LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT: A Fictional Jesus Movie About The Dark Before The Dawn

Currently, I’m on a mission to watch the best and worst of Bible movies for an upcoming video. To be honest, it was all sparked because I felt like there were approaches and concepts I wanted to see in Bible movies that were rarely shown, and I wanted to talk about those ideas…but, as I’ve delved deeper and deeper into the world of movies based on The Bible, lots of real and interesting art has already revealed itself.

I really, really, really dug Rodrigo Garcia’s Last Days In The Desert. In the first few minutes, even beyond the “white actors in Bible movies” issue, it was pretty hard for me to swallow Ewan McGregor as Jesus and unsee Obi Wan on Tatooine. As soon as we start to see McGregor’s Jesus interacting with other people though, including The Devil, he settles into the role elegantly. It’s a nice touch that he’s called Yeshua, too.

One of the remarkable things about Last Days in The Desert is that there’s plenty left up to interpretation. Even more remarkable is the director’s sense of confidence and trust that the audience can and will make connections in the imagery on their own without being guided overtly. That’s not just a rarity for Christian movies; it’s a rarity for movies. The imagery is strong, the on-location shooting style is present and tangible, and the cinematography is evocative and at times strange and surreal. Bible movies almost never have those qualities...but The Bible certainly does.

The portrayal of Jesus here certainly has some deviations from the Jesus we know later in scripture, but that’s kind-of the point; this fictional story is an exploration of Christ before he made his identity known, when he was still working out what being “the messiah” looked like, filled with self-doubt and plagued with questions of his own worthiness and love. The wrestling is strong, but the film doesn’t shy away from beauty, either. There’s a moment early on when Jesus is huddled on a mountainside, saying “father, please show me you’re here” as a bright orange and pink sunset paints itself across the sky behind him. The image says it all.

Last Days is truly littered with doubt, and for better or worse, it doesn’t give in to any clear hope or truth. It’s implied that Jesus can do miracles, but we never actually see him do anything supernatural beyond what could be up to interpretation. Satan seems to suggest that he has more power than Jesus, but it’s also implied that he’s probably lying. The film ends with the crucifixion, but it neglects to depict the resurrection, instead fading to black as the disciples mourn outside the tomb. If you wanted to show someone the “real Jesus story” - this would not be the movie to do it. And yet, there’s a contemplative and maybe even hopeful subtext buried in the doubt. This story, not despite the doubt but because of it, feels like an intimate look at the darkness before the dawn. If we know and believe the miraculous things Jesus did after leaving the desert, the events of the movie can almost feel like one final, grim test of devotion - one final moment when God seems completely silent, right before everything comes to fruition. As always, there’s a quote from CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters that comes to mind: “All the horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a king of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! You were out of the narrow and all was suddenly well. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?” Maybe it’s my interpretation, but showing the disciples grieving outside the tomb almost comes across as hopeful, if you believe their grief will be reversed in 3 days time.

There’s a beautiful moment early on in the film where Jesus catches Satan marveling at a shooting star flying across the night sky, and Satan quickly gathers himself and pretends it was unimpressive. Mustering his cynicism, he says, “what surprises me most about the world is the repetitiveness. The obstinate, dull repetitiveness of your father’s plan is bewildering to me. The same dull lives lived over and over and over again. Is there a plan? It all has to turn into something, it has to pour out into something. But into what?” In this fireside chat, Satan claims to be able to see the future - but says he cannot see the places where Jesus intervenes. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t understand the plan about to come to fruition.

In a moment of cruel mockery toward the end, Satan pointedly asks Jesus “do you really think anyone will remember you 1000 years from now? Don’t you know your efforts will all be forgotten?” And yet, in the final shot of the film, we see tourists visiting the very mountain where Jesus spent the majority of the movie, taking photos and gazing across the same valley where he once wandered and prayed. It’s left unclear whether these people know Jesus once stood where they are standing. But the very existence of the film we’re watching is proof that what he endured was not forgotten, and the darkness did not win.