Reviews & Ratings for
Last Days in the Desert (2016)

We saw the premiere of Last Days in the Desert at Sundance.

The film is absolutely beautifully shot -- all the desert scenes are from California. It's a very arthouse kind of film, and while I admire it, I didn't love it. Ewan McGregor has the daunting task of playing Jesus AND Satan. The dual roles work very well. At the Q and A he said they used his long time stand in to help him, and that they rehearsed extensively together to get the timing right.

I'm not familiar with Rodrigo Garcia's film work, although I'm sure I've loved TV episodes from In Treatment and other HBO shows he's directed. Last Days he both wrote and directed, and he also was daunted by writing a script where Jesus' name repeated on the page. He started using the Hebrew Yeshua to get past the fact that he was writing fictional dialogue for Jesus.

Jesus is wandering the desert and fasting when he comes upon a family living in the wasteland. Ciarand Hinds plays the father, and he is absolutely fantastic. The mother of the family is quite ill and in fact dying. There is a young boy who dreams of leaving the desert to live in Jerusalem which he has only seen from the distance., but he feels trapped by his father's expectations.

Satan wagers Jesus that he cannot solve the dilemma of this family, making all three satisfied. Jesus stays with the family helping them to build a stone house ("My father was a carpenter.")

There are many quiet still moments in the film, which frankly made the movie seem longer than it actually was to me. I most enjoyed the scenes of Satan taunting and talking with Jesus. I thought Ewan did a fantastic job with those scenes. I talked with other people at the fest who loved this movie, but it just was not my favorite. I admire the audacity of the director, and wonder if the "faith community" will respond to it since it creates a fictional narrative outside scripture for Jesus.