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Gibson’s
Passion: A Study in Excess*
You
cannot summarily say that Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion of The Christ, is
great, nor horrendous; it is just not that simple. But you can say it’s too
much. It adheres so closely to the Biblical Gospels that it is hard to take, but
maybe it has to be that way.
The
Christian story of Jesus is one of the oldest, most retold narratives ever.
Kooky spoofs, black comedy and the like have skewered Jesus’ life, as well as
other Biblical stories, for so long that that is how this film gets you—by
doing the opposite. For if anything, Gibson’s epic, The Passion of the Christ,
is a straightforward approach to the Gospels.
However,
let us address the Islamic factor first. This is a movie centered entirely on a
major Prophet, portrayed, of course, by an actor. For that reason alone (forget
the huge amounts of gore) Muslims may want to avoid The Passion of the Christ. The
Qur'an refutes the Crucifixion story. The Qur’an says that Jesus was not
killed nor crucified; only the likeness of that was shown to the people and
Jesus was saved and raised up unto Allah—(4:157-158.)
Muslims
may want to avoid it, but the rest of the world seems to be flocking to this
movie. Though the controversy of Jewish responsibility for the Crucifixion of
Jesus fueled the pre-movie hype, it is Gibson’s unflinching interpretation of
Jesus’ Passion that will keep the crowds coming. Un- is the prefix of choice
here—uninhibited, unabashed, unfettered, unwavering, and undaunted. ‘This is
how it was’, Gibson says with the film. You can love and appreciate what Jesus
did for us, or you can get lost in the semantics, and oh how shocking those
semantics are.
The
Passion of the Christ tells the story of the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life,
starting with him praying in the
Garden
of
Olives
after the Last Supper. He knows his demise is forthcoming, and he fights for
the strength to accept God’s decision for him; the strength to do what he must
to save his people. Hauntingly portrayed by the low-key James Caveziel, this is
a very human Jesus trying to regain his divine being.
He
is then betrayed by his disciple Judas to the Sanhedrin, the Rabbinical Senate,
who wants to condemn Jesus for proclaiming that he is the Messiah. The Rabbis
are out for Jesus’ blood, and any of their own that voice objection is thrown
out of the senate. Jesus is brought before Pilate (portrayed in the film as the
Roman Governor of
Judea
) to be judged. Wanting to avoid a decision, Pilate defers judgment to King
Herod, who calls Jesus ‘crazy’ and sends him back to Pilate.
The
crowd of mainly Jews, with some Romans, is out to crucify Jesus. There are some
Jewish supporters of the Prophet, of course, but they are too few. Pilate offers
the bloodthirsty crowd the chance to judge Jesus, and they choose to condemn
him. Jesus is viciously scourged and brought back to the crowd. In a mad frenzy
of hate and fear, they then demand his crucifixion.
After
that, the movie goes to the final scenes of crucifixion: bloody nails hammered
into the Jesus’s hands and feet with loud, painful bangs of the hammer. His
resurrection is but the flash of an epilogue—it is the torture he endured that
drives the film. It beats into every pore of the viewer, daring one to look
away.
Truly,
more contentious than the film’s depiction of who’s responsible for lynching
of Jesus (the Rabbis ask for it, the Romans make it happen), is the graphic
amount of blood and gore thrust on the screen. You can say this film is
anti-ancient-Jewish-Senate. It is the Rabbinical Senate that screams for
Jesus’ blood. They are afraid of Jesus, of his message, of his true Messianic
status.
This
is a story believed by most major religions. There is nothing that Gibson made
up here; it is all in the Gospels. However, the film is certainly not
anti-Semitic, a charge hurled by many Jewish leaders before the movie’s
release. The film shows many of Jesus’ Jewish companions and followers
grieving for him and begging for mercy.
The
real shock value is in the Jesus’s torture, the pure, visceral, gory,
bloodletting. At times, the movie screen itself seems to be spattered in blood.
Half an hour into the two-hour film, the sadistic scourging of Jesus begins. The
Roman guards take pleasure in giving pain, and cover his body with more than 80
flesh-cutting lashes from various torturous devices. One device digs into the
Jesus’s back and is yanked out with all the gruesome sound effects.
There
is little respite and the camera catches it all; if you do not see the mangled
body of Jesus, you see his blood sprayed over the faces of his torturers. When
the scourging is done, he is dragged off, crowned with a circlet of thorns, and
forced to march up the
Calvary
, carrying a crushingly huge cross, to his crucifixion. The final crucifixion
scene is of course especially bloody and excruciating.
You
want controversy? Why must there be so much attention to the torture? Gibson
said in a Reader’s Digest interview that it still is not as much as what he
read in the Gospels, “According to the Psalmists, you couldn’t even
recognize him as being a human. That’s how bad it was.”
He
added that he wanted the horror to “impress on the viewers the enormousness of
the sacrifice and the willingness. I wanted to overwhelm people with it.”
Nevertheless,
there are moments where you can catch your breath—brief, intermittent
flashbacks to Jesus advising his disciples at the Last Supper, to his memories
of being with his mother, to his Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, these scenes,
especially those of his mother Mary (played beautifully by Maia Morgenstern)
lend love to the film.
Morgenstern
is just spectacular, perhaps the true gem of The Passion. Her pain and faith
epitomize the extent of human dignity, in the same way that Jesus’ endurance
and forgiveness illuminates the Christ. For her, Jesus is not only the Messiah,
but also her son. And her acceptance of his larger-than-life stature is pure
beauty.
This
movie is not one for the weak, not one for those simply looking to be
entertained. It is a painful, searing experience, only for the devoted. See it
only if you must. It is Gibson’s exploration of self, of what Jesus means to
him. Gibson isn’t looking to win audience approval, but rather audience
awareness. The film is Gibson incarnate. With this film, he has reached the
level of directors whose soul and body become their film, and for that, The
Passion is something to be seen.
*
The Passion of the Christ is playing in theaters across the
U.S.
The film, though told from the Biblical Gospels, takes some historical
liberties and may not be entirely accurate.
Dilshad D. Ali's writing
reaches across the United States
to address lifestyle topics pertinent for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ali
has covered movie premieres, film festivals, art exhibits, concerts and numerous
other cultural stories, including 9/11’s affect on
New York
’s cultural landscape for Islam Online. Ali, a 1997 University of Maryland
journalism graduate, resides in
New York
with her husband and two children.
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