My Review of The Passion of the Christ
I just saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ a few hours ago, courtesy of a friend of my little brother. He and I, along with one of our older brothers and my little brother's friend, saw it in the company of a very full theater of apparently devoted Christians. The screening was arranged by a church here in Austin and it was preceded and followed by the witness of a minister of that church. Although I am not a Christian, I (usually) find it very easy to be respectful of those who are, so I did not mind (and, indeed, I had expected) the proselytizing and prayer, which I accepted as the price of admission.

Having said all that, I will begin my review by noting how aptly named this movie is. It is almost ALL about the passion (i.e., the suffering) of Jesus of Nazareth. That is, it is an extraordinarily violent and gory work of art. Gibson fixates on the bodily destruction of Jesus to such an extreme extent that the pace of the movie suffers for it. It is altogether too much. Perhaps the repeated acts of sadism are accurate, but it is a negative quality in what should aspire to be great cinema.

Visually, in other respects, the movie is sound. The cast are convincing in their various parts and signal what they are physiognomically, which I like. The settings are what one would expect, especially Golgotha. There is the occasional use of special effects that contribute hallucinatorily to certain revelations throughout and these are especially effective. Of course, there is also Monica Bellucci, who is a divine presence wherever she is.

The score is also very nice.

But, here's the stuff that matters: no one is going to go beat up Jews over this movie. If anyone were to use this movie as a pretext for that purpose, he would deserve to be shot on sight as the unreasoning animal he is. Does Gibson try to inculpate the Jews in Jesus' death? Yes. Does he also incuplate the Romans? Usually, although he occasionally shows us Romans or Jews who have The Look in their eye, signifying a foreknowledge of Jesus' ultimate power and the realization of the mistake they are making in his brutal treatment. The characterization I found the least acceptable was that of Pontius Pilate. He is portrayed as a man of greater conscience than I would have given him credit for. I'll just say that, if he washed his hands, Mel Gibson lovingly dried them with a fresh towel.

The audience I saw The Passion with were extremely quiet, except for the occasional sobbing and sniffling. It was obvious that the great majority of them were utterly stunned at the unrelenting brutality. I know I was.

This is a movie that will hit you hard in the gut, Christian or not. But, if you are a Christian, as I once was, there will be many moments in it that will resonate with you most especially and take you back to times and places where you knew those words and symbols and episodes ---and you will not be unmoved. They are so ubiquitous and influential in Western Civilization that you must, if you have true charity of understanding, be deeply impressed with what Christianity has wrought.

Finally, let's be clear about this movie as a religio-political matter. It is a work of art for Christians first and foremost. If it were not, the decision to make it in two dead languages would have been far more difficult (because the story, as it is, doesn't even need the subtitles, it is so well known). I can't see that it has any value outside of that sphere (I except myself for reasons I have already suggested). It is not, contrary to the wishes of those like the kindly minister who introduced and closed the film for us tonight, a tool to proselytize by. It's just not. And why is that? Because, again, Gibson's greatest error in this movie is the obsessive and intolerable degree of bodily violence done to Jesus of Nazareth. If he had, as my little brother told me afterwards, done more to focus on the teachings of Jesus, it would have been a far more appealing movie. You cannot tell me that that is wrong. It cannot be more important to focus on the degradation of the earthly Jesus than the exaltation of the spiritual one. Perhaps ironically, this reminds me of the obsessive attention paid by some to the Holocaust at the expense of glorifying the joyful and valuable contributions that Jews have made to the world. I remember both; don't doubt it. But, just as I prefer to celebrate the triumphs and vitality of the Jews, I would also dispense with the extremeness and single-mindedness of Gibson's message in The Passion and take from the Christ's message what I am able and to practice it.