Scorcese appreciation thread

[Syaoran Li]

Eh Christians are easy (and mostly safe) to rag on, especially these days. Get back to me when somebody makes "The Last Temptation of Muhammed."

That may be true nowadays, but The Last Temptation of Christ came out in the 80's during the heyday of the Religious Right and the Satanic Panic.

Questioning Christianity was still taboo in 1988 while in 2020, attacking Christianity is the norm and defending it is taboo.

The worst part is that Scorsese is a devout Catholic and was not attacking Christianity, and his depiction of Christ is only seen as iffy by the more puritan stances of the redneck Protestant types who happened to be the dominant clique of the Religious Right back in the Reagan years

If anything, Scorsese was celebrating Christ and showing the difficulty of the sacrifice that was made on the cross at Golgotha.

 

[Lensherr]

That may be true nowadays, but The Last Temptation of Christ came out in the 80's during the heyday of the Religious Right and the Satanic Panic.

Questioning Christianity was still taboo in 1988 while in 2020, attacking Christianity is the norm and defending it is taboo.

The worst part is that Scorsese is a devout Catholic and was not attacking Christianity, and his depiction of Christ is only seen as iffy by the more puritan stances of the redneck Protestant types who happened to be the dominant clique of the Religious Right back in the Reagan years

If anything, Scorsese was celebrating Christ and showing the difficulty of the sacrifice that was made on the cross at Golgotha.

Wasn’t it also heavily criticized by a lot of Catholics too (it was banned in several heavily Catholic countries and the terrorist attack on the theater showing it was done by Catholic extremists)?

 

[Syaoran Li]

Wasn’t it also heavily criticized by a lot of Catholic’s too (it was banned in several heavily Catholic countries and the terrorist attack on the theater showing it was done by Catholic extremists)?

It was, but a lot of the American criticism came from the Protestant/Evangelical types.

The bans and terrorist attacks were in heavily Catholic countries in the Third World and those guys were like the Catholic equivalent of the Protestant fundies over here.

 

[Lensherr]

I love his work. Goodfellas is my personal favorite, as its my favorite mafia movie ever.

But I LOVED Wolf of Wall Street too. That movie was a force of nature.

Just showed it to some friends for the first time recently. It’s so well paced that we started it at around 7:00 pm and I didn’t realize that it was 10:00 pm until it was over.

My two favorite scenes are Jordan Belfort having lunch with Mark Hanna near the beginning of the film:

and the part where Belfort and Donnie Azoff are freaking out on Lemmons:

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

Casino is my fave. Just so cozy.

That is a film I really want to like, but can't. Sharon Stone is such a cunt in that movie (which to be fair to her, she was supposed to be) that I can't sit thru it without wanting to destroy my TV, lol.

My Scorcese faves are Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Wolf of Wallstreet.

 

[Ahriman]

Just showed it to some friends for the first time recently. It’s so well paced that we started it at around 7:00 pm and I didn’t realize that it was 10:00 pm until it was over.

My two favorite scenes are Jordan Belfort having lunch with Mark Hanna near the beginning of the film:

This scene is almost 6 minutes long and Matthew absolutely stole the scene, what an absolute unit.

Doesn't hurt that it's fucking hilarious from beginning to end, fucking love the guy.

One of my all-time favorite Scorsese scenes.

 

[Lensherr]

Necroing this thread because Scorsese just started filming his next movie, Killers Of The Flower Moon, recently and the first image from it has been released:

I’ve been reading the book that this is gonna be based on. It’s a very interesting read, and I definitely trust Scorsese to do it justice (plus it’ll be his first Western, which also excites me).

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

What I love about Scorsese's movies is how focused on the human element they are. Scorsese isn't so much concerned with melodrama as he is portraying the lives of people, how they navigate their place in society and the path that leads them to. I noticed this when I saw Mean Streets for the first time. There's sort of an overarching narrative, but it largely takes a backseat in favor of just exploring the life of Harvey Keitel's character, how he hangs out with his buddies and how his job as a low-level gangster comes into conflict with his faith. Most of Scorsese's movies follow this kind of structure. Even Taxi Driver spends most of its runtime examining Travis and how Travis sees the world before taking his delusions to their logical conclusion. Then of course there's Goodfellas which doesn't follow a single specific narrative as much as it does life in the mob and what it means to a few people.

I think Scorsese himself said it best when he won the Oscar for Best Picture for The Departed that it was "the first movie I have ever done with a plot."

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I've only recently seen a Scorcese film and that was Goodfellas. That was quite a ride and very well-shot, although I'll be honest that I couldn't keep track of most of the characters, so I literally blinked (well was distracted by the Alamo Drafthouse bill) and missed Tommy's murder. Took me some time to get used to the constant narration throughout, though, had to remind myself it was based on a book and was most likely stylized as such.

If I had to pick a favorite scene (hard choice to make), it was when they stopped by Tommy's mother's place to pick up a shovel and she treats them all to a dinner because she missed her boy, all the while Billy Batts struggles in the trunk. It's such a weird scene, almost comes off as fillerish lol.

 

[Oats12345]

There's a Criterion Collection Bluray of it that's pretty good.

I'm not Catholic or Christian but the controversy over it never made any sense to me. It's probably the only Jesus movie I've ever watched that actually depicts him as someone charismatic, likeable and iconoclastic enough to convince a bunch of people to quit their jobs and follow him around the desert for years. Practically every other movie makes him out to be some rainbow-shitting Buddha figure with no personality or sense of agency whatsoever. The idea that anyone could relate to that on a personal level is something I can't understand at all.

I guess the big theological sticking point is that he has a delirious fantasy of marrying and living with Mary Magdalene as he is dying on the cross (hence "last temptation"), but so what? If he was completely immune to temptation then it wouldn't have made any sense for Satan to even bother trying to tempt him in the wilderness.

I could maybe understand the objections if Scorsese was some Bill Maher-esque smug atheist prick who just wanted to dunk on Christianity, but he's a lifelong Catholic himself and a lot of his other movies (i.e. Mean Streets, Raging Bull) contain overt Catholic imagery or themes. It's clearly something he cherishes and respects.

Actually as a devoted catholic I let that movie slide. When you read about his Catholic faith. It's clear that the movie wasn't made with ill attempt.

 

[Not Jewish Wario]

One thing I would like to add to the Last Temptation discussion is that the movie was based on a pre-existing novel anyways, so this wasn't even really Scorsese's (or Paul Schrader's) original interpretation of Jesus anyways. Also, the films opens up with the preface that this wasn't supposed to be a telling of the gospels and it's a fictional interpretation of Jesus' life.