LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT: movie review

Last name : Last Days in the Desert
Dad : Rodrigo Garcia
Date of Birth : 2015
Majority : August 17, 2022
Kind : theatrical release
Nationality : US
Cut : 1h39 / Weight : NC
Gender : Biblical drama

Family record book : Ewan McGregor, Tye Sheridan, Ciaran Hinds…

Particular signs : Ewan McGregor fascinates in Jesus and the Devil.

Summary: Ewan McGregor is Jesus – and the Devil – in an imaginary chapter of his forty days of fasting and praying in the desert. When Jesus leaves the desert, he wrestles with the devil over the fate of a family in crisis, testing himself in dramatic ways…

SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

OUR OPINION ON THE LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT

Ewan McGregor walking through the desert in a homespun robe seeking peace of mind. No, we’re not talking about the series Obi Wan on Disney+ where the Jedi roamed the sands of Tatooine but The Last Days in the Desert, a “spiritual” film to come to theaters in which the actor embodies nothing less than… Jesus and the Devil! This fable around the famous 40 days of retreat and fasting observed by Christ before his disastrous sacrificial destiny dates back to 2015, the year he was presented at Sundance. It’s only seven years later (?!) that he comes to us, lost in the middle of the meanders of summer. A very surprising choice of programming. Directed by Colombian Rodrigo Garcia (Albert Nobbs with Glenn Close), The Last Days in the Desert is a mystical trip, initially solitary, in which Jesus McGregor will cross paths with Ciaran Hands and Tye Sheridan.

Sublimated by the stunning images of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, The Last Days in the Desert is a contemplative journey illustrating this retreat in which Christ found himself struggling with the tempting Devil (also embodied by Ewan McGregor). Rodrigo Garcia tells an imaginary chapter of this desert tribulation (imaginary because the invented story bears no relation to the biblical description of the episode) by putting on the road of the Holy Man, a poor family whose situation will involuntarily push Jesus into its entrenchments. Few really stakes, few adventures, The Last Days in the Desert is the story of an intimate spiritual and humanistic conflict.

We are far from the audacity of a Scorsese on The Last Temptation of Christas far as one is far from the power of the jesus of nazareth by Zeffirelli. Rodrigo Garcia’s film is wise, it seeks neither controversy nor applied illustration. His way is also mysterious. We wonder about its real purpose, as much as we savor its intoxicating beauty which takes on a constant power of fascination making the trip more interesting than expected. The Last Days in the Desert is finally quite clever in the way he imagines and revisits the spiritual conflict between Jesus and the devil because he manages to draw from it a depth that goes beyond the simple theological trait. In the end, it’s a bit pointless (even anecdotal) but how beautiful! And Ewan McGregor is terrific.