You've watched two films by the much celebrated Pasolini and both have been, to be quite frank, mediocre. There are moments of beauty and tenderness in this one, but overall you have to wonder how much artistic input goes into a film that is full of quotes from the Bible. Yes, the faces are wonderfully expressive but you were hoping for a political/Marxist angle. Perhaps you want to see a film through Muslim or Jewish eyes..
If there was any chance of that then the Gospel according to St. Matthew would have been the best bet (cp. to john, for example).
On the other hand, it could be the desire to end all politics, competitiveness-as well as the scapegoating of victims that is the cycle of mimentic violence- is what constitutes Christianity's distinctiveness and radicalness. How to live in the world and not be of the world, how to give no thought for the 'morrow. Not by bread alone, and not bread first. No political community is (or can be?) built on love. That kind of inwardness will always set up a barrier to the dominance of the state..the power of the state no longer matters because it isn't real power.
So, in this film there is barely the faintest of hints of Roman occupation. No mention of the zealots.
In Matthew we see Jesus(pbuh) from very much within a Jewish tradition (Vermes, for example) before St. Paul's understanding of the centrality of 'the risen Christ'takes hold. But what of James, the brother of Jesus or 5:18: not an iota of the law shall be changed?
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A far better film was Edvard Munch by the director Peter Watkins. Here the use of words was less direct and therefore employed to greater effect. Which begs the question: what is realism? To depict reality one needs to look at it from an angle-as Tarkovsky does. Ways of approaching. I don't think there can be realism, the 'thing-as-it is, without art, without mirrors, filters.
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