Cool Hand Christ the World

Cool Hand Christ

The world of cinema is full of Christ figures, some more obvious than others. Christ himself has been portrayed in many movies -- leading to no small amount of controversy -- from many different perspectives. Even when Jesus himself is a character in a film, however, the filmmaker(s) necessarily interpret both his character and the events of his life as recorded in the New Testament to tell a new story with a unique emphasis that is relevant to the film's audience. This is even more true when Jesus is evoked through a different character, a "Christ-figure." One of the most memorable Christ figures from American cinema is Cool Hand Luke, the title character of the 1967 film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and written by Donn Pearce, adapted form his novel. Though there are many aspects of Luke's character that do not correlate with most conceptions of Jesus Christ, there are also many similarities in Luke and Jesus' character, outlooks, and willingness to sacrifice. Cool Hand Luke presents a story of a Christ figure that is relevant to twentieth-century audiences, and especially the rebellious decade of the 1960s.

There are many characteristics that are commonly used to identify Christ figures, several of which are directly applicable to Luke. He is beaten at several times throughout the film, sustaining injuries to joss ode and head, just as Jesus did before his crucifixion. In one specific scene near the end of the film, Luke is slashed on the head (where Jesus' crown of thorns would have been) before being pushed into the grave he has been forced to dig, fill, and re-dig. The injuries and the way they are inflicted do not directly match Jesus' injuries, but they are more fitting to the prison culture in the film than the acts in the New Testament. The same is true of the grave in this scene; rather than having Luke truly die and come back to life, he is pushed into the grave and then withdrawn again, in a symbolic return from the grave.

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.