I DETEST THIS FILM ..WITH A PASSION [Christopher Hitchens on the Passion of the Christ]

The Mirror ^ | February 27, 2004 | Christopher Hitchens

[ejdrapes]

I DETEST THIS FILM ..WITH A PASSION

A FEW years ago, Mel Gibson got himself into an argument after uttering a series of crude remarks that were hostile to homosexuals.

Now he has made a film that principally appeals to the gay Christian sado-masochistic community: a niche market that hasn't been sufficiently exploited.

If you like seeing handsome young men stripped and tied up and flayed with whips, The Passion Of The Christ is the movie for you.

Some people used to go to Ben-Hur deliberately late, and just watch the chariot race while skipping the boring quasi-Biblical stuff. Alas, that isn't possible with this film.

Along with the protracted torture comes a simple-minded but nonetheless bigoted version of the more questionable bits of the Gospels. It's boring all right - much of the film is excruciatingly tedious - but it also manages to be extraordinarily nasty.

Gibson claims that the Holy Ghost spoke through him in the directing of this movie, and that everything in it is from the Bible. I very much doubt the first claim, and I can safely say that the second one is false.

The Bible does not have an encounter between Jesus and a sort of Satanic succubus figure in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Bible does not have a raven pecking out the eye of one of the crucified thieves. The Bible does not have Judas pursued to his suicide by a horde of supernatural and sinister devil-children.

Moreover, whatever the Bible may say, the Roman authorities in Jerusalem were not minor officials in a Jewish empire, compelled to obey the orders of a gang of bloodthirsty rabbis.

It was Rome that was boss. Indeed, Pontius Pilate was later recalled by the Emperor Tiberius for the extreme brutality with which he treated the Jewish inhabitants (and you had to be quite cruel to get Tiberius to raise his eyebrows).

YET Gibson is evidently obsessed with the Jewish question, and it shows in his film.

It also shows when he's off-screen. Invited by Peggy Noonan - a sympathetic conservative interviewer - in Reader's Digest to say what he thought of the Holocaust, Gibson replied with extreme cold-ness that a lot of people were killed in the Second World War and no doubt some of them were Jews. Shit happens, in other words. He doesn't seem to grasp the point that the war was started by a political party which believed in a Jewish world conspiracy.

He doesn't go as far as his father, who says that the Holocaust story is "mostly fiction" and that there were more Jews at the end of the war than there were at the beginning, but he does say that his old man has "never told me a lie".

And he does say that he bases his film on the visions of the Crucifixion experienced by a 19th-century German nun, Anne-Catherine Emmerich, who believed that the Jews used the blood of Christian children in their Passover rituals. (In case you have forgotten, the setting of the film is the Jewish Passover.)

Yesterday, as the movie opened, a Pentecostal church in Denver, Colorado, put up a big sign on its marquee saying: "Jews Killed The Lord Jesus." Nice going.

In order to keep up this relentless propaganda pressure, Gibson employs the cheap technique of the horror movie director.

Just as you think things can't get any worse, he shoves in a gruesome surprise.

The flogging scene stops, and you think: "Well, that's over." And then the sadistic guards pick up a new kind of flagellating instrument, and start again.

The nails go through the limbs, one by one, and then, for an extra touch, the cross is raised, turned over and dropped face-down with its victim attached, so that the nails can be flattened down on the other side.

The vulg-arity and sensationalism of this would be bad enough if there wasn't a continual accompaniment of jeering, taunting Jews who want more of the same.

The same cynical tactic has been applied to the marketing of the movie.

Gibson is well known to be a member of a Catholic extremist group that rejects the Pope's teachings and denounces the Second Vatican Council (which, among other things, dropped the charge that all Jews were Christ-killers).

He went to some trouble to spread alarm in the Jewish community, which rightly suspected that the film might revive the old religious paranoia.

