Summary: | Last Days in the Desert (Rodrigo García, US 2015) portrays the devil as Jesus’s doppelganger,demonstrating the rivalry between good and evil as the two compete over theefficacy of Jesus’s faith. With Jesus assessing himself as he responds to the devil, thefilm offers a self-reflexive evaluation of faith as it is challenged by skepticism. By analyzingthe film using the idea of an evolutionary faith instinct, the article presents Jesus’strust in God as empowerment that allows him to endure elements of nature and findsigns of divinity. The devil’s eventual exhausted impatience and his loss of his wagerwith Jesus bolster the applicability of a faith instinct. Ultimately, the film is an opportunityfor this rendition of Jesus to be articulated in terms of evolutionary discourse.
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