Is The Passion of the Christ a film about Jesus Christ or Mel Gibson? By Valerie Davison
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about The Passion of the Christ will ultimately be the furor that has attended it, and the question of what in the world is the matter with Mel Gibson. While the hype machine has drawn audiences in droves, the film itself is driving at least some of them from the theatre, and reactions range from ecstasy to disgust. (At the screening I attended a number of viewers exited before the final credits; the woman next to me abandoned her supersized coke and popcorn and rushed out within thirty minutes, never to return.)
This is not a popcorn movie. In fact, it's hardly a movie at all, more like an animated, sado-masochistic cartoon. What passes for script is so thin you could leach avocados through it. In Gibson's hands, The Greatest Story Ever Told is no story at all, but merely an excuse to set in motion a graphic depiction of relentless torture that travels the Via Dolorosa in real time. For two hours one helpless man is turned into a side of beef at the hands of a squad of Roman Centurions, egged on by a gaggle of Jewish Pharisees. And make no mistake, the message is anti-Semitic. Anyone who says it isn't is either disingenuous or in denial. Pilate is portrayed as a reluctant pussycat whose only vice is wanting to cover his butt with Rome, while anyone clearly identifiable as a Jew is a rabid fanatic screaming for blood and sucking up to Caesar.
There is no beauty here, no poetry, no subtlety or transcendence, no characterization. Only two disciples are given any lines (Judas and Peter, the two who betray Jesus, of course). Some dialogue and scripture are interspersed throughout, but precious little. Gibson refers to these interludes as "trap doors," which he says he inserted periodically to give the viewer a temporary "out" from all the horror. By his own admission, then, the most important thing here is the violence. Throw in a little text for "comic" relief, and then get back to the gore. If the excuse for all this self-indulgence and preoccupation with physical cruelty were anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ, this enterprise would likely have never reached the screen.
One of the critics for Entertainment Weekly, had it right when she said this film is really about Mel Gibson. Just what, you have to ask, was he thinking? For what purpose did he do this? What does he want from us? Even if you assume (and it's a fair assumption) that he's preaching to the converted, the same questions apply. Are we meant to have an epiphany, or experience some orgiastic beatification? Run out into the streets and make someone hit us so we can forgive them? Run to the nearest church, fall on our knees and say, "Thank you." Are we to be propelled into outrage and anger, or recoil in shame and revulsion for what humans do to one another? Does he, consciously or unconsciously, want to rile up the Christians against the Jews? Does he, consciously or unconsciously, feel that the holocaust has gotten too much attention? That it's, time to remind the world that one man, the Christ, suffered as much or more than six million? Is this Schindler's List for Catholics?
What he says he wants is to remind us of what Jesus really went through. He wants an "unsanitized" cross, unlike the Protestant one. Fair enough. (Would he also recommend showing more, unsanitized, body bags from Iraq and what's in them, so we really know what's going on there? Just asking.) But he doesn't really know exactly what happened at Calvary, he only knows what he believes, and his version isn't even credible. In this rendering, Jesus would have been dead or certainly unconscious before he ever got to the cross. Consequently, the filmmaker's motive can only be the gratuitous elongation of torture -- ours as well as his. By divesting him of any context other than martyrdom, Gibson is doing his Messiah a tremendous disservice, reducing his life to little more than his death.
Violence and brutality, to be fair, are hardly new to religious history, nor exclusive to Catholics, fruitcake filmmakers, or Spanish inquisitions. Let's not forget the God of Abraham, who bade that he, Abraham, split his son in half, and then said, "Just kidding." Nor should we assume that necrotic imagery ended with the Reformation. Pick up a Protestant hymnal (any denomination) and read the verses, replete with references to blood, sacrifice, submission, and torment. While the Protestant iconography has retained the cross without its wracked body, it his hardly less barbarous. Drinking the blood and consuming the body of Christ, symbolic imagery still part of the Protestant Communion, still sounds a lot like cannibalism.
Leaving the theatre, I couldn't help but think of my grandmother, no longer alive, whose devotion to the Christian church and unwavering belief in its teachings were second only to her family and friends, if even then. She never went to a movie unless it had a religious theme. (She didn't see many movies.) What on earth would she think of this? While I shudder to imagine her being in the audience, hers is the voice I would like to hear. All the rest is noise.
