Posted on 01/29/2003 6:35:45 PM PST by TD911
Sunday, Jan. 19, 2003
The Passion of Mel Gibson
His Jesus film is bloody, bold — and in Aramaic. Here's an exclusive look
You may expect a certain tense solemnity when an Academy Award — winning director is shooting a film on the life and death of Jesus Christ. On the sound stage of The Passion in Rome's Cinecitta studio, the famed auteur prepares a scene for Maia Morgenstern, the Romanian actress playing the Virgin Mary. She is to enter the abandoned temple where her son has just been removed in chains on his way to Calvary. The director needs an enshrouding silence, so he shouts down some workmen's chatter. Then he coaxes the actress into a long, slow walk that hits the perfect notes of apprehension and anguish.
But since this director is Mel Gibson (who got his Oscar for Braveheart), the tone isn't always pious. Gibson loves to goof. Playing practical jokes is a way of keeping the crew loose, asserting the primal jester inside the armor of a star's machismo. So to wrap up the temple take, he has a quiet word with Morgenstern and steps back to leave the actress alone — staring dolefully into the camera with a bright-red clown nose he has stuck on her face. Cut. Print. Amen.
Don't look for levity in The Passion, an account of the day Jesus was crucified starring James Caviezel (The Count of Monte Cristo) as Christ and Italian sex diva Monica Bellucci (soon to be seen in Matrix 2 and 3) as Mary Magdalene. Gibson is life-after-deathly serious about the project, which his production company is financing on an estimated budget of $25 million. (He doesn't yet have a distributor.) "This has been germinating inside me for 10 years," he says. "I have a deep need to tell this story. It's part of your upbringing, but it can seem so distant. The Gospels tell you what basically happened; I want to know what really went down."
In the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon series, in Ransom and in Signs, Gibson was the loner battling impossible odds. He seems to feel that way about The Passion, which should be ready for Easter 2004. A conservative in reflexively liberal Hollywood, and a devout Catholic in an industry whose products often mock religion, Gibson senses opposition to his film. The star, who had kept the set closed to the press before allowing TIME to visit this month, was angry that friends and relatives, including his 85-year-old father, had been pestered by an unidentified reporter preparing a story on The Passion. He suspects this is part of a media attack on a Christian testament.
"When you do touch this subject, it does have a lot of enemies," he told Fox News channel host Bill O'Reilly last week. Asked whether The Passion will upset Jews, Gibson replied, "It may. It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth." Gibson's company recently signed a lucrative deal with Fox TV's film-studio sibling and has optioned O'Reilly's novel Those Who Trespass. So his TV anger may simply be the latest form of media synergy. Besides, Hollywood likes Gibson; moguls wish him well. "If anyone can pull it off, it's Mel Gibson," says Richard Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, for which Gibson made the megahit Signs. "The project is fraught with all sorts of issues, but I would never bet against him."
The Passion will be told — boldly, perhaps perversely — in two dead tongues: Latin, used by the Roman occupiers of Palestine, and Aramaic, the language of most Semites at the time of Christ. If it's hard for the actors to speak their lines, it will be a challenge for the audience too: Gibson wants to show the film without subtitles. "The audience will have to focus on the visuals," he says. "But they had silent films before talkies arrived, and people went to see them."
Jesus has been the subject of a hundred or so films, from Edison's The Passion Play at Oberammergau in 1898 to a quartet of Stan Brakhage experimental shorts in 2001. The story has been filmed by Cecil B. DeMille, Nicholas Ray, George Stevens. The Messiah has been portrayed with stolid reverence (in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth) and Surrealist blasphemy (Luis Bunuel's L'Age d'Or). Often he sings: in Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, in a born-again Bollywood musical and in the Canadian kung-fu horror comedy Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.
Gibson has few kind words for previous Passion films. Mention Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (which, like Gibson's location shots, was filmed in the Italian town of Matera), and he fakes a big yawn. On Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ: "You've got Harvey Keitel as Judas saying"--and here Gibson shifts into a Brooklyn accent--"'Hey, you ovah dere.'"
