From the moment blasting heavy metal music throws the blood-red opening credits on the black screen, Giulio Base’s fictional biopic of one of Christianity’s most wicked, and therefore, of course, most interesting characters, seems to scream at the audience: This is not your average bible lesson! To the Italian director’s defense, the wannabe provocative period piece, premiering at the Locarno Film Festival in the popular Piazza Grande section, is indeed something else. Not because it is as daring as it strives to be, but mainly because it reimagines the story of Christ within a realistic historical frame. In front of the sufficiently convincing backdrop of Jerusalem under Roman occupation, Jesus of Nazareth (Vincenzo Galluzzo) isn’t the son of God.
While the enigmatic young man certainly believes himself to be just that, and a growing flock of followers shares his conviction, he never turns water into wine, cures the afflicted, or raises the dead. The closest thing to a miracle he achieves is keeping his perfectly white clothes spotlessly clean and his face fresh in surroundings full of dust and dirt. He merely preaches and practices equality, peacefulness, and compassion, like a proto-hippie, complete with sandals and lush long hair. His band of followers who dance, have open-air sex, and rely on alms to get by, reinforce this interesting, if hardly original, idea of a realist version of Jesus. He and his story wouldn’t be complete without an adequate antagonist.
The latter is the title character, whose perception and incessant off-commentary shows the familiar events in a different light – or rather, darkness. Judas Iscariot (voiced by Giancarlo Giannini) recounts the events as a rueful monologue, told right after he watched his former friend’s cruel death on the cross and is about to hang himself at Akeldama. From this spiritual limbo, he looks back on his life, shaped by exploitation, neglect, and abuse, from the day he was born in a brothel. While still a child, he kills the brothel owner and takes his place. It’s one of several absurdly implausible turns in a plot attempting to find a basis of hypothetical truth in a work of religious fiction.
While Judas’ childhood is supposed to be tragic and disturbing, the sheer excess of brutal events and trauma make it almost comical. The only person to whom the pessimist protagonist has a personal connection before he meets Jesus, is his sister Mary Magdalene (Paz Vega). If his care for her springs purely from a sense of family pride, their shared fate, or genuine concern, remains unclear. This lack of personal insight is paradigmatic for the narrative’s blatant pseudo-psychology. Though Judas constantly talks about his feelings of envy, disdain, and self-loathing, their source remains a mystery. Time and again he claims to be sinful, cursed, evil to the core, but never says why.
Thus, his characterization, which is a defining part of the story, comes down to moralist one-note villainy of a cartoon series. Though writer-director Base’s choice to never show Judas’s face, making him everyone and no one at the same time, is an interesting dramatic digression, it further limits his emotional range. His betrayal seems less the consequence of emotional development or interpersonal dynamic. Pulled from the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, the sexed-up, sensationalized story treats treachery simply as predestination. The supporting cast is decent but unremarkable. Rupert Everett shows up as a calculating high priest, director Abel Ferrara appears as decadent Herod, and John Savage sports a fuzzy fake beard as centenarian Joseph.
A rare interesting moment is Judas’ decision to hang himself after witnessing Jesus’ moment of doubt. He’s crushed by guilt, not because he facilitated the murder of a saint, but of a human who will never return. However, such ideas remain half-formed, just like the superficial social critique. Set against a sun-blanched Holy Land consisting of a few stone courtyards, idyllic groves, and weather-worn roads, the scenario aims for the authenticity of a tableau vivant but sports the tacky aesthetics and voyeuristic sleaze of old Europudding sword and sandal flicks. The cheap costumes are mostly just fabrics cast off, and many scenes are mostly a pretext for half-naked hip-shaking.
This B-movie look has a certain trashy appeal, but rather than embracing its exploitation eccentricities and commercial calculation, the shallow mix of scripture, apocrypha, and contemporary conventions tries in vain to channel Pasolini.
Year: 2025
OT: Il Vangelo di Giuda
Director: Giulio Base
