Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini - filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini - Critical Essay

Cross Currents, Wntr, 2002 by George Aichele

Although it is in the tension between the subtitles and the speaking images that literal translation most evidently happens in this movie, by extension, and in a more complex way, the entire film translates the written gospel "literally." (12) Benjamin argues that the desire for meaning is an obstacle to translation, and that "translation must in large measure refrain from wanting to communicate something, from rendering the sense. (13) Instead of transferring meaning, and indeed quite like his concept of the mechanical reproduction of the work of art, literal translation "reactivates the object reproduced." Like mechanical reproduction, literal translation re-creates the source text and transforms it into an "original." The translation enables us to see the text in ways that we hadn't been able to, before it was translated. It reveals the text and critiques it.

There is gain and loss in any translation, both for the signifier and for the signified. Like any reading, a translation is an ideological act, an act of eisegesis. In intersemiotic translation, this betrayal of the source text arises from differences in the signifying potential of the respective media. Pasolini uses the interlinear sequence of translated words from Matthew's gospel as a matrix in which to distribute diegetic elements of the story. Certain consequences of this are inescapable. Diegetic elements are represented through nonverbal sign systems for which the translation must be considerably less than literal. The film necessarily gives flesh and blood to characters and scenes that we imagine for ourselves when we read the written text. (14) Numerous visual details do not appear in the written gospel but stand out in the movie. Among these are the child Jesus held in Joseph's arms, the androgynous angel, James and John running along the beach drying a fishing net, and Salome playing with her jacks just before she dances.

Pasolini's camera "speaks" its own highly articulate language, (15) featuring a mix of intense frontal close-ups (faces of Jesus, the disciples, and others) with striking cinema verite long shots (the baptism, the two trials), and he draws on familiar European artistic traditions. However, he also resists those traditions, as Naomi Greene has demonstrated, (16) giving to the film a quasi-documentary quality. The written text tells us nothing about what Jesus, Mary, or Judas look like, and the film's concrete depictions of human bodies are always at variance with our own imaginings. Several film critics even complained about the appearance of the actor (Enrique Irazoqui) who plays Jesus, apparently because they thought he didn't look like Jesus should. He is at once less rugged than John the Baptist (played by Mario Socrate) and less serene than the angel (played by Rossana Di Rocco).

Perhaps more significantly, what appear to be summary statements of repeated actions in the written text, such as Matthew 4:23-25, either must be depicted as specific events in the film, as when Jesus cures a tower filled with demoniacs, or else they cannot be depicted at all. Even through the mere juxtaposition of visual images with spoken words -- especially the words of Jesus -- the movie rewrites the gospel. Jesus picks up a child as he says, "my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30), although no children appear in the Matthean context. He weeps after the execution of John the Baptist (cf. 14:12-13). These correspondences are not coincidental.