The Man Who Fell to Earth. Labyrinth. The Prestige. These are the titles that usually come to mind when people think of David Bowie’s film career, and with good reason. Even when playing real-world scientist Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, each of these performances captured Bowie’s ethereal public persona. Bowie floated through the movies like a being from another world, immediately imbuing the story with mystery and danger. It’s somewhat fitting then that Bowie’s best film performance came in the most unexpected of places, a movie about the life of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Bowie had one short but powerful scene in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, using both his otherworldly nature and his natural warmth for a beguiling take on Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. A Unique Telling of the Greatest Story Of course The Last Temptation of Christ is hardly a standard Jesus movie. Directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, and based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, the 1988 film immediately courted controversy. Despite that fact that Scorsese and Schrader are both believers, the former a Catholic and the latter a Calvinist turned Episcopalian, Last Temptation drew the ire of those who took exception its portrayal of a very human Jesus (Willem Dafoe) full of doubts and fears. The Last Temptation certainly takes liberties with the usual Passion Play reading. Scorsese eschewed realism and historical accuracy, giving us Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot with a New York accent, musicians Michael Been of the Call and John Lurie of the Lounge Lizards as James and John, complete with The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner as their father Zebedee. But there’s an air of painful realism to Bowie’s scene late in the film, when the arrested Christ is brought before Pilate. As Governor over Judea, Pilate represented the Roman Empire to the people of the occupied land and considered petty disagreements between religious factions as beneath him. In Scorsese’s telling, when this Pilate even meets Christ, it is inside of the Roman governor’s stables. Pilate begins the scene with his back turned to the camera and to Jesus, paying more attention to the steed brought for his inspection. “So you are the King of the Jews,” he asks with disinterest, only turning around when Jesus responds, “King’s your word.” Even then there’s more than a little condescension when he asks Jesus to perform a miracle for him. When none is forthcoming, Pilate wearily decides that he’s “just another Jewish politician.” Pilate tries to provoke Jesus, pointing at him and calling him dangerous, but even that can’t elicit a desired reaction. When Jesus retells a prophecy from the book of Daniel, interpreting it as a story about how God will use him to topple Rome, Pilate cuts him off, clearly bored with another story about the occupied people destroying the occupier. For most of the two-and-a-half-minute scene, Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus emphasize Pilate’s distance from Jesus. The scene begins in a wide shot, showing the physical space between them. As the camera cuts to closer shots, Jesus and Pilate rarely appear in the same frame. At the end of the exchange, the camera stays on Pilate as he strides away, having fully measured Jesus up and deemed him as just one more rabble-rouser that the empire must clean up. A Tale of Two Kingdoms Bowie uses that distance from the camera, as well as his precise interlocution, to heighten Pilate’s unearthly qualities. That decision flies in the face of common sense. After all, he’s in a scene with Jesus, proclaimed as God in the form of human. Even in their conversation, Jesus explains that he represents a kingdom that, in his words, “isn’t here.” Shouldn’t Dafoe be playing the alien one here? Because Scorsese and Schrader are creating a grounded, human Christ, however, they want to achieve the exact opposite. Like Kazantzakis’ novel, The Last Temptation takes inspiration from the Gospel of John, which emphasizes Jesus as inaugurating a kingdom unlike any on Earth. So the human qualities and focalization through Jesus makes injection of an Earthly kingdom feel strange. In other words, to represent Rome, the ultimate unreal kingdom in John’s Gospel, Bowie must feel as alien as possible. Bowie expresses that perspective with his nonchalant attitude toward Jesus, all hand waves and arched eyebrows to look down on his charge. But the real testament to Bowie’s skill comes when the scene changes and Pilate sits next to Jesus. “It’s one thing to change how people live, but you want to change how people think, how they feel,” Pilate says, noting the difference between Jesus and the other rebels he’s sentenced. But when Jesus explains that change will happen with love instead of killing, Pilate cannot continue. He repeats that this kind of change is “against Rome, against the way the world is” and therefore is useless. “Killing or loving, it’s all the same. It simply doesn’t matter how you want to change things. We don’t want them changed.” Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! After that last line, something remarkable happens on Bowie’s face. Pilate’s still looking down at Jesus, still condescending to him like the powerful Roman official that he is. But when Jesus looks back and refuses to respond, Pilate’s face drops. The corners of his mouth turn downward. A sadness creeps into his eyes. Bowie’s expression suggests that Pilate wants Jesus to challenge him, to show him in fact that the world can be changed, changed even through love. And when Jesus doesn’t answer—either out of a refusal to speak, as is often the case in the Gospels, or out of the doubt that wracks Dafoe’s Jesus—Pilate cannot help but feel disappointed. He stands up and pronounces Jesus’s sentence with all the officious insincerity of Michael Palin’s crucifixion coordinator from The Life of Brian and walks off screen. In the World, Not Of the World Where does Pilate go? The answer is, of course, back to the safety of his Roman home and lifestyle. But within The Last Temptation of Christ, it feels like he moves completely out of Jesus’s existence, which underscores the themes. Despite the short contention they almost formed, a powerful and self-assured Roman cannot believe in the message of a self-doubting Jewish teacher. They belong to different worlds. It takes someone like Bowie who has always felt like a man who fell to Earth to underscore that difference. By casting Bowie as a member of the alien Roman Empire, Scorsese brings to life a Jesus who is of the Earth, a Jesus rarely seen on the movie screen.