Passion of the Christ

In honor of Ash Wednesday, I thought I would publish a review of Mel Gibson’s film.

This is a profoundly disturbing film. It is beautifully set and filmed, and very well acted. The Aramaic dialogue lent authenticity and beauty to the scenes. I, personally, did not find the film to convey a message of anti-Semitism.

But it is not the film it might have been. Why? I’m a stickler for a well-written script, and this film not only didn’t have one, it hardly required one. Also because, though I am not a believer, I have respect for the story, and a desire to see it told well. Gibson’s peculiar obsession with violence overwhelms it. Jaroslav Pelikan’s Jesus Through the Centuries points out that, while we think of Jesus as being a challenge to dominant cultures, the portrayals of him are usually a reflection and an endorsement of the dominant culture. So, in our extravagantly, pornographically violent times, Gibson produces a movie that extracts the most violent day of Jesus’ life and makes it stand in place of the whole story. In an age of religiously-inspired violence, it is a tragic decision for a director to make.

Gibson presumes that everyone knows Jesus and is sympathetic toward him. While that may be mostly true, it also absolves Gibson of the director’s difficult role in a tragedy: make the audience care for the characters, tell them why these people are worthy. Instead, he involves us in an orgy of gore, reveling in the blood spilled, and raising the awkward question: If this is the whole purpose of Jesus’ life, then what are we to think of the “villains”, Judas and Pilate, et al, who simply brought about that which must be done, that made that Friday, ironically, Good?

But Gibson as storyteller/evangelist is not interested in conundrums. He wants to make us feel good about feeling so bad. And he fails, at least in my case. I want to be ennobled by this story, as by stories of other selfless teachers who fell to the authorities of their times. I was appalled by the parents who took their children to see it. It is, hands down, one of the most graphically violent movies you will ever see, and parents should exercise the same caution with this film as they would with any other portrayal of a death by torture.

I knew that it was violent, and graphic, when I went to see it. What I hoped for was that Gibson would try to convey a sense of solidarity between Jesus and others who have been murdered, tortured, and persecuted. That sense was entirely missing. If he had run the quotation – “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me” – at the end, all of the violence might have been somewhat redeemed by urging us to treat others with the same compassion Gibson wants to evoke in us for Christ. Instead, he gives the resurrection a bare moment at the end, accompanied by military music, as if Jesus came back to kick some serious butt in retribution. I found the film, and its violence, utterly lacking in redemptive value. There is no grace here. I am not surprised that Gibson followed it up with yet another portrayal of human sacrifice, since that is what he reduced this story to: a mere barbaric bloodletting.