For what it's worth, I'm glad that Mel Gibson's made a movie about God. Really.
Expressions of personal faith account for some of the cinema's very greatest works of art, from Carl Dreyer's Ordet and The Passion of Joan of Arc, to Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest. It's a tricky path to navigate, and filmmakers don't always get it right (cough, Last Temptation of Christ, cough) — but when they do, the results can be, well, sublime. Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? is proof positive, along with Michael Tolkin's The Rapture and Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew. All are magnificent examinations of spirituality, and all are among my favorite films in the world.
And so I come to praise Mel Gibson, not to bury him.
Not that Mel will particularly welcome that news.
Gibson, whose The Passion of the Christ opens on Feb. 25 (Ash Wednesday), is acting a lot these days like a schoolyard bully daring someone to knock him down. More specifically, he seems to be in the throes of some full-throttle martyr complex, reveling in the prospect of a righteous crucifixion from heretics daring to take issue with his film.
The former Road Warrior has begun to look like someone who has identified so completely with his subject that he is now actively engaged in his very own personal passion play. In the version that Mel is playing out, he is, of course, the star.
As you may have heard, there is just the teensiest bit of controversy surrounding Mel's new movie. It's a controversy that Gibson himself, in no small measure, seems to be courting.
Bluntly put, The Passion of the Christ, which offers an account of the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth, is accused of being anti-Semitic. It's extremely unfortunate that some of this bad press and even worse word of mouth is coming from people who haven't even seen the film, but that seems to be the way that Mel wants it. Up until just recently, Gibson had flatly refused to screen the movie, except to handpicked members of the clergy, conservative Christian pundits and others perceived as staunchly sympathetic to the cause.
As to the exact nature of that cause, the story gets murkier. Deprived of an actual look at the film, critics have begun focusing on Gibson's involvement in a little-known church that makes John Travolta's religious affiliations look downright sensible. Gibson is part of a Catholic splinter group called Traditionalism, that, among other quirks, rejects the reforms made by Vatican II in the early '60s — reforms that include a refusal to single out the Jewish people as being somehow collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. It probably hasn't helped matters that Mel's dad, Hutton Gibson, is an outspoken Holocaust-denier, or that Mel hasn't exactly been forthcoming about addressing the sins of the father.
All of this has been well documented, though, and it may already be old hat to you. On the other hand, having finally managed to get a first-hand look at Gibson's movie, I have news from the front.
So — is there any truth to those awful things they're saying about Mel Gibson and his movie? And then there's that other little matter that seems to have almost gotten lost in all the brouhaha: Is the film any good?
OK, first things first. Like it or hate it, this may just be the most brutal and brutalizing movie ever made in the name of love.
The Passion of the Christ (hereafter referred to as The Passion, if only because I'm having a little difficulty dealing with that second "the") is tough going. It's a visceral and deliberately punishing experience that goes to great lengths fetishizing its copious pain, suffering, gore and instruments of torture. For all of its profound words and classy cinematography, there are times when The Passion feels uncomfortably close to a basic, whips-'n'-chains exploitation flick, albeit one produced with God on its side. At times, I felt like I was watching Women's Prison Massacre or Olga's House of Pain. Substitute a half-naked nubile or two for J.C. and a sneering lesbian warden for Pontius Pilate and you'd hardly notice.
It's all quite beautiful, though, in a grim and grisly sort of way. (Detractors of the film might even think of it as the most ravishing snuff film ever made.) Gibson claims he was going for maximum realism here, and, to his credit, he does achieve an admirable air of authenticity throughout, right down to the rotten teeth on most of the locals and the subtitled Aramaic and Latin dialogue. As far as subtlety, though, that's a whole other matter. Whereas a director like Pasolini did justice to Jesus by understatement — locating the still, small voice of the filmmaker's own faith and distilling it down to its poetic essence — Gibson simply pumps up the volume and screams for "More!" of everything. What Gibson gives us are lurid, loving close-ups of wood and metal piercing flesh, chunks of human gore flying into people's faces, and buckets of blood gushing from each and every open wound. Apply liberally, then repeat.
As for the pivotal issue of anti-Semitism lurking within the film, The Passion of the Christ isn't exactly a racist propaganda tract, but the news isn't particularly good.
