Mel Gibson's already legendary new movie The Passion of the Christ details the end of Jesus's life from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Resurrection. The movie is a fervent oddity, and the only thing I'm certain you can credit Gibson with is the commercial genius to see that a Jesus movie could be a big hit if it were filmed using the melodramatic action-movie conventions of Old Testament spectacles like Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956), or of more or less pious ancient gladiatorial sandbusters like Ben-Hur (1925; 1959), with its cameo appearance by Jesus, and the secular Spartacus (1960). Religious-themed movies used to be a standard subgenre in Hollywood from the earliest days through the 1960s, but the Jesus movies were always relatively inert.
This is in part because Hollywood has never wanted to offend the audience and figured that cashing in on this central Christian story required an air of paralyzed reverence. But there has to be more to it because it's true not only of studio stinkers like DeMille's King of Kings (1927) and Nicholas Ray's remake (1961) of it, and George Stevens's The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965, with John Wayne as a Roman centurion uttering the line, "Truly, this man was the Son of God"). The subject has also defeated the greatest directors, including D.W. Griffith in the Crucifixion episode of his masterpiece Intolerance (1916) and the Danish Titan Carl Dreyer in the Crucifixion episode of Leaves from Satan's Book (1920), his four-part movie influenced by Intolerance.
The deeper problem is that the gospel narrative is not a fictional drama but the account of a ritual sacrifice which is presented both as history and as the key to the meaning of all existence, and the main character is the Godhead Himself and hence without character flaws, unlike Oedipus, say, or King David. (He can't even be tempted, which is more than you can say for even a moral exemplar like a white knight.)
Gibson isn't afraid of his subject, at least, and the box office returns seem to have vindicated his instinct that, despite his personal adherence to a retrogressive splinter sect of Roman Catholicism, his feel for the Passion story (or his insensitivity to it, depending on your point of view) reflects the mass audience's pretty closely. He gives us a blood-and-guts version that takes melodrama back to its roots in a fevered Christian fundamentalism in which there's good and evil and no position in between, and the entire point of storytelling is to reveal the virtue and innocence of the misunderstood good characters and the willful malice of the temporarily ascendant evil ones.
![Samson & Delilah (1950) [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513N4RHCD9L._SL120_.jpg)
![Ben Hur - Tale of the Christ (1926) (Silent) [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21TB1T7DV3L._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Amazing Alan, penetrating, encyclopedic, articulate. I am amazed by the range of opinion on this and you explained much of that. Thanks!
2 - David Flanagan
He can't even be tempted, which is more than you can say for even a moral exemplar like a white knight.
Matthew 4:1-2
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
Hebrews 2:17-18
For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
I agree with Eric that your post is very articulate. At the same time, your argument is a philosophical one that seems at times to ignore the Biblical narrative of Jesus -- even while you attempt to use it in your critique of "The Passion -- as I point out above with your statement regarding Jesus vs. what the Bible actually says of him.
The real significance of the synoptic gospels is not that they contradict but, rather, that they are exactly what we have always known them to be eyewitness testimony. Do they mesh perfectly? Of course not. If they were identical, they would easily be dismissed as a lie. And though many Christians (myself included) believe that the scriptures were written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we also know that human beings see the same event in different ways, thus the Spirit uses four different people to give us the same event almost as if we were sitting in a court hearing eyewitness testimony to the events that transpired.
Ultimately, for Mel Gibson, this movie was a very personal endeavour; part of his life's journey, and a way for him to pay homage to God. Not only did Gibson pour his heart into this project, perhaps permanently alienating him from mainstream Hollywood, he was willing to put his money where his mouth was and personally finance the movie.
The story of the making of this film is as interesting to me as the film itself. I've read the gospel accounts numerous times, as well as historical texts regarding life in that period and the brutality of Roman Crucifixion. For me, there were few surprises in this movie.
The real fascination for me has been Gibson's journey to the making of this movie, then through the movie, and the thought of what might be next for him. The fact that he stands to make so much money has nothing to do with this movie. Gibson had no clue in the beginning whether or not he'd ever see a dime of it back from ticket sales. I'm very intersted to see what Gibson chooses as his next project.
Thanks.
David
3 - Alan Dale
Thanks for writing. My point about temptation is a narrative rather than a theological point. From a narrative perspective, there's no suspense as to whether Jesus will give in to temptation, any more than there is suspense as to whether Job will curse God. By contrast, Christian knights in medieval romance follow deceptively beautiful maidens and have to learn to distinguish physical enticement from spiritual fulfillment, and to prefer the latter.
4 - Samuel Lieberman
I find your conclusion that you "you don't think the movie is any more anti-Semitic than the common understanding of the underlying story of a schism within the Jewish religion" amazingly naive! It's clear that the Passion is exceptionally anti-semitic from the negative references toward Jews employed in the movie that are not present in the Gospels--particularly the scene where the earthquake upon Jesus's death causes the destruction of the Temple. In the Gospels, the Temple was not destroyed upon Jesus's death! Rather, the earthquake upon Jesus's death split the veil of the Temple, implying that God was now accessible to all, not just the Priests. Gibson's addition of the destruction of the Temple not only conflicts with the Gospels--it conflicts with history, because the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. The clear import of this scene--made up by Gibson--is that God collectively punished the Jews for Jesus's death.
The significance of the destruction of the Temple to both Jews and Christians cannot be underscored. The Temple, after all, is the holiest site in all of Judaism. (They don't call it the holy of holies for nothing!) Under Jewish law, each Jew must fast on two separate days to mourn the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. (Tisha B'Av commemorates the loss of both Temples, and the 17th of Tammuz focuses specifically on the 2nd Temple.) And in Jewish Theology, the destruction of the Second Temple is punishment for the sins of the Jewish People.
The Temple also has significance in Christianity because Christianity is based on Judaism. Indeed, early Catholic Church teachings held that the destruction of the Temple was divine retribution on the Jews for Jesus's death. However, that view, which attributed blame for Jesus's death directly on the Jews, was relgated to minority-view status by the middle-ages and subsequently repudiated by the Church in Vatican II.
There thus can be no doubt that the earthquake scene in the Passion is anti-semitic. Without basis in history or the Gospels, it suggests that the destruction of the site dearest to all Jews was divine punishment for Jesus's death. Such claims of divine punishment of all Jews is anti-semitism in its most basic form. And its parallel to pre-Vatican II anti-semitic Church teachings only serves to confirm Gibson's intent to bring Catholicism to an earlier, darker era. That Mr. Gibson has gotten away with portraying such anti-semitism in a major film is scary; that so many haven't recognized the film as anti-semitic makes me tremble.