesus had been torturous at best. Raised catholic by very catholic pre- Vatican Council parents. So, part of my rebellion had always been underlined by moving away from that pathology as far away as possible. Pasolini however, a Marxist homosexual, showed me a human side of the man I was suppose to follow that made sense, that touched me. Enrique Irazoqui plays Jesus in a way that may explain everything. He is just a guy but in his eyes, in his eyes there is something I've never seen before. Compassion without fake undertones. It chilled me. I loved him. I wanted to follow him. Pasolini wasn't trying to sell me anything, he wasn't trying to convert anyone he was doing what an artist, a real artist does. He was sharing his vision with me, with us. When people talk about movie experiences, this is the film that comes to my mind first. I'm glad to have to opportunity to share this with you.

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32 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
The most realistic and believable portrayal of Jesus I have ever seen, 11 November 2003
Author: joseph-sparrow from Richmond, VA USA

After reading all of the reviews listed prior to my entry I find it hard to agree with how Pier Paolo Pasolini's sexuality or political views are even worth mentioning. What is worth mentioning is the wonderfully dramatic portrayal of the story of Jesus by amateur actors. The lack of so-called special effects is not something that even crossed my mind when viewing this movie. The artistic mixture of poetic verse from the New Testament combined with beautiful vistas and believable characters bring the story of Jesus to life on a personal level.

Pasolini's Biblical adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew far surpasses present day movies of this genre in its overall effect on the viewer. The real substance of the film, the story of Jesus, is not glossed over with big budget extras, professional actors, and special effects which only seem to overshadow the awe inspiring wisdom of the words spoken by Jesus in the New Testament.

The fact that the actors are of Mediterranean decent only serves to make the film more believable. The costumes and settings appear to be more realistic than the Hollywood versions that I have seen in other Biblical films. The Jewish Church leaders with their alien looking hats show how detached and imposing these figures must have appeared to the common people of the time of Jesus. When Jesus threatens their positions of power by bringing God directly to the people without need of a temple or an interpreter it sheds light on how these leaders felt threatened by a "poor son of a carpenter".

Most films of this genre focus more on the Romans oppression of Jesus without showing the betrayal by the Jewish leaders that led to the unjust crucifixion of Jesus.

I highly recommend this film to anyone who has become bored with seeing the story of Jesus on film. If you think that you have seen it all and do not want to sit through yet another trumped up version of the story of Jesus then I suggest that you view this movie, for it succeeds where all others have failed.

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20 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Possibly the best movie ever made about Jesus, 4 May 1999

Author: Dubh from Rome, Italy

"Il Vangelo secondo Matteo" is probably the best film ever made about Jesus. The very sparseness of visual effects is evocative and highly suggestive: the supernatural is attained by showing very natural, even lowly people. Such an effect is emphasized by the use of non-professional actors: Pasolini probably owes something to the medieval Italian tradition of "rappresentazione sacra" (a representation of important moments of Jesus's life offered by everyday people), which is still practised nowadays. The powerful effect of Jesus's preaching is very well rendered by Pasolini, and this helps to forgive some poetical licenses on his part. In the end, anyway, this is not a movie you remain indifferent to: either you love it or you hate it. And this, maybe, is what contributes to making it a faithful representation of Jesus's life.

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17 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Best Screenwriter Makes for Best Jesus Movie, 17 April 2003

Author: jimtheven

We have reached a point at which the main point of a movie about Jesus has to be that he was "human". As if his "humanity", in itself, was any more remarkable than that of Barabbas or Philip the Tetrarch or the Man Born Blind. A recent TV miniseries drew roughly 10 % of scenes and dialogue from the Gospels. Most of it was devoted to making the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity look like a slacker goofball, a likable but pitiful example of air-headed arrested development. The approach of moviemakers to the Figure of Jesus has always been crooked. Now it's just gotten out of hand.

