Prophets and Zealots: Paul Schrader’s Adaptations of The Mosquito Coast and The Last Temptation of Christ

Focuses on Paul Schrader's process of adapting two novels—Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast and Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ. Draws on the Harry Ransom Center's collection of Paul Schrader's papers, Schrader's annotated copies of The Last Temptation of Christ and The Mosquito Coast, the outlines that he created for both films, and the multiple script drafts. Argues there is an inherent dilemma with The Mosquito Coast because the voiceover structure distances the viewer from the protagonist, Allie Fox, instead telling the story through the eyes of his son, Charlie. However, in Last Temptation (1978), Jesus undergoes trials that challenge his followers while remaining the audience's touchstone. The shifting use of voiceover as a technical tool in screenwriting therefore serves as a gauge for demonstrating how Schrader envelops viewers in his characters' worldviews. The last section of the chapter reflects on how Schrader's presentation of such themes is informed by his own critical concept of transcendental film style.

The Christ of Kazantzakis's Christ Recrucified

In the wake of Martin Scorsese's film adaption of the controversial novel The Last Temptation of Christ by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, Kazantzakis's work received a flurry of attention, but focused on The Last Temptation. The figure of Christ, however, is central to Kazantzakis's larger literary oeuvre, and a rounded picture of Kazantzakis's fictional Christology requires tending to these works. This article develops the central themes of the tacit Christology informing Kazantzakis's Christ Recrucified: crucifixion as an emblem of spiritual-moral struggle; motifs of adoptionism and exemplarism; spring/Easter as the agitation of matter to transubstantiate; the defiant, war-like “face” of Christ; and Christ's affinity to the broader pantheon of Greek gods and fertility myths.

Ideology, Emotion, and Aesthetic Pleasure

Chapter 7 examines the ways in which a film’s ideological properties contribute to aesthetic pleasure when they intensify, or when they complicate, viewers’ cognitive and affective responses. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which the ideology of a Hollywood film guides our beliefs, values, and emotional responses. In ideologically unified Hollywood films, such as Die Hard, Independence Day, Pickup on South Street, and Casablanca, narrative and stylistic devices concentrate our beliefs, values, and emotional responses, offering us a purer experience than we can find in most real-life situations. By contrast, ideologically complicated Hollywood films, such as Chinatown, The Third Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Dark Knight, advance their worldviews in a novel, ambiguous, or peculiar way, upsetting our appraisals of events and characters and complicating our intellectual and emotional experiences.