Thank you for that relevant/required quote. [The lies of omission by the media, et al have become rampant]
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Posted on 03/09/2004 4:37:39 PM PST by presidio9
The film by Mel Gibson is moving because of its central contention, namely that an innocent man of high moral purpose was tortured and killed. It happens that the man in question, Jesus of Nazareth, is an object of worship, and that harm done unto him, in the perspective of those (myself included) who regard him as divine, is especially keen because it is not only inhuman, it is blasphemous.
But suppose that a similar travail had been filmed centered upon not a Nazarene carpenter who taught the duty of love for others, but, say, an attempted regicide. In 1757, Robert-Francois Damiens set out to assassinate Louis XV. The failed assassin was apprehended, and the king quickly restored from his minor wound. The court resolved to make an enduring public record of what awaits attempted regicides, to which end were gathered together in Paris the half-dozen most renowned torturers of Europe, who in the presence of many spectators, including Casanova, managed to keep Damiens alive for six hours of pain so artfully inflicted, before he was finally drawn and quartered. What kind of an audience could Mel Gibson get for a depiction of the last hours of Robert-Francois Damiens?
The film depends, then, on the objectification of the victim as Jesus of Nazareth; but even then, the story it tells is a gross elaboration of what the Bible yields.
Consider Matthew: "And when (Pilate) had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. ... Then they spat on him and took the reed and struck him on the head." Luke: "I will therefore chastise him and release him" -- Luke records that the soldiers "mocked" him. And John: "So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. ... "And they (the soldiers) struck him with their hands."
What Gibson gives us in his "The Passion of the Christ" is the most prolonged human torture ever seen on the screen. It is without reason, and by no means necessarily derivative from the grand hypothesis that, after all, the crucifixion was without reason, as Pontius Pilate kept on observing. One sees for dozens of minutes soldiers apparently determined to flog to death the man the irresolute procurator had consented merely to "chastise." There are records of British mariners who were literally flogged to death, receiving 400 strokes of the cat-o'-nine-tails delivered on separate vessels, lest any sailor in the fleet be deprived of the informative exercise.
It isn't only the interminable scourging, which is done with endless inventories of instruments. The Bible has Christ suffering the weight of the cross as he climbs to Golgotha, but that is not enough for Gibson. He has stray soldiers impeding Christ every step of the way, bringing down their clubs and whips and scourges in something that cannot be understood as less than sadistic frenzy.
I write as author of a book ("Nearer, My God") in which I included a vision of the Crucifixion by an Italian mystic, Maria Valtorta. A learned priest cautioned against taking this liberty. "Valtorta seems to have solved the Synoptic problem that's been plaguing scholars for centuries, viz., the contradictions between Matthew, Mark and Luke. She has St. Dismas, the good thief, blessing Christ; Matthew (27:44) has him reviling him (Luke and Mark do not); she has Our Lord drinking gall mixed with vinegar (Mark 15:36 has him drinking just vinegar). I was amused to see Joseph of Arimathea boldly traversing the line of 50 soldiers and the angry Jews in order to get near the cross, since in Mark (15:43) we're told he 'took courage' to go to Pilate to retrieve the body."
This kind of improvisation is headlong in Gibson's "Passion." Still, the film cannot help moving the viewer, shaking the viewer, even as he'd be moved and shaken by seeing a re-creation of the end of Robert-Francois Damiens or one of those British sailors flogged to death. The suffering of Jesus isn't intensified by inflicting the one-thousandth blow: That is the Gibson/"Braveheart" contribution to an agony that was overwhelmingly spiritual in character and perfectly and definitively caught by Johann Sebastian Bach in his aptly named "Passion of Christ According to St. Matthew." There beauty and genius sublimate a passion that Gibson celebrates by raw bloodshed. The only serious question left in the viewer's mind is: Should God have exempted this gang from his comprehensive mercy? But that is because we are human, Christ otherwise.
Thank you for that relevant/required quote. [The lies of omission by the media, et al have become rampant]
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For the same reason, Buckley alludes to the brutality of pre-19th century punishment when he refers to sailors being lashed “around the fleet” and often beaten to death in the process. If you think this was done without bloodshed you are sadly mistaken.
What Buckley seems to object to is transforming the traditional version of the crucifixion. Before seeing The Passion, the crucifixion of Christ, to me, was almost abstract. A trial, Jesus being hit with a few willow wands, a thorn crown placed on his head, being made to carry his cross and then the crucifixion. All done is pastel colors, virtually without passion, certainly without unbearable pain (OK, maybe the nails on the cross hurt) and then on to the tomb and the resurrection. Rather antiseptic and certainly lacking in any grand passion.
The movie gave me a new perspective. As a student of history, I know of the inherent cruelty of ancient cultures. “Scourging” certainly meant more than the whipping schoolchildren once received from their teachers for misbehaving. While the gospels do not give us the details of the tortures that Jesus suffered before his crucifixion, the version the Gibson gives us is not inconsistent with the practices of the time or with the versions presented in the gospels. That is why I have to smile at those who condemn Gibson for historical inaccuracy. Unless one of the critics can produce a living eyewitness who will withstand cross-examination, I’m afraid that I side with Gibson.
In that case, why not wait until you have before forming any starting point?
Ever ready with the Ad Hominem.....
Can you honestly say, that The Patriot, a movie about battles that were faught, with Guns, Cannon and Sword, up close, or Braveheart, depicting an age where men faught Battles with Axes and Swords, in close quarters were unrealistically bloody?
Is it not just as, nay, more fair to say that he produces accurate movies of Violent and Bloody times?
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