Pasolini the Wheat and the Chaff

I've just been writing a piece for The Reader magazine on the political aspects of Pasolini's Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo. I'll hopefully post that article here in time, but for now just one observation that I picked up watching bits of it tonight.

The observation comes in part from thinking about Pasolini's politics and part from reading Mark Goodacre's thoughts on Matthean phrases that occur in the double tradition. Anyway, throughout Matthew the harvesting imagery is fairly prevalent. So it was interesting to notice that as Jesus leaves the wilderness, the first people he encounters (albeit passing them in the field) are a group of men with winnowing forks separating the wheat from the chaff (c.f. 3:12). This is to be a key theme in the ministry of Jesus the film portrays.

On a related note, last month the Guardian did a number of Top 25 film lists, and this film ranked number 10 in the Top 25 Arthouse Films and, as a result, got a new write up by Andrew Pulver. It's a good summary though I must admit I prefer Derek Malcolm's review for the same paper from ten years ago.