10 Perfectly Weird David Bowie Movie Performances

6. Pontius Pilate - The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988)

No matter what area of the arts he dabbled in, you could always rely on Bowie to bring his redoubtable intellect to bear as well as his more impulsively creative tendencies. As an actor, he could easily coast on that hypnotic, glinting charisma that lurked in the traces of every smile: but he preferred to work a little harder than that. His small role as consummate politician Pontius Pilate in Scorcese€™s idiosyncratic take on the last years of the life of Jesus Christ is a perfect example of this. Pilate has been played as an incompetent, as a guilt-ridden good man, as a bellicose civil servant, as a vainglorious militant, as a mordant cynic, as a cold, indifferent nobleman, and more. Bowie€™s Pilate, on the other hand, is a wryly intelligent utilitarian who intuitively grasps the implication offered by Willem Dafoe€™s wearily idealistic Christ: that he intends to change hearts and minds, and that this very ordinary radicalism is actually more dangerous to Rome than the firebrand zealotry of the men that claimed the title of revolutionary. Where other versions of Pontius Pilate felt cornered into condemning Jesus to death, or found some brutish pleasure in doing so, Bowie€™s iteration of the man had him make a conscious, unfettered choice to sentence an innocent man to death as a political measure, to remove the demagogue as a focal point for Jewish dissidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hvHu8gHUc Bowie is a model of restrained, world-weary melancholy here - Pilate is clearly tempted to pour scorn on what he considers to be backward superstition and fanaticism, but restrains himself out of compassion for Christ and the position he's in. Regardless, Jesus is sent to Golgotha. It€™s the right thing for Rome.