The Passion of Christ
by The Rev. Cn. Mark Stanger
Last week, I attended a special pre-screening of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, set for commercial release on February 25th.
Charges of anti-Jewish content, gratuitous gore (giving it an R rating), and general fuzziness of concept have not been good omens for Mr. Gibson's self-financed, idiosyncratic portrayal of the final hours of Jesus of Nazareth.
I would not recommend the film to a devout Christian, skeptical Jew, or avid Hollywood buff. My fairly traditional Catholic 76-year-old mother, who accompanied me, found it "plodding" and the protracted violence of the torturing of the captured Jesus turned her stomach; she lasted till the end in order to see Gibson onstage, interviewed by the local pastor. (Telling about it at bridge later that week would be quite a trump card, worth any temporary discomfort.)
As a life-long Christian and lover of Jesus and the implications of his life and death for humanity, I found the film dull, trashy, and historically and biblically unsound. It's potentially as harmful to Christians as it may be for Jews.
The determined effort to give a patina of historical authenticity (which could be challenged on many essential points) is expressed most obviously by the use of Aramaic and Latin. Mr. Gibson, in the interview, said it was to add an air of "mysterious reality". Maybe so, but putting another language into a film doesn't necessarily add to its historical accuracy or truthful storytelling.
More disturbing was his second reason for the language barrier. He compared it to a film depicting ferocious Vikings descending with all their barbarous intent and weaponry on a peaceful village. "To have them step off the ship, ready to attack, but speaking English, would diminish the sense of such a frightening confrontation. The same goes for those who put Jesus to death." Apart from the logical inconsistency (the speech of Jesus and his followers was also subtitled, after all), the idea that more brutal terror would be evoked by non-English speakers strikes me as chillingly xenophobic.
The film's anti-Jewish bias magnifies what the Christian scriptures do indeed contain: a growing discomfort between this wild new group of Jews for Jesus and faithful mainline Jewish groups of that time and place. But having the temple high priest Caiaphas as the prominent cheerleader demanding crucifixion unduly villainizes him and the faith tradition he represents. The focus on Pilate's hand-washing (only in Matthew's account) reinforces the perception that the "blame" is laid squarely on the Jews. This is, of course, preposterous and offensive to Jew and Christian alike: Christian theology -- and even a bit of this fragmented film -- affirms that the death of Jesus was freely accepted and necessary. Complicity in his death is shared by the Roman occupying power (the charge and the sentence were theirs), religious traditionalists (who happened to be Jewish), an out of control mob, and, most significantly, by the weak and spineless disciples of Jesus.
Mr. Gibson's larger bias, regrettably shared by thousands, is that the Gospels have been diluted of their power by "revisionists" -- his disdainful word for the past two generations of faith-filled, critical scholars of the texts, including the startlingly enlightened and coherent official principles for biblical interpretation promulgated by the assembled bishops of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican council of the 1960's. Gibson further dismissed the idea that the gospel writers had "agendas", a concept that puts him firmly outside official Catholic teaching and all of mainstream Christian biblical interpretation. That wholesome tradition recognizes the very definite theological, pastoral, and spiritual agendas of the written gospels, not as eyewitness accounts, but as theological works (faith-filled screenplays, if you will) to answer questions and express divine truths in a particular time and place. The late Fr. Raymond Brown, in his masterful two-volume The Death of the Messiah or his profound little booklet A Crucified Christ in Holy Week, far outshines this $30 million piece of bizarre and lurid propaganda.
The violence-induced "R" rating is compared by the film's promoters to the same rating given to "such fine films as Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan." The biblical accounts are supremely less wanton and morbid. The Gospel writers straightforwardly and soberly state that after arriving at Golgotha, "There they crucified him." Only Hollywood, or an overactive and distorted religious imagination, would add such details, literally ad nauseam.
When the pastor-interviewer tried to commit him to doing more biblical films, Gibson squirmed and wisely said, "there are a lot of good stories out there." Indeed, the greatest literature and films often illuminate the mysteries of human suffering, redemption, salvation, forgiveness, brutality and betrayal, renewal and resurrection. For "religious" inspiration, it's often best to skip Hollywood altogether and find a generous group of praying believers. Or go for Hollywood's best and noblest offerings. The Passion of the Christ is not among them.
-- The Rev. Cn. Mark Stanger