Taormina Film Festival, meeting with Martin Scorsese: 'Seeking the truth'

At the Taormina Film Festival, we met Martin Scorsese, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

You’re working on a project about Jesus set in the contemporary world. Can you tell us more about it?

"I think it will take me more time, probably until next year, before finalizing it. This idea dates back to the early '60s, when I wanted to make a film based on the gospels but set in New York’s Lower East Side, in the tenements and slums where I grew up. I had planned everything. But at that time I was just starting out, involved with NYU, which was very small then with only 30 students. Now there are thousands in the film department.

I was thinking about these ideas, we wanted to shoot in black and white, obviously. Then I saw Pasolini’s ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’ and had to find another approach, which years later became ‘The Last Temptation of Christ.’ From there it evolved through ‘Kundun’ and finally ‘Silence.’ It’s still an ongoing search, and it’s what I’m trying to do in the time I have left. I’d like to create another approach to this theme and I found Shusaku Endo’s book on the life of Jesus interesting. I might base it on that, with modifications. It’s just a matter of another six months or so to figure out how to proceed."

Meanwhile, you’ve worked on a series about saints, ‘The Saints.’

“It was also shot in Italy. Last year filming took place in Morocco too. It’s produced and created by Matt Madden. I present it and Kent Jones is writing all the screenplays. The characters include St. Paul, St. Peter, Mary, and St. Patrick, among others. They’re films of less than an hour that are then discussed by a panel including Father James Martin, a Jesuit who was our consultant for ‘Silence,’ Paul Elie, Mary Karr, and others. We discuss all these different aspects and so far the first season has gone very well, so we’re shooting the second.”

You’ve had the opportunity to meet Pope Francis.

“Yes, I’ve met him several times. We’re preparing a film titled ‘The Schoolboys’ that’s set in Argentina. The film was shot in Sicily and Gambia, and it’s a true story. I’m connecting with other cultures, other ways of thinking, and I’m learning a lot. I believe this stemmed from the documentary made with Pope Francis about elderly refugees. I was among the youngest of the ‘old ones’ in that project, made a few years ago for Netflix.”

How much has religion influenced your personal and artistic development?

"One of the places where I found a kind of refuge was the downtown cathedral. There was a priest who was very good with us young people, very passionate. He introduced us to literature, to James Joyce and other authors, and also to films. He offered us a very different approach from how we were living in the old world. We were a new generation, different from those who arrived in 1900 or 1910: there was another world out there called New York, which was part of a place called America, which in turn was part of the world. He talked to us about both realities and for the first time I thought it would be wonderful to be like him, to be a teacher.

But I was always sick, I had terrible asthma, I didn’t play sports and always spent time at the cinema or in church. For me, there was no way to follow that path. I lasted only about six months in that small seminary. I also understood that vocation is a calling, so the call must be stronger than simply wanting to be like someone. You really have to understand who you are, it’s not about yourself but others, and I simply couldn’t do it. At the same time, cinema, films, and storytelling were always present and somehow I slipped into that world."

How does this religious background manifest in your films?

“Religion and spirituality are different things. You’re in a world of sin and you’re expected to atone for your sins simply by going into a building and praying for an hour. And I wonder, ‘how do you do that?’ We go in there, okay, we come out, there are people, money, weapons… I mean, there was organized crime. And regular people, those who had a grocery store, were oppressed by these criminal groups. They were good people. So the religious aspects are always present in my films, like in ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Raging Bull.’ The stories I was attracted to – and the characters – always seemed to have, sometimes unintentionally, a sort of Christian background and a search for spiritual peace with themselves.”

In your films, you’ve often portrayed New York and its social dynamics. How do you see the evolution of the city and America in general?

“New York is my neighborhood, it’s where I grew up. I could walk around and see all these buildings, bright places, the underground markets where you had to go in and kill the chicken in front of them. And the cemetery. All this was real, so setting stories there was natural. The only thing is that there weren’t Italians but Irish. Irish immigrants were the first to face the attack on immigration. This is the story of America, and America’s roots have always been deeply marked by blood.”

The current situation of immigrants in the United States seems to be repeating itself.

"It always repeats. For Italians there was a quota. Many Italians came from New Orleans and other areas, but the point is that any new group that comes to experience democracy is opposed because it’s different. Hence the value of the story we’re trying to tell with the film for Francis, to understand how much everything has changed.

If I got in a car now, I would only know certain streets, everything else has changed. What was paid dearly by the Irish, who then settled and after a generation or two managed to run politics and law enforcement. The Italians were outsiders, and after the Italians, I remember – growing up in Manhattan – there were Puerto Ricans: hence West Side Story. Every new group that arrives, Asian or other, must go through a kind of conflict process before there can be assimilation, because the nature of the country is to continuously introduce new cultures. So every culture will experience conflicts. It might be Pakistan, India… You have to learn to assimilate somehow in America. The experiment of democracy is under stress, but reading much of history, it seems it has always been so."

Do you see parallels with the current political situation in the United States?

"It’s close to the American Civil War of 1860, as the division in the country is so clear. I was in Oklahoma and had issues there. We’re politically very different, but we had a good time together. It’s a very interesting thing, but unfortunately tragically divided. It will take a generation, hopefully just one generation, for it to become a bit more comfortable. I don’t think that in the end, when you have so many different cultures and people with different ways of thinking, there will always be the possibility of difficulties.

I find that this administration under Trump takes pleasure in working against people. And with new technology, of course, one no longer knows if truth exists. At first I thought, well, this is really the end of democracy, it’s about to be tested. No matter what their intentions are, some might be good, I don’t know, I don’t have the qualifications to say, but their style for me is the opposite of what I would direct myself toward. It’s anger and hate.

Two things are happening: one is the verification of the president’s power, and this will have serious repercussions for future generations. It’s not just a president who wants what he wants. How much power can they have? The other thing is how long the American public, the voters, will endure. What happens if some of these policies, which I don’t understand – I don’t understand tariffs, for example – if someone realizes that this will cost them a lot of money for a long time? I believe these are the two factors: people need to be strong enough to work at least to control the president’s power, and how long the public can bear if these programs don’t work."

A final question: what can cinema do in this delicate moment?

“The fundamental thing is to continue seeking the truth. The truth might be different across the street, but it’s your truth. You might not agree with certain things, but how do we know what’s true? That’s the problem.”

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