The scathing review Martin Scorsese keeps framed on his wall: “It’s so appalling”
Good reviews aren’t everything. There are plenty of filmmakers who have triumphed in the face of critical adversity, even if it makes them, or their art, rather polarising. In many instances, reviews change over time, with many pieces of cinema that were initially hated receiving critical evaluation in line with society’s changing attitudes. Perhaps an artist was simply too ahead of their time, and it took several years for critics to catch up.
There are many films out there that we now consider classics that originally divided critics, like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It received many lukewarm reviews from critics who couldn’t get on board with the filmmaker’s attempts at horror, finding the movie disjointed and strangely acted. Kubrick even earned a Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Director’. Now, it is praised as one of the greatest horror movies of the 20th century.
It seems as though receiving bad reviews is just part and parcel of being a filmmaker, and even the most acclaimed figures in the industry are no strangers to a less-than-positive evaluation of their work. But isn’t that a sign of a good artist? How good can a piece of art be if pretty much everyone likes it? Surely, that means that the film isn’t boundary-pushing or creative enough.
Martin Scorsese has received his fair share of negative reviews during his career, but he is still acclaimed as one of the most important directors in cinema history. Yet, there was one instance where he was met with a review so “disgusting”, as he told Sight and Sound, that he framed it on his wall.
The review was for his 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, which saw Willem Dafoe play Jesus to extreme controversy. Scorsese depicted a rather blasphemous image of Christ, at least according to many devout Catholics who were not impressed by the movie’s exploration of Jesus’ sexual exploits.
The movie caused so much outrage among certain religious organisations that a French cinema was even set on fire while it screened the film, before an incendiary device blew up another screening room in the theatre. Time journalist John Leo then wrote an article that detailed the intense response the film had garnered from various groups, pointing out some of the movie’s most controversial moments.
“In one grotesque scene, Jesus reaches into his chest (though it looks more like his belly), yanks out his heart and holds it up for his apostles to admire,” Leo wrote in his article entitled ‘Religion: A Holy Furor’. “For many believers, the problem with all this is that Scorsese is not tinkering with a minor historical figure, as Gore Vidal did with Aaron Burr, but with the founder of their faith,” he added.
Scorsese was not impressed by this article, explaining: “I have it framed on my wall, it’s so appalling—and I know for a fact he was going to write it without seeing the film. Then he saw it and hated it anyway. I’m laughing because it is what it is.”
The Last Temptation of Christ certainly divided viewers, as epic movies about Jesus tend to do, but Scorsese even received death threats for his film. Still, the filmmaker triumphed in spite of this backlash, earning himself a ‘Best Director’ nomination at the Academy Awards.
