A few thoughts on The Chosen's "The Complete Last Supper"

It's been a year since series 5 of The Chosen, subtitled The Last Supper was showing in theatres. One of the most innovative things that series 5 did was in its portrayal of Jesus' last meal with his disciples. Rather than showing it all as one, rather long, scene, it broke it down into eight sections and began each episode with one of these sections. To add an extra twist they arranged the sections in reverse chronological order, Memento-style, so while the main part of each episode moves forwards chronologically, the Last Supper chunks are jumping backwards (and then playing through forwards to where the previous section had begun).

This was one of the more controversial decisions made during the last series, with many of those, even on the fan forums, saying they disliked this approach and would have preferred a more conventional, linear progression. Personally I always like it, not least because, as we've discovered today, the whole scene, shown in order, last for a full 50 minutes and is a little bit testing on the attention span.

Since the series' release, Dallas Jenkins and team have faced numerous questions and requests to show the whole scene in chronologically and had always said they had no plans to do so. That was until today, when The Chosen's official channel, release the entire scene in chronological order. Again, while I liked the original innovative approach, there was certainly a groundswell of support for this, so I'm pleased that they decided to acquiesce. I like the humility of accepting that maybe the people may have had a point. And Good Friday is a great time to do it.

Watching it like this, which was the first time I've revisited this series since I saw it in the cinema, I had a bunch of new (minor) thoughts about it so I thought I would get them down while I had a moment.

Dispensing with Mark

In The Chosen Mark is a teenage boy whose parents own the house with the upper room where the Last Supper takes place. Most people assume, then, that this is the same Mark who go on to write the earliest Gospel. 

The series suggests that the expectation was that Mark would be washing the disciples feet, but Jesus dismisses him so he could celebrate Passover with his family. Firstly, I like this because it does bring out the human side to this scene and some of the realities. If Jesus had to do it someone else would have had to instead. We don't know what happened to that person, but as speculation goes, this is quote nice.

It is another example of The Chosen double-underlining, though. It wants to make the point that Jesus is good. So it includes him washing the disciples feet (it's a key story after all), but that doesn't go far enough for the show. Jesus acting like this not only teaches his disciples an important lesson, it also enables a servant to spend the Passover with his folks.

It does, however, introduce a bit of a wrinkle into the series' determination to present the Gospel writers as eye-witness. Obviously as Mark's last (and possibly only) contact with Jesus, this moment would have had a major impact on him, especially given Jesus's generosity. So why, then, would Mark not include the foot-washing element, in his own Gospel (it's only found in John). This seems even odder [still not very odd, I grant you] given that Mark's presentation of Jesus is often described as that of the Suffering servant.

Banquo's Ghost

Next, and this is a brief one, is that part way through Jesus' pre-meal speech, just after he says "abide in me" (16 minutes), Jesus looks up to the end of the table and sees / imagines John the Baptist at the end of the table smiling back at him. No-one else sees the Baptist. It's a nice touch. It struck me, this time, however, that this scene – even if unwittingly – draws on the imagery of Banquo's Ghost from Macbeth. It's true that there, the story is about how the speech-giving king is terrified by this spectral presence, whereas here, this king is reassured and comforted by his insubstantial guest. I guess others might look at this and see Yoda, Anakin and Obi Wan at the end of The Return of the Jedi (where the tone is similar, but a different number of guests). And others will see other influences. It was just something that occurred to me.

The breaks

Without having run a close-ish analysis of the scene, my overall impression is that most of this scene is paraphrased from the Gospels. As ever, characters make little asides, the occasional additional prophecy / reference from the Hebrew Bible gets introduced, but overall there are only two major interludes. The second is the corporate recital of the Jewish prayer the Dayenu (where one person reads out a stage in Israel's history before the group choruses "it would have been enough"). This becomes a major element of this episode 4. Not only does the episode start with this section from the last supper, but at the end of the episode Jesus eats with the women of the group who craft their own appropriation of the phrase with Jesus, rather than God as it's focus. I wrote more about that in my review of The Chosen: Last Supper - Part 2. I'd forgotten, though, that James already begins this process of bringing Jesus into the heart of this traditional Jewish prayer

But the other major interlude occurs about 19 minutes in to the episode, where having just predicted Judas' betrayal he says "I need a moment" and gets down from the table. While this is happening others step away from the table and soon everyone is either seeking to demonstrate to the others that they are not the traitor, or to work out who it is, or to check with Jesus that its not them. 

I initially thought this was to allow the screenwriters to fuse Mark and John's accounts together, but actually on closer inspection I was wrong about this. I guess partly it just allows the filmmakers to introduce a bit of action into the scene and partly, it enables them to cover various one-to-one conversations that take place after Jesus announces his betrayal, without them seeming weird.

One of the ways this works is that it puts a big gap between the point when Jesus first announces he is going to be betrayed, the sign that Jesus gives as to who the betrayer is, and, Judas leaving the room. These things vary quite a bit between the Gospels (not least the extent to which Jesus gives away who is betrayer will be), Here, though Jesus announces, has a break and then after the break Jesus starts a new topic: a more compassionate response.

Camera friendly set up

One thing that struck me this time around was how camera-friendly the arrangement of the tables is here. Those seeking to compose this scene tend to give it a lot of thought. Some reproduce Leonardo's famous rendering of this scene, as a nod to our cultural heritage (or something). Others eschew such traditional approaches and try to do their own thing, such as the Y-shaped table in King of Kings (1961). 

I suppose Leonardo's own composition was to produce an image of this scene that worked for his medium. By having Jesus and his disciples all down one-side of the table (an otherwise impractical and unlikely scenario) he is able to show all their faces and not to have their faces hidden besides some one's head.

So it struck me how this arrangement was equally suited to the practicalities of this medium as it provides plenty of space for the camera and the lighting (critical for difficult-to-photograph candle-light effects). This is particularly useful for such a long scene where there are so many interactions between the differnt disciples (whereas often just Jesus speaks). The extra space not only allows Jesus to scoot round the outside and wash everyone's feet, it also allows the camera operators to move their equipment around and get the close-up / wide shot they need to the series.

A couple of lines

A couple of lines stood out to me this time around. Firstly, Jesus' final words to Judas are "He has you now..." followed by "Not God" when Judas asks "Who?". This seems, to me, to go beyond the harshness of the Gospels. The "He" in this case is never stated explicitly, but the audience has good reason to think it's Satan. But in John 13:27 it just says that "Satan entered into him" which, to me at least" seems a bit worse.

Lastly, in Luke's Gospel there is a slightly odd moment where Jesus warns that of they don't have a sword they should sell their cloak to buy one (Luke 22:36). when one disciple says that they have two swords he replies, slightly oddly "It is enough". Here the screenwriters smooth this out by having Zee state "Here are two swords. It's not enough to defend 12 men against violent attacks..." before Jesus then counters with his "It is enough" as per Luke, but here it works much better.