MEL GIBSON'S The Passion of the Christ is a brutal movie. It is also brilliant, a box-office blockbuster and the center of as much controversy as any broadly attended film in recent history. That makes it hard to step back and simply view it as a film. As one 25-year-old viewer said: "It wasn't made to be an entertainment, and it isn't."
The plot, on one level, is known to every Christian who ever paid attention during Holy Week and Easter. If our passion is that for which we will give everything, then Jesus' passion is us, and the brutal disaster that ensues is about the everything that he will give for us.
Only rarely have modern Western Christians paid much attention to what that actually might have entailed, which is at least part of why Gibson's film is so shocking.
There is much that works in this film. Using the original Aramaic and Latin languages is brilliant. Halfway through, you may find yourself unconsciously understanding what is being spoken.
Images from Christian tradition, such as Veronica and her veil (the eventual shroud of Turin?) quietly appear along the way. And the flashbacks to other periods of the Jesus story present an attractive, intelligent, whole person, every bit the Lord one would love to follow. But then there is the violence.
The violence is horrific. Sadistic. Revolting. And it is most of the film. There were moments during which I covered my eyes, moments during which -- knowing there was still more to come -- I found myself saying: "Enough. Let's get this over with."
One prays that Gibson's portrayal is in fact over-the-top, rather than what really happened. For it is so difficult to watch. (Although, one could argue that it is only a balance to all the "sanitized and civilized" versions we previously allowed ourselves.)
How it begins
The film opens with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, an anguished man truly torn by what he is about to face. "I don't want the others to see him like this," says Peter.
The film's core affirmation is that the Christ knows what awaits him; he is fully aware of the magnitude of the sacrifice, if not in every detail, and is committed to saving our souls through the intentional sacrifice of his innocent self on behalf of our sinful ones.
Despite all the bludgeoning violence, this is a theologically nuanced film that lays out its central theme literally from beginning to end, framing the entire film between two contrasting images of Satan.
In the opening sequence, a seductive, taunting Satan asks Jesus: "Do you really believe that one man can bear the burden of sin? No one man can carry this burden, I tell you. Saving their souls is too costly. No one. Ever ... Never."
The rest of the film is, in a sense, Jesus' overcoming Satan's lie and bearing the burden, leading to the final framing image. For when the Christ finally dies and "it is accomplished," the film cuts to Satan vanquished, screaming in rage and despair, in a pit.
The message is reinforced, in case we've missed it, during the way of the cross when, brutally beaten and barely able to crawl, never mind carry his cross, Christ falls one last time. A bystander, Simon of Cyrene, is pulled from the crowd into unwilling service.
"I am an innocent man forced to carry the cross of a condemned man," he bellows in outrage. Ah, but that's true about Jesus, too, is the unspoken, but underscored, point.
One could even argue that the film makes its point by the very aggressiveness of the violence, for the cost is too much for us -- the viewer -- to bear. We recoil. "Right," the filmmaker might respond. "We're not up to it. Only Jesus could, and did, bear it on our behalf."
Reasons for controversy
The obvious question is why our culture has had so much trouble with this film -- even before it came out. Four possibilities come to mind.
The first is that a secular culture, clearly comfortable with films or books that debunk, demystify or criticize orthodox religion, simply does not like blatantly sympathetic versions.
Second is the liberal/conservative theological divide. For the most part, conservative, traditionalist Christians support this film, liberal Christians do not. Therein lies a few hundred years of church history.
Third is a historically justifiable anti-Semitism concern. Israel at this moment is not particularly popular in the rest of the world. Will such a harsh look once again become the vehicle for "kill the Jews?" Gibson has gone out of his way to say that the biblical message, and he, are not
Anti-Semitic, but that everyone is to blame. Jesus in the film clearly articulates in several places, "No one takes my life from me. I lay it down myself." But to fearful minds, that may not be enough.
One comes back in the end to the violence, and our fears and revulsions about it. Make no mistake; this is a brutal, over-the-top version. And one viewing is enough. But then again, this has always been a scandalous story.
