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(More customer reviews)Every Jesus movie or miniseries has its strengths. "Jesus of Nazareth" is the most historically and scripturally accurate. Jesus Christ Superstar does the best job of seeing the parallels between Christ's time and our own (pretty good music too, I hear.) "The Passion of the Christ," as we all now know, is the bloodiest.
"Jesus," the miniseries, though unrealized in significant ways, attempts to address aspects of the Christ story that others have not and could not. First, the movie focuses on the relationship between Jesus and his earthly father Joseph, played lovingly by Armin Mueller-Stahl. Jesus' love for Joseph is palpably tender and reciprocal. Joseph is the old master; Jesus the eager apprentice, desperate to please and bereft when the old man dies. There is also a romantic sub-plot between Jesus and Martha, in this film depicted as his distant city cousin. Nothing comes of the relationship, but it makes you wonder the degree to which Jesus, fully human even by conservative theological principles, struggled with a desire to be a normal man of his time, learning a trade, getting married, and having a family.
Jesus, played adequately by Jeremy Sisto, is also shown as quite playful. He teases his disciples, splashing water in their faces and pulling their scarves. This is fun, though it doesn't seem to move the story anywhere. The scenes of Jesus teaching also attempt to break new ground. Rather than merely stringing together a long list of inscrutable sayings, gospel style, "Jesus" shows the Master interacting with the crowd, even getting a good-natured heckling.
"Jesus" fails to show why anyone would find this man threatening. Yet I was fascinated by the film's attempts to show Jesus as a person with an interesting personality of his own. Jesus in this film had real charisma, giving us more than the inexplicable magnetism of most Jesus flicks. Ultimately, the movie does not succeed (none have) in depicting the enigmatic man who has held the world in his spell for two thousand years. But "Jesus" brings to the screen a few more pieces for us to consider, making its subject perhaps a bit more accessible in a time that needs him more than ever.
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