In the 60s, they wanted to have it both ways. To make Jesus THE Man, the Son of Man, as it were, in clouds of glory, provoking supernal modes of a Phrygian nature, but in a secularized, not a "dogmatic" way. Things were bound to get worse for the Incarnate Word in cinema. The trick to the post-SUPERSTAR travesties is to diminish Jesus by making Him out to be infantile, weak, unstable, uncertain, neurotic, stupid... and answering all orthodox objections with an appeal to the idea of His True Humanity. "Oh, I suppose YOU think the Man was made of stained glass, that He didn't sweat and weep and laugh and sing and at least WANT to have sex with Mary Magdalene and maybe even the 12 year old daughter of Jairus..."

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST MATTHEW, with roughly 99% of its dialogue and 90% of its very images coming from the eponymous text,puts to shame all other Jesus Pictures on the level of basic conception. It alone has given itself over to the Material, to the Story. It is the only movie on Jesus made in good faith with Him as He is in the Gospel. That's why it's the only one which really works on a dramatic level. With great and terrible justice of at least a poetic kind, the others fail dramatically for having tried to serve two masters: the Gospel Christ and Modernistic, Liberal Christian reductionism in His regard. MATTHEW is the only one whose 33 year old itinerant Preacher matches up perfectly with its hours-old Angel-attending, Magi-sought Celestial Babe. (THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD fails most miserably in this regard. It robs Jesus of all glory, all Personal interest. No WAY this kindly but annoyingly sententious unmarried uncle or history prof, called forth Glorias In Excelsis once upon a time...)

It is far from perfect. The scenes of Jesus just standing there preaching get wearisome. Too much of the direction seems deliberately bizarre. Those are obviously dolls being tossed about like footballs in the Massacre of the Innocents scene.

But what brilliant gold on the other side of the scale!

The Face of Jesus, dominated by amazingly piecing eyes...

The strong yet suave voice provided by Enrico Salerno.

Jesus' air of otherworldly authority focused with terrible intensity on His Father's business in this world...

The intelligence and the compassion and the Rabboni-worthy anti-authoritarianism demonstrated in Pasolini's own marginal glosses to Matthew's narrative... The sadness and fear of a peasant girl both pregnant and unmarried... The mute qualms of young men, soldiers, before they are forced to render unto Caesar (Herod the Great, that is) something which SS Peter and Paul themselves might not so readily have declared not to be Ceasar's... (No Christian artist before Pasolini seems to have considered that the "cruel soldiers" of unreflective homiletics and iconography were ORDERED to be cruel by the lawful Powers That Be... Maybe for Pasolini this touch was a Marxist thing. But it should be a Christian thing...)

Magnificent sequences. The young fishermen brothers James and John racing unknowingly down a beach, nets unfurled, towards their Rendevous with Immortal Glory... The way in which the very spaces between Jesus and his hearers in one wind-blown preaching scene are made to convey the idea of His words being carried off on the wind...

And you want the human touch? After this Apocalyptically stern Master of All warns some hapless farmers he happens upon to repent, leaving them to look after him in shock and awe, HE SHOOTS A GLANCE BACK AT THEM! This beautifully natural and "human" moment puts to shame all the others' tendentious "souping-up" of the Sacred Humanity.

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14 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Remarkable, honest ... with an exceptionally powerful MISA LUBA, 3 May 2002

Author: Ales (gott@isibrno.cz) from Czech Republic

Three ingredients make this movie truly remarkable and honest:

First - it contains perhaps the most powerful piece of MUSIC I ever experienced in a movie. I've never forgotten my utmost impression from that music when I saw the movie for the first time in a film-club some twenty-five years ago. From a total silence of the first titles, a music like an avalanche of a heavenly army hitting the soul ...

Which music it was? MISA LUBA! An incredible polyrithmic blend of three ingredients: a high melodic church chorus of Kenyan women, plus an unbelievably improvising african singer, plus a bunch of African drummers... everything locked together by an unrepeatable moment of inspiration and chance. I could not imagine some most powerful music to underline the most exposed passages of Jesus' story. Curiously and sadly enough, this MISA LUBA is even not credited in the movie titles, in contrast to a fair (but much more standard) classic music used in most of the movie. It was just this happy usage of MISA LUBA which contributes most to the soul and mood of the Pasolini film. It is also well understandable why Pasolini used an eclectic mixture of music from various continents, -- in an obvious intention to make the universal story yet more UNIVERSAL, across the nations and cultures.

