Mel Gibson's act of religious devotion is The Passion of the Christ. So
passionately did Mel believe that this film be made that he footed the 30 million
to make it so. But the media hype about the controversy the film will arouse,
coupled with the opportunistic opening date of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of
the season of lent, suggests that Mel will more than get his money back.
Pre-sales toped $10 million.
Christians flock to see the movie as part of their Lenten devotion.
Mel's passion is for realism. Hence, the film is spoken entirely in Aramaic and
Latin, those assumed spoken at the time. Every wound Christ suffered is shown
with devastating realism, inflicted by sadistic Roman torturers.
Mel wants us to understand the physicality of the crucifixion of Christ. There's
a line in the gospel of Matthew when the crowd scream: "His blood be upon us and
on our children." Mel takes it seriously. I felt that the blood was completely
on me.
Yet Jim Caviezel, as Jesus, looks remarkably Caucasian and his teeth shine with
whiteness suitable for a colgate ad. We know from Zecariah, the Psalms, and the
gospel of John that not a bone in his body was broken. I'm not sure he could take
the beatings as portrayed in this movie without a bone breaking.
And Mel adds his own artistic moments. A spooky androgynous demon at times
holding an evil looking child follows Jesus during his darkest moments. And a
crow pecks at the eye of the unrepentant the thief crucified with Jesus.
The Passion is not entertainment. It's not pleasant to watch. And after a while
I think that all the violence starts to be more about violence than anything
else. You might subtitle the movie Jesus does Braveheart.
Certainly the movie makes you re-think the magnificent art works of the crucified
Christ. Michelangelo's Pieta, for example, or any number of the cool white
marble corpuses so ubiquitous in our religious art. Mel's Christ is covered with
blood and wounds after his 10 minute scourging and random other acts of violence
by the sadistic Roman soldiers.
I understand that Mel's motivation to make The Passion came from his religious
convictions. I think the movie encourages discussion about the passion of Christ
and what it says to us in our own struggle for meaning in our lives. I do not
think children should go to this movie. It takes a brave heart to watch the
Passion. A woman in Wichita had a heart attack and died during one screening.
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