As both a Christian & a filmlover, I find myself often struggling to connect with much of what is now termed the “Christian” film industry. Even among older films, I often find the so-called Biblical epics to just not connect with me in the way that the original text of the Bible does; it seems most Biblical adaptations are either so reverent as to be dull and uninteresting or so revisionist as to lose a lot of the emotional power of the original stories. But then there’s this miniseries, directed by Italian auteur Franco Zeffirelli with British iconoclast Anthony Burgess present as a co-writer. It’s been divided many different ways over the years as it’s been aired and as it’s been released on home video; I’m using the IMDB’s entry which splits it into two parts and reflects the DVD set I own of the series. It should be noted that these two parts both clock in at a bit over three hours; let the buyer beware all the severely truncated versions out there, both on DVD and digitally, because the full experience is really the only way to experience this magnificent masterpiece, one of the great artistic achievements of television history.
It's been a while since I’ve seen it, so I took the quarantine as an opportunity to revisit it and I’m glad I did, because it held up just as well as I remembered. The cast is phenomenal and while it’s quite common for Biblical epics to get prestige casts to show up for cameos, here everyone is really giving real performances. Olivia Hussey is a pitch-perfect Virgin Mary; Zeffirelli captures her in iconic and her heart-breaking beauty makes her magnificent. Her performance is excellent as well; her delivery of the Magnifcat, taken from Luke, is impassioned and beautiful. Peter Ustinov is repulsive and frightening as a slovenly Herod the Great. Some of the casting choices are less obvious, downright counterintuitive sometimes. Michael York would never have entered my mind for John the Baptist, but he brings an unhinged energy and raw emotion to the role. Christopher Plummer, close to the MVP of the supporting cast in Part 1, is, again, not a guy I would have picked for Herod Antipas, but he’s wonderful: preening, juvenile, creepy and the scene where he gazes lustfully at Herodias, his step-daughter, as she performs a sensual dance for his birthday is like something out of a horror movie. James Earl Jones and Fernando Rey bring their usual majesty to their roles as two of the three Wise Men but Donald Pleasance in flowing white robes and a tall white magicians hat as a weird Zoroastrian? Now that’s ingenious. And as this part comes to a close Ian McShane enters as a conflicted Judas Iscariot; this film gives him a sympathetic treatment and McShane, shockingly handsome in his younger years, gives one of his finest performances. Lesser known actors are also very good. James Farentino brings both a fiery temper and the vulnerability of a child to Simon Peter. Yorgo Voyagis brings a quiet certainty, but also a lot of charisma, to his role as Joseph, earthly father of Christ. Keith Washington has a surprisingly meaty role as Matthew, hated tax collector turned faithful disciple and he’s excellent. And then there’s Robert Powell as Jesus himself. Powell gives a profoundly intense performance, utilizing his piercing eyes to wonderful effect and, just like Hannibal Lecter, he never blinks on camera. He looks at people as if he can indeed pierce to their innermost thoughts and desires. He brings a wry sense of humor to his speeches and parables, most of which are taken directly from the Gospels, and a genuine sense of empathy and tenderness to his interactions with the sick and suffering. He’s a very human Jesus; you can see weariness weighing on him, but Powell brings that uncanny divinity to the role as well. When he's slumped against a wall sleeping, he looks like an ordinary man, but when he looks up, the sharpness of his gaze is arresting.
The script does amazingly well at exploring the socio-political context of the times. In a typical movie of this type, we’d get a scene or maybe two if we were lucky to deal with political intrigue and explore the dynamic of the Roman oppressors and the Jewish citizens. But when we’re stretching out to six and a half hours all told, we have time to spend nearly an hour on scenes featuring either Herod the Great or Herod Antipas or to follow a group of Jewish Zealots as they hang on the fringes of the Jesus movement, trying to figure out how best to use him to their ends (hint: it involves Judas Iscariot). In this part, it’s over an hour before Powell enters the film, so much time does the film take in the telling of the Christmas story. And the script knows how to expand those side characters, really make them feel real, even characters who appear only briefly in the Gospels. But the script never feels disrespectful to the source material or as if it’s trying to offer a revisionist spin on things (except possibly in the case of Judas); it’s merely expanding on things in a smart and sophisticated way. The script is able to take the passages of the Gospels that it replicates here and make the old words come alive in new and powerful ways; part of this is, of course, also down to Powell. The scene where Powell’s Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son, a story I’ve certainly heard or read well over a hundred times over my lifetime, is a masterwork. It captures the ways in which Jesus might have used a story in order to get his point across, but still be incredibly pointed and the scene has him use it in order to reach the hearts of two men specifically and bring them together into friendship after they had fallen into bitter rivalry. The layering of the writing is powerful and Zeffirelli’s direction and Powell’s raw, honest story-telling capture the powerful emotion of the story. It’s a scene that made me cry the first time I watched this series; imagine that: me crying at the Prodigal Son, a story so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I would have thought I’d never be moved by it again.
Again, I know it’s easy to be skeptical of this kind of prestige Biblical epic, but I can’t recommend this series highly enough. It just does everything right and it’s absolutely brilliant. This first part takes a hair over three hours to take us from the planned engagement of Mary & Joseph to probably the first year of Christ’s ministry, after he’s gathered his disciples around him and is beginning to catch the attention of the authorities, both the Jewish religious and the Roman political. It’s brilliant and beautiful and profound. 4 stars.
tl;dr – at just over 3 hours, the first part of this magnificent Biblical epic avoids all the usual flaws of its genre; an excellent ensemble & a smart, sophisticated script raise this to the masterpiece. 4 stars.