Gibson adamantly maintains, as do most true believers, that everybody shares equal blame for killing Christ — but that's not really the sense we get from his film. The movie is quite clear about who its villains are.
The bad guys here, the real movers and shakers of Gibson's take on this cosmic tragedy, are the Jews. Others may do the prime poking and prodding, but Mel dutifully reminds us at key intervals that the Jews are the ones pulling the strings. At the same time, the portrait that the movie paints of the man traditionally deemed directly accountable for Christ's death, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, is a weirdly sympathetic one. Pilate comes off as a curiously gentle and even noble ruler pushed into ordering Jesus' execution by bloodthirsty Jewish mobs and sinister Jewish priests conspiring in shadowy alcoves.
It all makes for great drama, of course — albeit a particularly virulent strain of drama that has directly inspired thousands of years of vicious hate crimes. Gibson's interpretation is as suspect as it is unsavory, having less to do with actual Gospel accounts than with a personal agenda "supported" by dubious non-Biblical sources chosen by the director. One of those sources, just incidentally, is the 17th-century Spanish nun Mary of Agreda, who insisted Jews bear special blame for the death of Christ, and that responsibility for that murder "descended to their posterity."
This is some powerful hoodoo that Mel's messing with. Supporters of the film will undoubtedly argue that the "Jewish Question" is a relatively small part in the greater design of The Passion, but, to everyone's misfortune, that small part is also a significant one.
Gibson's movie isn't a great one by a long shot, but it inevitably confronts us with a thorny dilemma. Just how do we deal with art, great or otherwise, that's generated from confused, controversial or even misguided ideologies? Remember the wonderful, horrible Leni Riefenstahl, whose fiercely poetic Triumph of the Will just happened to inspire scores of ordinary Germans to join the Nazi cause? And what about D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, the seminal epic without which narrative cinema as we know it might not exist? Griffith's granddaddy-of-all-movies is as loaded with odious stereotypes of African-Americans as it is crammed with noble, soul-stirring images of Ku Klux Klansmen.
That these films qualify as art of the first order is beyond dispute, but even the aegis of art can't excuse their problematic politics. Even now, nearly a century later, they should be approached cautiously, and in context. As for Mel's Passion, I'll jump to defend the filmmaker's right to his faith and to his creative vision, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to finding much of what he's done here distasteful, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.
The Passion of the Christ would be sensitive stuff in almost any time and place, but these are particularly touchy times, with anti-Semitism on the rise again all over the globe. (The sport of kings and peasants alike, Jew-bashing might be among the very last acceptable prejudices in our PC world.) The Passion is powerful stuff and it stands to be seen by a lot of people. I trust that the vast majority of those people will be able to ignore or forgive the movie's transgressions, but, by the same token, it's all but inevitable that Gibson's film will create more than a few new anti-Semites even as it emboldens existing ones. So be it.
In any event, Pandora's box is open, the film is out there, and now all we can do is sit back and watch what happens. The controversy that Gibson appears to have intentionally encouraged is in full bloom, and it's the best marketing strategy any movie could hope for. In a gesture of exquisite hypocrisy, Mel Gibson has made sure that his self-financed labor of love and peace will get as many people as possible pissed off at each other. Now is when all that screaming really begins.
The bottom line, of course, is that we will all bring our own agendas to this movie, and I'm no exception. For me, however, the movie's biggest sin lies not in where it chooses to cast blame, but in its bungled attempt at manufacturing what I suppose you'd have to call an epiphany of excess. My real problem with this film (and I may have more people than I want praying for me for saying this) is simple: all that suffering, all that endless, bloody excess finally just becomes redundant, then numbing, and then boring.
At any rate, what else should we have expected when an action hero makes a movie about God and perfect love? Gibson claims that it wasn't him but the Holy Ghost who was really directing this movie, but you could have fooled me. The Passion is what happens when somebody raised on head-butts and explosions tries to get spiritual, and I can already hear the crowds squealing for the sequel. Call it Lethal Passion II: Jesus Strikes Back.
Lance Goldenberg can be reached at lgoldenb@tampabay.rr.com or 813-248-8888, ext. 157.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 3, 2004.