Basically everything I said in my review of Part 1 of this beautiful, transcendent miniseries is true of Part 2 as well. The emotional content gets even more intense in this episode, which is just shy three-and-a-half hours as we move from Christ’s ministry into the Holy Week which culminates, of course, in a really effective and moving depiction of the trial and Crucifixion of Jesus. The script once again breathes a lot of life into the side characters and the actors brought in to play those parts are doing really fine work and not coasting at all. Even an actor as given to coasting as Laurence Olivier in his later years gives a really stately, but vulnerable performance as Nicodemus, the curious Pharisee who sparks Jesus speech in John 3 that includes one of his most famous sayings, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” James Mason is excellent as Joseph of Arimathea and Anthony Quinn is a frightening and overbearing Caiaphas. Ian McShane really comes into his own here as Judas; the film posits that he was a well-meaning, but troubled, man and McShane is really great. The series continues to make unconventional casting choices as well. Stacey Keach, not a guy I think of in a Biblical milieu, shows up as a menacing Barrabas and the scene between Barrabas and Jesus (not a meeting recorded in the Bible, of course) is really great. Then there’s Rod Steiger as Pontius Pilate, who I typically see played by a venerable British character actor. But he’s absolutely perfect; no-nonsense, pragmatic, perpetually exasperated. It’s a truly inspired bit of casting, one of the best in the entire series. Then there’s Ian Holm as Zerah, a crafty scribe who manipulates Judas for his own agenda. It’s a part that could easily be over the top, too blatantly villainous, but Holm is, as he always is, precise to perfection. He makes Zerah a living, breathing character, a man with an agenda, but a compelling reason to believe in that agenda; a man willing to be unethical when his own ethics require it, if that makes any sense. It’s a great performance, maybe the absolute best of the supporting performances.
Powell’s performance is even better in this part than it was in part 1, which is saying something. There’s a lengthy section of this film where Jesus and his disciples, having come to Jerusalem for Passover, just kind of hang around the Temple all the time and when Jesus finally has his fill of the religious hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, it’s epic meltdown time and Powell’s delivery of the “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees” monologue is bristling with righteous anger. Then in the Last Supper scene, Powell really kind of delivers his very best work in the series. The Last Supper is a scene that’s been depicted so often, referenced so often and parodied so often that it truly deserves to be called, literally, “iconic,” but Zeffirelli strips it down to what it might have actually been like with the participants seated on the ground in a more circular fashion in a tiny room light only by flickering lamps. The scene builds to another monologue from Powell and by the time it ends, I was really transported. The final shot of that scene is of Powell, tears running down his face, in a kind of tragic ecstasy, delivering the line, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” It’s magnificent.
There are some interesting omissions that I’d like to briefly talk about because it gets at something about just how great this miniseries is. There’s a scene where the conversation appears to be leading toward the parable of the Good Samaritan and I was looking forward to seeing what Powell would do with it, given his wonderful delivery of the parable of the Prodigal Son. But then the conversation kind of veers away and they don’t do it. Likewise, I find it odd that the film doesn’t include the scene between Jesus and Herod Antipas; the miniseries has taken the time to really make Herod Antipas a significant supporting character in Part 1, but he barely appears in Part 2 and we don’t get the scene between him and Jesus that’s recorded in the Bible. It’s an understandable cut from a narrative perspective; in the full narrative, Jesus is interrogated by Pilate and then Pilate says that since Jesus is Jewish he really falls under Herod’s jurisdiction; Jesus is then taken to Herod and interrogated and Herod says that only the Romans can hand down a death sentence so he needs to be taken back to Pilate; so Jesus is then taken back to Pilate and the story continues from there. So, narratively it kind of slows things down at the moment things should be picking up speed, but still, I would have loved to see a scene between Powell’s Jesus and Christopher Plummer’s petulant Herod. I think what I’m getting at here is that this miniseries is approximately six-and-a-half hours long and the biggest “complaints” I have is about things they left out. I mean, that kind of says it all.
I just don’t think that any of the other Biblical epics can really hold a candle to what Zeffirelli and his magnificent collaborators have done here. This is, in my opinion, far and away the best of these kinds of movies and its certainly by far the best depiction of Jesus I’ve ever seen on film, capturing him as a well-rounded character, a man with fully human emotions and experiences, but with a divine intensity and passion. The Jesus depicted here is a man you’d follow if you met him and you understand how and why he changed everything for the people he encountered. The work on the supporting characters is truly excellent; the script gets into the political and social elements of the culture at the time and gives the actors, all of whom are excellent, a lot to work with. Jesus himself will sometimes drop off the screen for twenty minutes at a stretch just to allow the film to really develop the side characters, like Pilate or Judas or Herod Antipas. It’s one of the greatest artistic achievements of television history and it proves that even before our current “peak TV” era, the medium was home to some astoundingly great art. This one endures. 4 stars.
tl;dr – second half of this miniseries is even better than the first in some areas; this one is still just mind-blowingly great and by far the best filmed presentation of the life of Jesus. 4 stars.