HE showed the film at the Vatican, and then claimed that the Pope had endorsed it - a claim that the Vatican has flatly denied, but then every little helps.

Then he ran a series of screenings for right-wing fundamentalists only, and refused to show any tapes to anyone who wasn't a religious nut. (It took me ages to get around the ban and get hold of a pirated copy, and I was writing for the Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair.)

Having secured a huge amount of free publicity in this way, and some very lucrative advance block bookings from Christian fundamentalist groups, Gibson now talks self-pityingly about how he has risked his fortune and his career, but doesn't care if he "never works again" because he's done it all for Jesus.

The clear message I get from that is that he'll be boycotted by sinister Hollywood Jews. So it's a win-win for him: big box office or celebrity martyrdom. With any luck, a bit of both. How perfectly nauseating.

In a widely publicised concession, Gibson said that he'd removed the scene where the Jewish mob cries out that it wants the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children's children.

This very questionable episode - it is mentioned in only one of the four gospels - has in fact not been cut. Only the English subtitle has gone. (The film is spoken in Aramaic and Latin, though Roman soldiers actually spoke a dialect of Greek.)

So when the film is later shown, in Russia and Poland, say, or Egypt and Syria, there will be a ready-made propaganda vehicle for those who fancy a bit of torture and murder, with a heavy dose of Jew-baiting thrown in.

Gibson knows very well that this will happen, and he'll be raking it in from exactly those foreign rights to the film.

So my advice is this. Do not go.

Leave it to the sickoes who like this sort of thing, and don't fill the pockets of the sicko who made it.

[unspun]

Chris....

           

[cajun-jack]

I wonder if Mr. hitchens is familiar with the phrase: "wailing and gnashing of teeth"?? he will probably be doing quite a bit of both in his "post taking up space on this planet life".

[drlevy88]

Now he has made a film that principally appeals to the gay Christian sado-masochistic community: a niche market that hasn't been sufficiently exploited.

he talks like a twit. anyone know, does hitchens actually get, ahem, jollies about such things.

[af_vet_1981]

Having secured a huge amount of free publicity in this way, and some very lucrative advance block bookings from Christian fundamentalist groups,

This is the first review I've read that is really a personal attack on Mel Gibson. I think it should not have been written. I wonder about his sources and I don't really know, but I thought it was Evangelicals who were supporting the film. I had not heard of a single Christian Fundamentalist group that was supporting it. Are there any ? Does Mr. Hitchens know the difference ?

[Salvation]

Wounds of Christ -- 5,480 [The Fifteen Prayers of St. Bridget of Sweden]

[Salvation]

The Passion of the Christ & Anne Catherine Emmerich, Mary of Agreda

[AppyPappy]

I thought you were a little more informed than you are letting on. You have never read Josephus or investigated the Dead Sea Scrolls? There is a big world outside of CNN.

Sorry Schoolmarm. There's chores to do here on the farm.

[granolaconservative]

I'd like to respond to two of the criticisms of the film: (1) that it is overly and unrealistically violent, and (2) that it is intended to stir up guilt.

1. First, let's discuss the violence. Yes, it is violent, but the violence is of an entirely different kind than the violence in practically any movie we have ever seen. Yes, it is painful to watch in parts, but Gibson shows the audience the right response, that of Mary. For all but a few minutes, she watches, even as tears stream down her face. She identifies herself with her son. She never doubts that he is in control of the situation. During the scourging she asks herself when he will choose to be delivered. The depth of the love that causes God to humiliate himself in this way is unfathomable to her, as it is to us. But Mary does not turn away. At the scourging, having been beaten with rods, Jesus looks at Mary, and she at him. Continuing to look at her, he raises himself up, to the incredulity of the Roman soldiers, and they proceed to beat him metal-thonged whips until he is practically dead. Gibson does not show all the blows. Instead the camera turns away to show Mary, or to flashbacks.