Gibson's film will be Scorsesean in one aspect: its meticulous attention to violence. "It's gonna be hard to take," he says. "When the Romans scourged you, it wasn't a nice thing. Think about the Crucifixion — there's no way to sugarcoat that." Not if you're playing Jesus. Caviezel, a practicing Catholic who met and was blessed by Pope John Paul II, logged 15 shooting days on the Calvary cross — which may have been easier than wearing shackles and getting beaten and whipped. During one trouncing, he separated his left shoulder. "There's an immense amount of suffering on this," the actor says. "Fortunately, God is helping me."
Gibson is a more truculent Catholic. He scorns the Second Vatican Council, which in the 1960s replaced the Latin Mass with the liturgy in the language of the people and lots of perky folk songs. To Gibson, Vatican II "corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." He might also have noted that Catholicism flourished in those countries where it became a church of liberation — where priests welded traditional doctrine to radical social reform.
It's dodgy to argue theology with an actor-director who seemingly sees a fusion of the movie characters he has played and Christ: feisty, persecuted, able to take whatever punishment the bad guys can dish out. Gibson is determined to walk his own lonely path. But it hardly seems unreasonable that there can be a contemporary film about a Christian hero when there are so many about, say, serial killers. So Gibson pursues his passion to make The Passion.
Got a problem with that? Take it up with your new spiritual counselor: Mad Max.
With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles
 |
|
|
Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. |
Privacy Policy |
He might also have noted that Catholicism flourished in those countries where it became a church of liberation — where priests welded traditional doctrine to radical social reform.
The author had to get that last lick in. So Christianity won't flurish unless it is attached to some sort of radical agenda.
There was no opposition to English language translations in the 1500s.
There was an opposition to antiCatholic English translations.
The first Catholic translations of the Bible into English started in the 8th century.
The first critical translation of the Bible into English was done by Catholics. It is the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible and it was first published in 1582 - long before the the King James Version.
In point of fact, the Douay-Rheims was an important source for the KJV and the KJV Gospels are almost word-for-word reproductions of the Douay text printed a generation before.
The Protestant government of England seized and burned copies of the Douay when it was first published, and it also seized and burned editions of the Geneva Bible - the one most popular among the Calvinists.
So there was great support among Catholics, Anglicans and Calvinists for English-language Bibles - and great opposition by each group to the translations of the others.
This is what the Catholic church clung to until the 60's. Many do not understand that there is nothing holy about a language. There was pressure on the Vatican because Catholics thought it would be more desirable to say the Mass in their own tongue. I'm not sure what the primary issue was...whether it was the large number being converted who were from 3rd world nations or what.
Before the Douay-Rheims Bible were several other English translations including the Tyndale, Coverdale, and Wycliffe Bibles. I had forgotten about the 8th century Bible. Was that Bede?
The Wycliffe translation was an ungrammatical rendering of the Vulgate which was passed around in manuscript form. Most manuscript versions extant include obvious interpolations added by Wyclifites (sometimes paragraphs long!) to bolster their doctrines.
Tyndale did a decent rendering, with a number of textual problems, of the NT and the Pentateuch.
The Coverdale Bible was kind of a pastiche of a translation - it drew partially on Tyndale's NT and unfinished OT, partially was a loose translation of Luther's German Bible, and was filled in in places with a clumsy rendering of the Vulgate.
The most important English Bibles before the Douay-Rheims and the KJV were the official Bishop's Bible, also called the Great Bible (which was a revision of Coverdale's project) and the Geneva Bible, also called the Breeches Bible (for its odd turns of phrase) which was a revision of the Coverdale OT pastiche according to the Rabbinic Bible and a revision of the Tyndale NT according to Beza's Greek text.
The Douay-Rheims was the first Bible, and the KJV the second, to be prepared by a group of scholars skilled in the original languages who critically examined their sources. The KJV, as I mentioned earlier, made extensive use of the work of the Douay scholars' efforts.
I had forgotten about the 8th century Bible. Was that Bede?
Bede translated part of the Gospels. Only a fragment of his translation of John is extant.