Second happy aspect of Pasolini's interpretation is his cast of characters, his choice of believable and interesting types ... for Jesus, for Maria, and most other characters. These are believable and convincing types of people from the middle-east. How superior and fair is here Pasolini in comparison with all those funny blue-eyed and polished Hollywood casts of those pseudo-biblic stories ...

And third - Pasolini did very well to make the movie in black-and-white. It contributes to a mystical, spiritual and abstract atmosphere of the opus. In my opinion, it would be hardly possible to make this movie well in color.

And yes, I agree with those who say that practically all other movies about Jesus and those biblic stories are fundamentally wrong, and in cases of those (in)famous Hollywood versions - even funny to tears.

This Pasolini's opus is very honest and might be the 'very best film interpretation of Jesus' story.

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Spiritual experience, 17 February 2003
Author: Gouram K from Paris, FR

Each time I see that movie I'm barely able to speak right after that. Nor would I write extensive review. Open yourself and be prepared for the most unique voyage in the world of Pasolini; if the words "cinema of poetry" doesn't make sense after that film then nothing would. Bach and Prokofiev music add extreme intensity in simple, yet beautiful, screenplay. Forget about scene cutting and poor effects: just breath this film,treasuries lie here, right in front of you.

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19 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
A Few Thoughts About This Different Kind Of Presentation Of Christ, 8 July 2007

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

I think I've seen most, if not all, of the movies dealing with the life of Jesus. (There haven't been that many.) This is without a doubt the most different presentation I've ever seen. It's oddly captivating because of the stark visual contrasts and the direct and different approach used by the director concerning the teachings of Christ. Instead of hearing Jesus' small sermons in context of where and when he said them, much of it is just a head shot of him and many of his comments are all lumped together. It's actually too much to take in at one time - many of Jesus famous statements and no time to digest any of them.

There are a few shots of Jesus performing miracles, intermingling with all kinds of people, must mainly it's a lot of His rhetoric with nothing in the background. It's as if they tried to cram as much as Christ's profound statements into the two-hour movie as they could, so they come rapid-fire. And, since the dialog is in Italian, you have to read all the subtitles to know what he's saying and they are printed in the King James English! That is difficult for most people today to understand, so it really is a must that you've already read the Gospels in modern translations to know what Jesus much of the time. That's because some of the King James words are not ones we are familiar with today, or they have the opposite meaning than they do today. Yet, saying all that, I still found this oddly fascinating and I am not complaining about how they presented it. However, I don't think it would win any converts because most secular viewers would be bored to death with this film. That, and all the King James English, make the sermons way too difficult to comprehend.

The film is slow moving in many spots and today's movie viewer would be challenged to stick with this for the full two-and-a-quarter hours. To be honest, this isn't what most people - believers and non-believers - would call great entertainment. If cinematography means something special to you, you'll like this film better than someone just watching for the story

I could also nitpick and make fun of how all the men's hairstyles looked in here, which was mainly 1960 Italian, not First Century Middle Eastern, but that's incidental. I thought Mary looked realistic and Jesus certainly was portrayed with an intense and captivating face. John The Baptist, by the way, immersed people in the Jordan River. He did not kneel on a boulder and pour a handful of water on their head, as pictured in this film.

Being that Pier Paolo Pasolini, the director and writer of this film, was a Marxist rebel, it's obvious he liked Jesus for His anti-establishment words. Jesus was the most radical man ever to step on this planet. Just read his words. He said things that really shook up people back then, and still do today. He was very tough on the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day and you can tell the director loves that. I do wish, however, that Pasolini hadn't overemphasized that side of Jesus and neglected much of the Lord's warmth and compassion that is written about in all the gospels. In this film, Christ comes across as ultra-serious, a hard-nosed and often cold individual, and sometimes very judgmental...but read the gospels and you'll find him mostly the opposite.

The music in here was excellent. Playing the old Negro spiritual, "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" by Odetta, a few times was a very nice touch, and a profound statement at the same time.

