'Last Days in the Desert' movie focuses on the human side of Jesus, says Ewan McGregor

"Last Days in the Desert," a film that focuses on the temptation of Jesus Christ, will be shown in cinemas on a limited release on May 13. Prior to its screening, lead actor Ewan McGregor shared his thoughts about the movie.

"The film is very much about the human side of Jesus, because I don't know how you go about shooting the divine side," McGregor said during an interview with the Daily News.

The film is set during Jesus' stay in the desert for 40 days, praying and fasting. The imagined chapter that the movie centers on shows him on his way out of the desert when he meets a father and son who are in need of guidance. Yoshua (Jesus' name in Hebrew) struggles with the Devil over the fate of the ordinary family as he finds himself facing human conflicts.

"I did quite a bit of research on Jesus going in ... reading all these books about who Jesus was and who he wasn't and that wasn't helpful to me," he said. He found his character after he stopped reading, saying, "I just started to think about a man who was communicating with his father, and was frustrated with the lack of response."

McGregor plays the role of Jesus as well as the devil. The 45-year-old actor explained that the latter role could have been given to another actor or it could have been presented as a classical creature with horns.

"But because the devil's role in the story is to mess with Yoshua ... how do you not trust the words that seem to be coming out of your own mouth?" he said.

Film director and screenwriter Rodrigo Garcia, according to the report, said that Jesus and his followers were poor whose environment was harsh; thus, he didn't go for the starry-eyed, clean-robed look the way Jesus was portrayed in some other New Testament-based films.

"Jesus and his followers were very poor and lived in a harsh environment so out there 40 days in the desert he is all but a homeless man," he said.

Garcia also went to different places to find the right desert to shoot the film in, even considering Israel, but eventually decided to go for the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California.

"There was no cell signal out there, it was just very peaceful," McGregor said. "Between setups all the actors would sit in the desert and look at the sky."

Apart from McGregor ("Moulin Rouge," "The Ghost Writer"), "Last Days in the Desert" also stars Ciarán Hinds (Mance Rayder in "Game of Thrones") as the father, Ayelet Zurer (Superman's biological mother in "Man of Steel") as the mother, and Tye Sheridan (young Cyclops in "X-Men: Apocalypse) as the son. Cinematography was done by Emmanuel Lubezki, who won three Academy awards for "Gravity," "Birdman," and "The Revenant."