After this scene, Luke appears to be defeated, and his sudden final escape is another type of symbolic resurrection in the film. His apparent defeat also serves to make him more human than the figure of Jesus in the New Testament, and therefore someone that the film's audience could more easily identify with. His desertion by his supporters during this time is also very much like Jesus, who sacrificed himself for the rest of humanity but who was reviled by many for his efforts, and eventually ignored and denied by some of his own followers. In the film, however, it is the entire community of prisoners that first reveres and then reviles Luke, making the story far more poignant and immediate than Jesus' betrayal in the New Testament.
The most telling features of Luke's character and life in the film that connect him to Jesus Christ, however, are the suggestions of his crucifixion....
The first occurs after Luke eats fifty hardboiled eggs, a feat that excites and inspires his fellow prisoners or "disciples." They quickly leave once this event is over, and Luke is left alone on a table, his ankles crossed, his arms outstretched, and his head to one side, much like depictions of Jesus in art. The second instance of the crucifix is the last image of the movie, when the photograph of Luke that had been torn in four pieces is superimposed over an image of the crossroads. The crossroads and the tears in the repaired photograph both suggest the image of a crucifixion without requiring anything even remotely literal -- which would also have been unbelievable -- to make the connection of this ultimate sacrifice between Luke and Jesus. By making Luke's crucifixion symbolic, like his resurrection, the filmmakers made a story that could be about a martyr without involving religion.
