The following is a quote from Paul Verhoeven‘s book, Jesus of Nazareth. It describes how he would open his hypothetical “Jesus movie”…
Naked feet dangle beside a beam. Nails are hammered through a heel bone. Agonized screams. The camera glides upward, showing a naked man on a cross. It zooms out, and we see that three men, and not just one, have been crucified. The camera moves back until we see ten naked people on two hundred crosses., which line the winding road to Sepphoris. The city is in flames. Roman soldiers lead men, women, and children out of the burning metropolis and into slavery. We are in Galilee. It is 4 B.C.
We shift to the middle of Sepphoris, where Roman soldiers are pillaging the town and raping the women. A Jewish girl, no older than sixteen, hides inside a house. Her family has been brutally slain. A Roman soldier finds her and rapes her. The girl’s name is Mary…Then there is a sudden cut, and we see Jesus at the age of thirty.
Verhoeven’s book rarely contains passages like this, wherein he describes his vision of his long planned film about Jesus Christ. Mostly, Verhoeven shares his research and thoughts on the true history of one of the world’s most famous and mysterious people. Jesus of Nazareth is interesting to read, but a small pittance when compared to the possibility of the film. Here’s hoping Verhoeven will still manage to make it someday.
One Comment
As you show us above, Vertoeven has the knack for getting a provocative shot (e.g. naked crotches of Sharon Stone ‘”Basic Instinct”and Elizabeth Berkley in “Showgirls.”). Don’t take his claims to present the Historical Jesus seriously. When he presented his movie outline to the Jesus Seminar, he was told that all his ideas were stuff they had rejected as unhistorical. He retorted that he was looking from “dramatic movement,” and couldn’t make much of a movie out of what he’d learned from them! Judging from end notes I’ve seen for his book, he knows about only a handful or so of the major works in Jesus scholarship — none of the most recent work, and almost none of the vast iceberg of scholarship “below the waterline”). And he largely disregards the prevailing views of scholars. The notion of Jesus as a violent revolutionary who makes a scene in the Temple early in his career, and then is on the run from angry priests is ridiculous. He takes a contrarian view toward other conclusions of scholars who’ve spent their careers on this stuff, and defiantly argues against them using movie maker logic — how can I shock people the most (a preference he personally claims as his guiding principle). Of course a movie based on his book could have an effect similar to “Satanic Verses.” It would be throwing gas on the fire of many peoples’ resentment of Hollywood (and it’s unlikely that most distinguish between Hollywood and independents). But Verhoeven’s book and movie ideas fail on the very grounds of his duplicitous claims to present a historical view of Jesus.