The Passion of the Christ
Written by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson
Directed by Mel Gibson
Newmarket
2004
Rating:


There has been more written and said about "The Passion of the Christ" over the past several months than any film in recent memory. Long before the film arrived in theaters, there was talk about its alleged anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson's fundamentalist Catholicism, and the significance of James Caviezel's initials. Once the movie finally arrived, it lit up an unprecedented critical firestorm that engulfed film reviewers and audience members alike. Christians have rallied around the movie, moved as they are by the explicit depiction of their savior's suffering. Those who were less inspired have had their faith questioned or assaulted: the two Jewish critics for Entertainment Weekly received hate mail for finding fault with the film, and the angered subscribers assumed it was a matter of faith.

What many of "The Passion's" proponents have ignored is that, no matter from what religious perspective a critical viewer examines it, the movie is simply poor storytelling. "The Passion" exists in a vacuum that prevents the story from resonating in any real way. There's barely any historical, human, emotional, or even Biblical context. Without knowing why the High Priests wanted Jesus dead or why his death even matters, the movie can't hope to succeed on a basic dramatic level.

In its vacuum, "The Passion" is simply an inhuman, masochistic torture mechanism that is born out of guilt instead of love. The absence of love and humanity makes the movie little more than an art house snuff film. It hurts to see Jesus beaten, humiliated, scourged for 10 minutes, and, finally, crucified. But because Jesus exists here as a literal whipping boy for the world, one could argue that seeing Barabbas be tortured would be just as painful to watch. Jesus' significance has nothing to do with the fact that anyone with skin will find it impossible not to respond to the unsparing violence.

There's some difficulty in criticizing the extreme violence of the film when "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" -- with its orgiastic dismemberments and oceans of blood -- is considered one of the best movies of 2003. But the cruelty on display here is inarguably worse for the simple fact that it's extended torture. The difference between Jesus' scourging and a bloody fight scene is the difference between and a 2-minute love scene and a 10-minute rape scene.

Sometimes Gibson's violence achieves the over-the-top style of Tarantino. When a Roman soldier pokes the crucified Jesus in the side, the ensuing blood spurt looks like the uncensored album cover for The Distillers' "Coral Fang." It's amazing that so many are willing to champion this film's Grand Guignol, exploitive sadism while deriding every other violent movie from "Bonnie and Clyde" to, well, "Kill Bill: Vol. 2." Unlike those movies, "The Passion" doesn't ask its viewers to emotionally connect with the hero beyond the basest level, making it pornographic. More alarming is the fact that parents are taking their 5-year-old children to this movie merely because it's about Jesus without ever considering how traumatizing the experience will be.

Is "The Passion of the Christ" anti-Semitic? One could argue that all of the characters are one-dimensional (even Jesus), so when the Pharisees smack their lips and snarl, it's not an anti-Semitic depiction, it's just bad characterization. This would also explain Herod's decadent homosexuality, Satan's gender-bending, and the use of deformed children as the symbols for all things evil.

But then the movie does something appalling: it makes Pontius Pilate a three-dimensional character. In Gibson's interpretation, Pontius doesn't want to execute Jesus -- he believes the man is innocent and his wife, apparently on the verge of conversion, won't forgive Pilate if he condemns the man to death. But Pilate knows he'll be in trouble with Caesar if a riot erupts for pardoning Jesus. So he leaves the matter up to the crowd, asks them twice if they want Jesus crucified, and washes his hands of the matter. In making Pilate so complex, it lets the Romans off easy, while encoding gender-bending, deformity, homosexuality, and Judaism as, if not evil, then very bad.

It's also historically inaccurate that Pilate was able to wash his hands so clean. Pilate was so notorious for his wanton brutality that Rome withdrew him from Jerusalem in 37 CE. The Jewish philosopher of the first century, Philo of Alexandria, wrote of Pilate: "[He was an] unbending and recklessly hard character famous for corruptibility, violence, robberies, ill treatment of the people, grievances, continuous executions without even the form of a trial, and endless and intolerable cruelties." It also seems unlikely that the Sanhedrin would meet during Passover, let alone advocate crucifixion.

The Romans, on the other hand, routinely crucified self-proclaimed messiahs and "kings of the Jews" for challenging their rule the way Jesus did. Just a few of these include Judah of Galilee (6 CE), Theudas (44 CE) and Benjamin the Egyptian (69 CE). The truth lies in the simple, undeniable and incontrovertible fact that Jesus was condemned in a Roman court on a Roman charge, and put to death by a method of execution used only by the Romans, just as the two leading historians of the time, Josephus and Tacitus, expressly maintained.

For further proof of the anti-Semitism, one need look only at the casting: while the proto-Christians are all played by Americans or Western Europeans, the Pharisees have Semitic hooked or bulbous noses. More damning is the fact that the movie has been selling out in Arab theaters in the Middle East, where Muslims leave the film further convinced of Jewish villainy.

Those who have fully embrace "The Passion of the Christ" are the same people who, sight unseen, protested Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ," a movie that, in spite of its faults, celebrated Jesus' humanity and teachings and depicted his death as a real sacrifice. Fans of Gibson's vision would do well to see it and Pier Paolo Pasolini's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew," a daring, humanist study that shows why Jesus' message was so radical and appalling to the Pharisees. In "The Passion of the Christ," spirituality is only a footnote to the text of suffering.

Posted Friday, January 5, 2007

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/passion.of.the.christ