With a refined aesthetic, Pasolini frames an ascetic portrait of Christ's journey in a neorealist style, but unfortunately, his approach to the biblical text is didactic. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 13, 2025

Pasolini frequently uses those who push themselves to the margins of society to expose our collective and individual weaknesses, and our determination to maintain the image of order.

| Jun 29, 2023

Pasolini pay[s] attention to contrasts of light, and also focuses on faces and reactions to cruel deeds.

| Aug 11, 2021

"Heightened realism," I had thought at first, and so it was, but as the film wore on the realism began to disappear and only the heightening remained.

| Aug 13, 2019

[VIDEO ESSAY] This film seems to say that religious doctrine has worked as long as it has because its poetry is so beautiful. It also allows for the passing of generations who will eventually reject all religion because it is ultimately a lie.

| Original Score: A+ | Nov 20, 2015

At once primeval and immediate

| Feb 27, 2015

Cinema's most impressive biblical movie to date.

| Mar 3, 2013

Superb in every way, and possibly the film-maker's best.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 1, 2013

A fierce magnesium flame of a movie.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 28, 2013

Pasolini, a gay atheist Marxist, has made one of the most intriguing films about Jesus, cast with unknowns and shot in documentary style.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 21, 2012

Definitely one for multiple viewings, and arguably up there with Pasolini's best.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 8, 2012

A defiantly earthy anti-epic, Pasolini's Gospel is a period piece in costume only, placing its rather scruffy, contemporary-looking Christ in the steep southern Italian hills of Calabria.

| Aug 21, 2009

Beautifully retells a spiritual story without resorting to the overbearing piousness that makes most American Bible films such well-intentioned slogs.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 19, 2009

Seen as a Catholic-Marxist statement at the time, nearly 40 years on, Pasolini's cinematic accomplishment still impresses.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 19, 2008

Pier Paolo Pasolini benefited from the very austerity that underlies the particular and at the same time universal center of this film.

| Nov 24, 2007

Pasolini uses a complex but seemingly stark and simple visual style, and he evokes wonderful performances from nonprofessionals Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, and Marcello Morante.

| Oct 23, 2007

This highly political interpretation of the passion is as scandalous in its own way as Mel Gibson's but more poetic, more contemporary in its impact, and more serious in its overall morality.

| Oct 23, 2007

A quirky version of Matthew's story, one that was closer in accord with fundamentalist beliefs than Marxist tenets.

| Original Score: B | Sep 5, 2007

Certainly Pasolini's most satisfying movie.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 10, 2006