A belated Passion review

A month after it opened, and after it finally got knocked out of #1 at the box office, The Passion of the Christ finally came to Corner Brook this past weekend. Before I checked it out yesterday, I was saying there seemed to be no middle ground with this movie; you either thought it was a moving masterpiece or a violent, hateful travesty. But lo and behold, I am somewhere in the middle, in the fuzzy no man's land between "thumbs up" and "thumbs down", on The Passion.

Now that I've seen the movie, I simply do not believe that the two major criticisms of the film - that it's anti-Semitic and excessively violent - are warranted. The film makes it clear that Jesus and his followers were themselves Jewish. Several Jewish characters argue against Christ's punishment. Herod, who I always assumed was a Jewish king, refuses to crucify him. The only characters who take any pleasure in Christ's torture and punishment are Romans; I got the impression the Jewish High Priests (a couple of whom opposed punishing Jesus, and got booted from the temple for their troubles) were going after Christ for political reasons - namely, he challenged their authority - and not because they're evil.

True, if any professional "anti-Zionist" is looking for yet more ammunition to fire against the hateful Joooooos, I'm sure they can find it in this film. (Already, a Kuwaiti Muslim cleric is demanding the film be shown in his country, because it "reveals crimes committed by Jews against Christ." Remind me why we liberated these guys again.) But the movie shouldn't be blamed if some idiots use it to confirm their own prejudices, any more than Natural Born Killers should be blamed for "making" people go out and commit murder.

(In a thoughtful touch, Mel Gibson shows his own hands nailing Christ to the cross, a symbol of his own - and everyone else's - responsibility for crucifying him. If he is blaming the Jews for having Jesus crucified, he's blaming them for what he did himself.)

The movie is uncomfortably, disturbingly violent at times; when Christ is being flogged by the Romans, and Gibson lets the scene drag on for about 10 minutes, with plenty of shots showing his skin being torn and gouged by their instruments of torture, I wanted to scream, "we get it, Mel." This movie is not remotely suitable for children under 15 or 16, and even older teenagers should be accompanied by an adult.

And yet, I didn't think The Passion was a geek show, in which Christ gets whipped to appeal to the audience's blood lust. I didn't find it nearly as disturbing as my experience seeing Freddy vs. Jason last year, during which my fellow theater patrons whooped and cheered at the sadistic scenes being shown. Gibson wants us to be uncomfortable, to show us the extent to which Jesus suffered for our sins. There's a point to the extreme violence, and Mel undoubtedly thought he wouldn't be honest if he didn't show us what he believes Christ went through.

So I don't accept the most common criticisms of this film, but that doesn't mean I don't have other problems with it. My biggest complaint is that it shows just one part, albeit an extremely important part, of a far larger story. I felt like I'd walked in 2/3 of the way through a much longer film about the life of Christ. Gibson shows several flashbacks to the seminal events in Jesus's life, but anyone not already well-versed in scripture will probably find himself wondering why Jesus Christ had to suffer as he did. This movie, alone, won't make anyone go out and attack Jews - but it won't make anyone convert to Christianity, either.

The Passion is a movie I greatly admired as a piece of filmmaking. It looks great, Jim Caviezel gives an absolutely remarkable performance as Christ, and I appreciated several of Gibson's artistic decisions, including filming the whole thing in Latin and Aramaic (thank God for the subtitles, though) and portraying Satan as an adrogynous humanoid instead of, say, 'Hellboy'. But it's clearly a movie meant for those who already believe the way Gibson does; it assumes you already know everything leading up to Christ's crucifixion, that you already know all the secondary characters (no expository dialogue here), and that you can appreciate the significance of the story.

I felt like I was attending somebody else's religious service - it was interesting, but I found myself quite detached from the whole thing. Gibson is preaching to the converted, as they say.

Posted by damian at March 28, 2004 08:30 AM