Martin Scorsese says new Jesus film aims to ‘take away the negative onus’ of organized religion

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Martin Scorsese said he aims to use his latest film about Jesus Christ as a way to challenge the negative associations with organized religion. 

The award-winning director and filmmaker discussed his personal past and how it has shaped his work and his "religious" beliefs in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. 

After his most recent film "Killers of the Flower Moon" premiered at Cannes in May, Scorsese traveled to Italy with his wife to attend a conference titled the Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination, the LA Times reported. After a brief meeting with Pope Francis, Scorcese announced that he had "responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus."

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Scorsese has completed the screenplay for that film, which he reportedly plans to shoot later this year, the LA Times reported. The movie about Jesus will be based on Shūsaku Endō’s book, "A Life of Jesus," set mostly in the present day, while focusing on Jesus’ core teachings. 

"I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion," Scorsese said. 

"Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways," he added. "But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it. Don’t dismiss it offhand. That’s all I’m talking about. And I’m saying that as a person who’s going to be 81 in a couple of days. You know what I’m saying?"

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(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

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Scorsese explained that for him, it is about finding his own way that could be described in a "religious" sense. 

"But I hate to use that language, because it’s misinterpreted often," he continued. "But there’s basic fundamental beliefs that I have — or I’m trying to have — and I’m using these films to find it."