Overall, I'm glad I finally was able to see this film. It was worth the time, and some of it is as interesting (and still Scripturally accurate) presentation of Christ I have seen on film, but I don't know if I watch it again......probably.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
A Film worth dying for!, 10 May 2001

Author: dababog from Manchester, England

Okay, so maybe not quite, but this is still an excellent film, by far the best depiction of the last days of Jesus's life. By taking the view that Jesus was a revolutionary rather than emphasising the religious aspects the film succeeds in presenting a unique view of the life, and death, of Jesus and the reactions of his followers. There are no mystical halos descending from heaven, no "angelic music" and none of the other cliches that Hollywood's attempts at presenting the story usually contain. Instead the humanity of those who lived the story comes through, and by doing this the film takes on emotional, even religious intensity totally lacking in other, larger budget depictions of Christ. Possibly the most moving part of all is the moment Peter realises he has disowned Jesus three times. This isn't portrayed as some great epic biblical act, the denial of the Messiah, but rather as the actions of a man, scared for himself, who, when he realises that he has betrayed his friend runs away in shame sobbing uncontrollably. the scene is given even more dramatic impact through the music, taken from Bach's St Matthews Passion, which perfectly fits the mood of the moment. Overall this is a brilliant film and anyone remotely interested in either good film making, the relationships between human beings under pressure, or the final days of Christ should see it.

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12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Impressive and imperfect, 19 December 2003
Author: kapali from Oxford

Before I saw Pasolini's "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo" I was uncertain if I even wanted to see it. I was aware that when he made that film the director was influenced by Italian neorealism, a movement which has little appeal for me. At the same time, Pasolini's later films are some of the greatest ever made. Eventually, my love for Pasolini's later works won out and I saw the movie. While "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo" is indebted to neorealism, as in its use of non-professional actors, this does not in the least detract from its quality.

Enrique Irazoqui, who plays Jesus, gives an excellent performance. He brings an intensity and harshness to the role that is very much in accord with the Jesus portrayed in numerous passages of the gospels. Margherita Caruso, who plays Mary as a young women, is an inspired choice. Although she does very little, and I cannot truly commend her for her acting, she has an amazing presence in this film, combining serenity, holiness, and innocence.

Pasolini paces the film well. It never drags, and never passes over subjects or incidents too quickly. The heroic quality of Jesus' life is strongly emphasized, his confrontations with existing religious authorities, his preaching of his message throughout Palestine, his bravery before the Roman authorities, and so on. Through demonstrations of his resolve, composure, and sternness, a real sense of the courage and dynamism of the character of Jesus is produced.

Pasolini's choices of locations could not have been better, and the scenes are staged and filmed skillfully, emphasizing the right emotions at the right times, whether those are feelings of sympathy, courage, or awe. I would not go so far as to say that any of these elements demonstrate brilliance, but they are very well done.

I was impressed with Pasolini's use of the gospels, which provide the bulk of what the character of Jesus actually says. I might note, also, that the harshness of much of the message is left intact. Conservative Christians might find this appealing, in that the director does not sanitize the message. Certainly, the pope enjoyed it. Pasolini received a medal from him. Non-Christians, and more liberal Christians, might find parts of the message to be a little frightening. When some of the harsher elements, especially the religious exclusivism (i.e., only those who believe in Christ have hope) are heard as spoken dialogue, rather than as words printed on a page, their impact is much greater, whether it is more disturbing or more inspiring. The film is a powerful evocation of the life of an important religious figure, and can be enjoyed by both believers and non-believers.

The film does have it's faults, however. The scene in which the "massacre of the innocents" is shown is poorly done. I personally found the depiction of the event to be somewhat comical, which clearly was not Pasolini's intention. The score, which draws on a variety of genres of Christian religious music is, by itself, beautiful. Unfortunately, I felt that it did not complement the film. The juxtaposition of disparate musical traditions with one another, and with the harsh world being visually depicted weakened the effect of both, had either stood on its own. I should say that these are relatively minor complaints. The film as a whole is a moving and impressive work. I do not think that it is as impressive a work as any of Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" films, but it is a great film nonetheless.

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