Aelfric was also a Gospel translator, and Alfred the Great also translated Scripture notably the the Psalms. There were also the anonymous translators of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the West Saxon Gospels and the Paris Psalter (which followed the Gallican Psalter of the Old Latin Bible)- all in the period from 800-1000.
A further comment: when a language ceases to be used for profane purposes and becomes dedicated solely to divine worship and theology - the language has become sacred. It is not sacred in itself - it is sacred in its use.
This is the issue that was discussed earlier; that of opposition from the established Church against the Bible being translated into the vernacular. These men considered it important that the people themselves be able to read the scriptures for themselves rather than be blocked from Biblical understanding because the scriptures were only available in an archaic language.
Later, when it was seen as inevitable that the scriptures would be translated, more scholarly work translations were translated.
This is the issue that was discussed earlier; that of opposition from the established Church against the Bible being translated into the vernacular. These men considered it important that the people themselves be able to read the scriptures for themselves rather than be blocked from Biblical understanding because the scriptures were only available in an archaic language.
Later, when it was seen as inevitable that the scriptures would be translated, more scholarly work translations were translated.
This is the part that ticks me off. I would be really excited about the film but he wants us to not understand the dialogue.
I really, really, really hope he comes to his senses about this. It's completely wrongheaded. I don't even know where to begin. What the heck would be the harm in putting subtitles?
Um, so what you're saying is that Mel Gibson is depriving us of half the acting.
Yes, that's indeed why I'm complaining.
Seriously: what is wrong with putting subtitles, and why are some people knee-jerkingly defending this stupid idea of Gibson's to forbid subtitles? Why is the audience supposed to be in the dark about what the characters are saying? Something about this really bothers me, and I don't really think it's defensible.
Why not film the whole passion story with no lighting whatsoever for crying out loud. Tell the audience "use your imagination and remember your Bible" and then place a black screen in front of them for two hours. That makes only slightly less sense.
Is the object here to confuse people and to hide aspects of the story from them?
Again, you are ignoring historical reality.
Two important facts to remember:
(1) 95% of the population was illiterate and could read neither English nor Latin. Books of any kind, let alone books as large and complex as the Bible, were prohibitively expensive and difficult to come by. Why?
(2) Printing had only been around for a few decades. The cost of a complete Bible in any language prior to 1500 was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20 workingmen's annual wages.
Even in the 1550s, a century after the invention of printing had significantly cut the cost of books, Bibles were so expensive that the English Crown could not afford to provide every government preacher with a Bible - so a Bible was chained to the altar of a select number of churches for the use of itinerant, government-licensed preachers.
It wasn't until the 1600s that printing had sufficiently achieved the economies of scale necessary to make books available to wealthiest 20% of society.
The vernacular translations of Tyndale and Coverdale did not "put the Bible in the hands of the common man" as is commonly claimed. It put the Bible in the hands of the less-well-educated portion of the educated 5% - and it was done for a very specific reason.
After the King had tortured, persecuted and driven abroad two-thirds of the English clergy, his new church had to make do with the dregs and washouts of the educated class - the kind who barely remembered their schooling and required vernacular Bibles to be able to perform their clerical duties.
In point of fact, the Catholic Church never opposed the translation of the Bible into the vernacular.
In Europe, from the fourth century until the sixteenth century, to be literate meant to read Latin. The concept of vernacular Bibles as one's primary Scriptural text was strange - vernacular versions were considered to be analogous to Cliff Notes for people who hadn't fully mastered their Latin, or as aids to preaching to enable pastors to more swiftly translate passages verbally for the illiterate common throng.
You are taking the modern-day milieu of cheaply available books and 99% literacy for granted - we are not living the norm of human history: we are incredibly lucky to live in an age where one can both buy an accurately translated Bible for $4 and read it.
The Russian Orthodox Church uses Old Church Slavonic as its liturgical language, a language as different from modern Russian as Latin is from Latin American Spanish.
The Greek Orthodox Church uses the liturgy of St. James - using a Greek which is alien and almost incomprehensible to any Greek person who has not grown up in the Church.
