The Passion of the Christ

Well, I finally got around to seeing this. The trick here is to review The Passion of the Christ as a film and avoid launching into any sort of rhetoric, one way or the other, referring to the swirling and obvious controversy around the film. I’ll likely opt out of making personal statements about Mel Gibson and I wish other reviewers of the film had the same ideology, but I realize that we live in a celebrity obsessed culture and many people struggle with identifying the line between reality and one’s body of work. Gibson is certainly a public figure of interest and has become quite the controversial figure lately, but I don’t feel that it’s fair to lampoon this film based on the actions of its director or the proposed beliefs of the director. The countless people that worked on The Passion of the Christ deserve better.

Web parenting aside, on with the review. The Passion of the Christ arrived in theaters in 2004. The film was director Mel Gibson’s labour of love, as he spent $40 million or more of his own money to produce and finance it. Gibson is also the film’s co-producer and helped write the screenplay along with Benedict Fiztgerald, whose previous experience was a television screenplay of Moby Dick from 1998. The film faced a number of problems when it came to distribution, partly because of its violence and partly because of the multi-lingual soundtrack (Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew). It also faced the widely-publicized problems of anti-Semitism. Without giving too much air to the claims, many critiqued Gibson’s film on the grounds that it held “discredited” viewpoints in terms of Jewish involvement with the crucifixion of Christ. It should be noted that the actress (Maia Morgenstern) who plays the Virgin Mary is Jewish and is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She rejects the anti-Semitic criticisms and said that both she and her father found the script to be “beautiful” and “poetic.”

Back to the film itself. The Passion of the Christ serves to detail Christ’s arrest, trial, and crucifixion in realistic detail with as much respect given towards the nuances of the cultures of the time. The source material for the film comes largely from the various gospel accounts, but also from “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” which is the controversial “meditations” of stigmatic German nun Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. Emmerich’s visions of Christ’s Passion, as recorded by Clemens Brentano, tend to depict the Jews as being much more bloodthirsty than the Roman rule of the time in Judea. Gibson also sources, along with a touch of creative license of course, “The Mystical City of God,” a work from Spanish nun Maria de Agreda. Naturally with such a huge task at hand, the film will be – and should be – subjected to its fair share of critique. Using the source material as a guide, Gibson set out to create his own personal “Passion” of the final days of the Christ narrative.

The film runs about two hours and about 100 minutes of it is heavily concerned with the torture and ultimate suffering of Christ via the process to his execution. The Passion of the Christ does not skimp on the ugly, bloody, or brutal. The film is a Catholic vision, in essence, which renders its ultimate appeal more squarely towards those that have Catholic leanings or, at the very least, a fair understanding of the Catholic tradition. Although Gibson is what many describe as a “fringe Catholic,” a lot of the Catholic tradition in terms of Christ’s execution is in this film. The “14 Stations of the Cross” are here, for example. The brutality of Christ’s torture and punishment are evidenced in heartrending fashion, too, and it’s enough to turn stomachs. It is unrelenting and disturbing. It is also the ultimate visceral idea of what the Passion was.

Gibson’s film, despite what many critics attempt to say, does not present a sermon here. It doesn’t provide eloquent homily or otherwise patronize its audience. I disagree with much of the anti-Semitic volley that has unfortunately sullied the reputation of this film. I consider the critique along these lines to be hollow, regardless of Gibson’s point of view. I suppose had I been actively seeking out anti-Semitic rhetoric, I may have found it, but I also may have found it in The Benchwarmers or any other assortment of films. Certainly the subject matter of Gibson’s piece demands a higher modicum of respectful critique than a Rob Schneider vehicle, but it’s no small wonder to me that those looking for issues or problems will atypically always find them – whether intentional or not.

Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is captivating in its ideological representation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, take it or leave it. It’s not particularly attempting to convert people, although it was mistakenly and erroneously utilized by evangelicals as a missions tool. It is, instead, a pretty powerful film. It is not anti-Semitic in my view and its value can truly be found in the notion that it delivers a narrative of the violent crucifixion and torture of Christ that is so disturbing and excessively brutal that it is actually physically effective. The performances are adequate and there are moments of beautiful cinematography, but this is really about the blood and agony of Christ in the final hours of life. Quite frankly, I was moved by the depth of emotion and feeling in The Passion of the Christ and by the skill of the makers and performers of this film. That’s enough to make it a good film. The discussion in terms of its theological terms belongs elsewhere.

Trailer: