A cinematic vale of tears: Mauro Borrelli’s ‘Last Supper’

Julia Hamilton• March 1, 2025

Pinnacle Peak Pictures, the studio behind The Case for Christ and God’s Not Dead, has released a new film well in time for Easter: The Last Supper. Directed by Mauro Borrelli and filmed in Morocco, it will appear on US screens from March 14. Jamie Ward stars as Jesus, Robert Knepper as Judas, and James Oliver Wheatley as Peter. Other star turns are Charlie MacGechan as John and James Faulkner as a terrifyingly intelligent and cunning Caiaphas.

The film opens with Peter in a wistful mood: “I was a fisherman once, content to follow the rhythm of the tides…but He made me a fisher of men.” At once we’re plunged into AD 30, with Jesus’s ministry in full swing along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. As the sun goes down, we see the disciples urging Jesus to send the people away to fend for themselves but, as we know, He has other ideas.

We then witness the unfolding of the scene from Matthew 14, where the Lord feeds the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish, demonstrating what Bishop Robert Barron calls so aptly “the loop of grace”, where in order to keep what you have you must freely give it away.

The camera follows Peter as he makes his way through the vast, billowing crowd. His sense of awe grows as he begins to understand what is happening (that he himself is somehow being used as an instrument of grace) as more and more people help themselves to the unending bounty of the loaves and fishes.

It’s dusty and still hot; people are hungry and tired but also uplifted, somehow aware that they are in the presence of something incomprehensible and strange and yet, as the camera swings back to Jesus, the very simplicity of the scene is immensely telling. Here is no king on a throne with serried ranks of slaves doing his bidding; just a young, bearded man moving amongst the crowd, serving them Himself and talking to them.

As night finally falls, the problem of Judas is mentioned to Christ by Peter. “His inner struggles trouble me,” he says, which is an interesting take on the other apostles’ view of him. We then see Judas encouraging Jesus to rise up against the Romans, demonstrating how far he is from understanding, even slightly, what he is actually a part of. Admittedly he has this in common with the other disciples, and yet we see the very flawed Peter making an effort to comprehend what is happening – even if he doesn’t understand it fully.

Robert Knepper plays Judas with great subtlety; allowing the viewer to witness his internal struggles is a great way of drawing us into the narrative.

One year later, we are in Jerusalem. It is Palm Sunday; Jesus has entered the holy city on a donkey and shortly afterwards is wreaking havoc in the courtyards of the temple by violently overturning the money lenders’ tables. Sheep run distractedly this way and that; panicked birds flap their wings and squawk in clouds of dust and a hail of coins; people shout and curse Jesus, who takes refuge in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Caiaphas plots his moves as carefully as a chess grandmaster: “We need one who walks beside him,” he says. He contrives to approach Judas, who is rivetted by the money clinking in Caiaphas’s hand. Although he does try to resist temptation, we can see by the presence of a very long and dangerous looking serpent slithering through the straw in the room in which they meet that all is already lost.

And then to the Upper Room: the washing of the feet, the significance of which has to be explained painstakingly by Jesus to His apostles, even at this late hour, followed by a detailed showing of the Last Supper itself. John, the favourite disciple, understands what Christ is getting at; the others remain baffled and afraid.

The taking of Christ is violent and dramatic; and although we see Jesus being scourged we do not see His interrogation by Pilate, nor the crucifixion. Next we are with Peter leaving jail and having the story relayed to him by John. There’s a marvellous moment where the gloriously caparisoned Caiaphas is told that Jesus’s body has disappeared; his obvious shock is gratifying and underlines the fact that a new order, outside the control of the old temple system, is establishing itself.

The film ends where it began, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Peter is forgiven by Christ and finally understands his mission, his dawning comprehension brilliantly portrayed by James Oliver Wheatley. The journey is over, and a new one begins.

The director is proud of the theological accuracy of the film but I was particularly taken by the immersive, visceral quality of the camera work: everyone is dirty and dishevelled, flaming brand wooden torches pierce the darkness; there are elaborate period headdresses, robes trailing in the dust.

Christ’s life on earth was hard and bitter but rewarding beyond measure, something this film makes crystal clear.

Photo: Detail from film poster for Mauro Borrelli’s ‘Last Supper’(screenshot from imdb.com).