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John's gospel is a difficult narrative to bring to life on the silver screen. How are you going to get an audience to sit still for the all-talk-and-no-action Farewell Discourses in John 14-17? How do you successfully weave together the voice of the narrator and the dialogue of the characters in the drama?

And there are many other long discourses in John's Gospel. Then there is the difficulty that the Johannine Jesus, as Ernst Kasemann once put it, "bestrides the stage of this Gospel like a colossus, as a deity." How do you portray Jesus saying things like "before Abraham was, I am" and make it convincing as a statement of divinity coming from a truly human being?

This is all the harder to pull off when the screenplay is a verbatim transcript of the Good News translation of this Gospel. Despite these and other daunting challenges, this first-ever full-length film of the Gospel of John is convincing and powerful.

The film is Visual Bible International's first effort to involve world-class actors (culled from the Royal Shakespeare Company and elsewhere), including actor-turned-narrator Christopher Plummer, and top-tier cinematographers. The soundtrack, of equally high quality, employs copies of musical instruments used in the New Testament era.

Directed by Philip Saville, the film falls short in some regards, especially when compared to Franco Zefirelli's Jesus of Nazareth. Zefirelli's Passion sequence is more compelling, with more pathos than that of The Gospel of John. And John's crucifixion scene is relatively bloodless, in marked contrast with that of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Furthermore, the raising of Lazarus is more telling and more dramatically rendered in Zefirelli's film.

These are small weaknesses, however, and on the whole Henry Ian Cusick's portrayal of Christ is compelling. Cusick, with a beguilingly simple grace and style, convincingly presents us with a Jesus who is both human and very clearly more than human—no small task.

There is a warmth and passion to Cusick's portrayal that is winsome and captures your attention, drawing you in. When he tells his first followers, "Come and see," immediately you want to do so.

The Gospel of John has the added advantage that it tells the entire story, rather than focusing on its violent conclusion.

The $15 million film—shot mostly in Spain, with the Temple scenes filmed in a studio in England—was financed largely by wealthy Jewish Canadian Garth Drabinsky. He has reportedly said that he sees in John's Gospel strong conflict among Jews over Jesus, and that the film will strengthen Christian- Jewish relations by illuminating both faith traditions.

Fine biblical scholars, led by Peter Richardson, now retired from the University of Toronto, helped to ensure the film's authenticity. They include five Protestants from varied denominations, a Roman Catholic nun, and two Jews.

Rather than lumping all Jews of Jesus' time with the Jewish authorities who sought his death, the film takes pains to distinguish the conflicted Jewish camps. A scrolling text at the beginning of the film notes that Jewish law did not permit the Roman sentence of crucifixion, and that Jesus and all his early followers were Jewish.

The choice of Bible translation further blocks anti-Semitic undertones. Filmmakers chose the 1966 Good News Bible for its accessibility, but it also happens to translate the Greek loudaioi, "the Jews," as "the Jewish authorities." Thus the Jews collectively are not seen as seeking to have Jesus killed.

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May 2004, Vol. 48, No. 5