The Hebrew used in synagogues from Christ's day to our own was a different language from the common tongue of Jews. As we know, Christ spoke Aramaic and most European Jews spoke Yiddish or Ladino. Hebrew was only recently revived as a spoken, rather than a liturgical, language. Most Orthodox Jews consider Hebrew to be holy in itself - that it is a language directly given by God to man, the language that God speaks and that the letters of the Hebrew alefbet itself were the tools that God used to create the universe.
And for a good three or four centuries many English and German Protestants used the KJV or Lutherbibel exclusively in their worship services - and there was quite a fight in many congregations about scrapping a dialect that no living person had spoken for three hundred years.
Nope, I know that illiteracy was widespread in the Middle Ages. However, education had been increasing dramatically since Renaissance times and it was inevitable that the masses were going to become literate.
Wycliffe, Tyndale and others yearned to have the Bible available in the vernacular. Here is a famous quote from Tyndale while addressing a priest: "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth a plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou doest." He must have seen the inevitablility of the masses learning to read as he knew of Gutenberg's invention. And what better book to teach men and women to read from than the Bible itself? In fact, the Bible was used as a textbook, more than any other book. Tyndale was hounded by the Church for his translation work and later burned.
In addition, with the translation of the scriptures, preachers could read directly from a vernacular source which would also reach the masses (Wycliffe's Lollards were tireless in this type of preaching.) Even if one was illiterate, hearing the Word of God in one's own language must have been tremendously inspiring.
By the way, I recently learned that John Wycliffe was most likely the first person to translate the entire Bible anywhere in Europe in 1,000 years. Pretty amazing accomplishment. The Pope ordered his bones exhumed and burned for this and other "offences".
I'm glad I don't have to worship in a different language in Church. Apparently, the majority of Catholics felt the same which seemingly is why Vatican II decided to do away with the requirement. This was my original point.
Forgive me if I don't check back to see if you've responded to my post. Things are picking up here and I will be extremely busy for the next while. All the best.
Indeed. As you may recall, Gutenberg - a staunch Catholic - made the Paris Bible the very first printed book.
And what better book to teach men and women to read from than the Bible itself? In fact, the Bible was used as a textbook, more than any other book.
Monastery schools had been using the clear and simple language of the Vulgate Gospel of John as a Latin primer for centuries before Tyndale.
Tyndale was hounded by the Church for his translation work and later burned.
He was, in point of fact, forbidden from returning to England by Henry VIII even after Henry had broken his allegiance with the Holy See. Henry had agents on the Continent seeking to seize Tyndale and bring him back to Protestant England for trial and execution. Tyndale was eventually executed by the government of Emperor Charles V for being in league with the Protestant rebels who were threatening his hold over his lands in the Low Countries. His translation work had little to do with the Emperor's complaint - in fact it is entirely possible that the prosecuting attorney had no knowledge of it.
(Wycliffe's Lollards were tireless in this type of preaching.) Even if one was illiterate, hearing the Word of God in one's own language must have been tremendously inspiring.
Whether it was inspiring or not, the Lollard texts in many respects bore only a passing resemblance to the actual text of the Bible.
By the way, I recently learned that John Wycliffe was most likely the first person to translate the entire Bible anywhere in Europe in 1,000 years.
Then you have been misinformed. The "Wycliffe Bible" was more the work of Nicholas Herford than Wycliffe himself, and textual analysis suggests than more than ten different Lollards were involved in the translation. The only parts of the Wycliffe Bible which demonstrate tolerable fidelity to the source text were Herford's.
The Pope ordered his bones exhumed and burned for this and other "offences".
Incorrect. The Council of Constance ordered his bones exhumed because the Council correctly concluded that a non-Catholic should not be buried in a Catholic cemetery.
I quote from the Acts of the Council:
"[This Council] decrees and orders that his body and bones are to be exhumed, if they can be identified among the corpses of the faithful, and to be sent far from a burial place of the church, in accordance with canonical and lawful sanctions."
No burning of his remains is mentioned, which makes sense, since the Church forbid cremation at that time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.