There are a few places, perhaps, where Gibson may have exaggerated. For example, immediately after Jesus's arrest the high priest's soldiers, after beating Jesus, push him over a bridge. He tumbles nearly to the ground before his chains stop the fall. Of course that scene is not in the gospels.

However, the scourging certainly is in the gospels and was, we know from secular history, a common Roman penalty and an important part of a crucifixion. Moreover, we also know from secular history that the Romans used whips with metal thongs that flayed the flesh, and we know that in some cases soldiers delivered one hundred blows. As for the crucifixion, who can say that Gibson has exaggerated its torment? The act of crucifixion is shameful and sadistic--unworthy of the humanity of its perpetrators.

Moreover, to those who think Gibson went overboard in what he shows, we would point out what he does not show. He does not show--can't show it--the moral suffering that Jesus underwent. He cannot show the weight of all of the sins of humanity. One well-known writer on the Passion, Dr. Pierre Barbet, believes that Jesus died of asphyxiation on the cross. Jesus' last hours were spent in a desperate struggle to lift himself up--thus putting pressure on his hands and feet, through which the nails were driven--so that he could breathe. Gibson does not show this torture. For more on what Jesus likely suffered, from a medical point of view, see Barbet's book, A Doctor at Calvary.

2. Last, let's discuss the idea of guilt. Is Gibson's point--is the gospels' point--to make the audience/reader feel guilty? No! To think that Jesus underwent the crucifixion to make people feel guilty reveals a lack of understanding of Jesus' message. Jesus came, he said, not to condemn, but to save. Does Jesus cry out against his tormentors? He does not accuse, he does not judge, he does not condemn. On the contrary, as the nails are being driven into him, and from the cross, he pleads with his Father to forgive the perpetrators and even excuses them, saying they do not know what they are doing. Moreover, though according to orthodox Christian doctrine human sin is a cause of the Passion, it is also clear that the Passion was not strictly-speaking necessary. God could have chosen to redeem the world in any way he wished, or he could have chosen not to redeem it at all. One bruise on Christ, one scratch, one tear--any of these things could have redeemed the entire world, had the Father so chosen.

It is and will always remain a mystery to us why God chose to have his son undergo the Passion. So far as we can see, and as the Church teaches, he did so out of a superabundant, unfathomable, even mad love. In revealing this love, God was showing us something about himself and about us.

In words of the Second Vatican Council, Jesus fully reveals God to man, and man to himself; he does this, in large measure, by his Passion. Does knowing the truth about ourselves and about God make us feel guilty? For a moment, yes, but very quickly this guilt--which is negative--is replaced by contrition--which is positive. (Or at least it should be, if one is a follower of Christ, has been properly instructed in the faith and is open to grace and conversion of heart.) Contrition has been described as the sorrow of love. St. Paul explains the difference: "for worldly sorrow" -- guilt -- "produces death, but godly sorrow" -- contrition-- "a salutary repentance without regret." II Corinthians 7:10.

After one of Jesus' falls on the way to Calvary, Mary rushes to comfort him. "I am here" she tells him. Caked in blood, striped with scars, crowned by thorns, Jesus responds, "Mother, behold, I make all things new." The music soars, the spirit ascends. Guilt? Guilt is insignificant in the face of the Passion. It is a speck, a grain of dust. The Passion utterly transcends guilt. It is the supreme manifestation of the love of God who is love for his children, though we be sinners. All things are possible for God, even to use sin to redeem the world. The words of the liturgy of Holy Saturday speak to this: "Oh happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!"

Reflecting on the Passion moves the believer to contrition, to greater love of God and neighbor, to forgiveness of others, and to profound inner peace and joy; that is why the Church has encouraged its faithful to meditate on the Passion frequently, for example by praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary or the Stations of the Cross, and, preeminently, by attending Mass, which is a re-presentation of the Passion. Mel Gibson's movie will have a similar effect on millions of its viewers, and that fact alone makes it an outstanding film.