The Passion of The Christ

Although accusations of anti-semitism and gratuitous ultra-violence are being used to denounce the film in certain quarters, Tara Brady nonetheless contends that Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ is ultimately a poignant and overwhelming experience.

It seemed destined to be a footnote of folly in Mel Gibson’s glittering career. Something to rank alongside Mel’s more eccentric ventures such as Million Dollar Hotel or The Singing Detective. Few initially expected his $17 million Passion play shot entirely in Aramaic and period Latin to represent anything other than star-power-gone-rampant. Fewer still expected that The Passion Of The Christ could rain on The Lord of The Rings’ Oscar parade by out-grossing it and indeed everything else in sight at the US box-office. And yet, that’s precisely what’s happened. The Passion – Gibson’s account of the final hours of Jesus Christ – earned $23.6 million on its opening day alone, the second highest single-day gross since Spiderman. By the end of five days the tally was a downright awe-inspiring $117.5 million. Not bad for a subtitled affair with a restrictive viewing certificate and a certain outcome.

And that’s before you consider the venomous opposition that’s been building against the film since its release. Many, including the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, have levelled charges of anti-Semitism at Gibson’s project. Certainly, its depiction of Caiphas and Jewish authority figures is less than charitable, and one can’t help but feel that Gibson could have pre-empted much of the current critical tide had he allowed the merest flicker of humanity to cross even one of the Pharisees’ faces. The Roman soldiers within the film are portrayed in a more flattering light after all. However, the notion of the film being an unmitigated illustration of the Jews as ‘Christ-killers’ is erroneous. Many of the supporting cast, including Mary, played by the remarkable Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern, and Peter, are far more recognizably semitic than their counterparts in such movies as The Greatest Story Ever Told, Jesus Of Nazareth or The Last Temptation of Christ.
But the case against has been fuelled less by the actual film and more by certain inflammatory, intolerant remarks from Mel’s 85-year-old father, Hutton Gibson. This biblical scholar became disillusioned with the Catholic Church following the modernising reforms of the Vatican Council during the early 1960s, and formed his own ultra-conservative sect which adheres to the Latin mass, amongst other arcane traditions. His recent interviews have established that he views the second Vatican Council as a Jewish conspiracy to undermine Catholicism, and the Holocaust as a money-spinning fabrication. It must be noted that Hutton’s undeniably noxious opinions have never been reiterated by Mel Gibson himself, though he is (like his father) a member of the reactionary Tridentine church, as is Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in The Passion, Mel’s first and only choice for the role.
A second disquieting aspect of The Passion Of The Christ concerns the harrowing, near pornographic levels of brutality on offer. The 20-minute scourging scene in particular is being billed as the most visceral portrait of physical torture to be found beyond the realms of the snuff industry. This will come as no surprise to anyone unfortunate enough to have sat through the entirety of the Lethal Weapon series, but while The Passion is grisly, unsettling and unforgettable, in truth it’s no more shocking films like Pasolini’s Salo or even last year’s Irreversible. And while there is enough gore to impress Stan Winstone (in fact the make-up meisters for The Passion are Keith Vanderlaan and Greg Cannom of Hannibal fame), much of the horror is suggested and occurs off-screen.
Due to the film’s graphic nature much has been made of the film being awarded the 15PG Certificate in the Republic. As someone who deplores the 18 Cert on principle (at 15, one should be allowed to drink, fuck, vote and watch whatever the hell you want), I applaud the censor completely. Anything that puts the emphasis on parental responsibility is okay by me, and I hope the warning of extreme violence will encourage parents to actually see the film before letting their offspring head off on their Passion school-trip. The PG Cert may be open to abuse by religious zealot types, but we can only legislate for mortals and not the mortally retarded.
Between all these enraged critical attacks, Mel Gibson has already developed something of a persecution complex. ‘Why am I being picked on for this?’ he asked on a recent talk-show. ‘I don’t know of anyone who would have bowed to this kind of pressure. It’s un-American.’ The scary part is that he’s probably right. Plenty of feature writers have sharpened their quills and Catholic-bashing instincts long before viewing a single frame of the film. And regardless of whether you view religion as a quaint lifestyle option or a vile toxin, it’s simply churlish to dismiss Gibson’s film because it’s rooted in his own religious fanaticism. The terminus of such logic would, after all, flush most of Western Civilisation down the toilet, leaving us with Pot Noodles and those profane poems of Chaucer’s.
More importantly, The Passion Of The Christ is a very fine, though flawed work of extreme art and it must be judged on that basis rather than anyone’s feelings toward Catholicism and its oppressive doctrine. It’s also quite unique. As an adaptation, the screenplay (penned by Mel and Benedict Fitzgerald) claims to be drawn from all four New Testament gospels, though in reality it seems largely based on Matthew’s gospel, and also includes several incidents from the so-called Apocalyptic gospels – the legendary material from the early church. As Matthew’s is the version of events that contains the most apocryphal material, this ensures an incredibly supernatural emphasis, and The Passion is densely populated by daemon-spawn and monstrous apparitions. Satan even shows up, and quel surprise, she’s a woman. But then you’ll already suspect as much if you’ve been reading Milton or listening carefully to your Led Zeppelin CDs. This gothic reading is frequently compelling but doesn’t always work, particularly beside the stark, voyeuristic violence of the piece. Some incidents in The Passion, such as the conflation of the tearing of the Jerusalem temple veil (as reported in the bible) with the historical levelling of the structure in 70 AD, are too other-worldly by half.
Other elements of the film are brilliantly orchestrated. It looks profoundly beautiful, taking cues from the darksome light and shadows of Caravaggio’s paintings. The Last Supper here is simply the most stunning candlelight scene since Stanley Kubrick utilised specially developed NASA technology for Barry Lyndon. The cast are also wonderful, particularly Caviezel as Jesus, who has literally transformed himself into a bloodied human Turin Shroud for the role. Morgenstern (Nostradamus, Ulysses’ Gaze) playing his mother is equally impressive, and she and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene do a magnificent mama et putain routine. In fact, for all the scenes that play like something the lads from A Clockwork Orange would lap up, there’s a very definite Marian inflection to the proceedings. And it’s these maternal moments that are the most affecting within the film. On second viewing the anticipation of the scourge didn’t cause me to flinch, but the scene wherein Mary sees her son fall with the cross was simply unendurable.
Regardless of one’s religious convictions and whatever else may be said, Mel Gibson’s account has reinvigorated the most widely related narrative in our culture. Even coming to the film as a devout and evangelical atheist I still found much resonance in The Passion, both as an unforgettable portrait of man’s inhumanity to man and a damning account of colonial duplicity. It’s a forceful, poignant and overwhelming experience and the very opposite of apologist art. Despite the kerfuffle, Gibson is to be applauded and defended for giving us this essential cinematic experience.

The Passion of The Christ is released March 12