Among the abusive epithets you can apply to Gibson, "primitive" is perhaps the most precise in terms of his storytelling. But first a few points in his favor: the critics have overstated the amount of time given over to direct depiction of violence. And I 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, with the group that emerged dominant renouncing their Jewishness, inevitably makes it. For example, the whole time Simon of Cyrene, wearing a yarmulke, is helping Jesus carry the cross the Romans denigrate him as another Jew. He's unwilling to lend a hand at first, but behaves manfully thereafter, and we warm to him.
Of course, both of the Jews who show sympathy to Jesus on the via dolorosa--Simon of Cyrene and Veronica, the young woman who wipes his face with her headcloth (on which his image becomes imprinted)--were made into Catholic saints long before Gibson's day, along with Dismas, the good thief who is converted while dying on the cross next to Jesus, and Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierces Jesus's side. But all that's outside the scope of what we see onscreen. For theological subtleties read Andrew Sullivan's pieces on the movie (click here and here), but I'd guess most of this is lost on the audience--lost equally on the old lady to my left who sobbed through the second half of the picture and the old lady to my right who slept through it. The audience is most likely assimilating the movie to how they already feel about the story. In other words, it may excite anti-Semites but it won't create them.
In addition, scan through the classic works of art depicting the Passion on this website and you'll find some pretty rough imagery. Here, however, I think the tide turns back against Gibson. Even this image of Christ carrying the cross by the 15th-century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch, for instance, with its animal-like tormentors, features a patient Jesus (not one who, like Jim Caviezel, howls through teeth pink with blood). And without the tumultuous and noisy representational impact of moving-and-talking pictures (putting you there on the spot while the Savior of mankind is flogged senseless), Bosch's grotesque little snapshot can still serve as a focus for contemplation alongside Fra Angelico's serene abstraction of the mockery of Christ from a cell at the monastery of San Marco in Florence earlier in the same century.
It's a little late in western civilization for Gibson's use of rotten yellow teeth and cataracts and dwarfs to instill moral horror in us. But the way most movies work on us is quite primitive--they arouse us with graphic sex and violence, they work by enticement and revulsion, sometimes simultaneously, and urge us to the simplistic moral gratification of melodrama. In Gibson's version of the Passion there's no sex (DeMille would have found an angle), but otherwise the movie feels more unself-consciously plugged into what makes movies widely and directly appealing to a mass audience than any other Jesus movie. That's a dubious feat.
![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.