If anyone is the artist here it's Gibson's cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, who brings a Caravaggiesque chiaroscuro to the Last Supper and comes up with some expressionistically loose-tumultuous camerawork (an upside down perspective shot as Jesus is being dragged from the whipping post is reminiscent of the end of Dreyer's ineffable Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), the greatest Christian martyrdom movie of all).
I don't believe that the Passion can be treated realistically in a straightforward way and convey its meaning to anyone unfamiliar with the story. Realism trades in believability and the gospel stories ask for a different kind of belief, that provided by faith despite the lack of mundane credibility. The contradictions of a gospel story aren't a problem; they're catalysts for meditation on the intricacies of God's intentions (which is exactly the kind of foolproof argument that makes atheists smell the usual forms of human conmanship in the gospels). The distance between gospel and realism, however, is a great subject, as Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ and Martin Scorsese's peerless 1988 movie adaptation of it attest. Those works translate the ancient means of narrative into modern means, applying their minds to the most puzzling conflicts that result, for instance, how to think of Judas, whose role is preordained and essential to the good outcome and yet for which he suffers damnation. (He's much easier to wrap your brain around as an allegorical figure than as a man.) Scorsese's movie is the only Jesus movie that really struggles with the subject, that's anything more than a more or less animated pageant.
Gibson's movie is the most animated of all, but it's not distinguished. It puts a veneer of realism over the usual form of American melodramatic romance and so despite superficial thrills it can't really serve as more than an illustration of the narrative anymore than DeMille's stiff diorama. But though Gibson's shallowly insistent and seductive method may stir his audience, what the audience feels isn't necessarily the significance of the Passion but a reflexive submission to a familiarly manipulative style of moviemaking. (You could lodge the same complaint against (the much greater) left-wing directors like Sergei Eisenstein. The moviemaking of The Battleship Potemkin (1925), for instance, can turn you on without turning you into a Bolshevik.)
Gibson is plainly sincere. It's easy to sneer at the fact that he approaches this of all stories with everything he's learned in his successful action-movie career, but that's the mark of his sincerity. He's filmed the Passion in a way consonant with his life's work. The fact that his life's work has been mostly crap (excepting Gillian Armstrong's Mrs. Soffel (1984), and his acting in Conspiracy Theory (1997) and Signs (2002) as well), even if occasionally brilliant crap (George Miller's Road Warrior (1981)), means that though this personally financed pet project is full of conviction, the aesthetic inspiration is pretty crude. If The Passion leads to a spiritual experience, as you define it, great, but that's a utilitarian rather than an aesthetic matter.
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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.