February 24, 2004

Where does one start with The Passion of The Christ?

I think I will begin with some excessive disclosure. This is pretty unusual and really none of your business. I believe in my professional objectivity, but you may not, so here goes.

I am a Jew. I grew up in a conservative Jewish family, but was taught at an orthodox day school. Having lived through it, I am no longer a fan of orthodoxy in any religion, though I respect those who choose to embrace any lifestyle with the intention of living as a better person.

Okay…

The most unexpected thing about The Passion is that rather than being a powerful piece of art demonstrating unrelenting faith, I found it to be evidence of an absolute crisis of faith. It is a document of rage and I do not consider rage to be an outcome of real faith.

The story of Jesus Christ's death is enormously powerful, whether you take it as gospel truth, exaggerated memory or outright fiction. So why didn't Mr. Gibson just tell the story… with all the production details… with Caleb Deschanel's spectacular (and slightly hyperreal) photography… with realistic carnage… with the Jewish priests calling for Jesus' crucifixion… with Judas… with Mary… etc, etc, etc.? Why couldn't he leave "bad enough" alone?

Because he doesn't, apparently, believe deeply enough to trust the audience. Or perhaps he trusts their faith just as much as he does his own.

I was reminded of a high school romance in which the word "love" is invoked early and often, leading to the young couple constantly challenging one another to prove their love. Even in adult relationships, real love is not always enough to overcome our insecurities. But if you are an adult and you need your beloved to prove their love all the time, you are either in an immature or a bad place in that relationship.

Honestly, Gibson left me disconnected from his film in the first half hour and I never returned to a place where I could shed a tear, no matter what extreme he went to. In the audience I saw the film with, there was no sobbing, though there may have been a moist eye now and again. Gibson's decision to have Jesus beaten in almost every scene he was in, sometimes to an extreme and often in an almost casual way, signaled to me loud and clear that the call for Jesus' death because he insisted he was the one true son of God, the horrible whipping, the painful walk to the place of his crucifixion and his death on the cross was not enough, in Gibson's mind, to make his case.

Perhaps the worst case of Gibson Gone Wild was in the first major public torture scene. First, there are the canes that cut Jesus' skin with each stroke, over and over, finally bringing him to his knees. (And here is one occasion where you can see the massive difference between reading a screenplay and watching a movie.) Jesus gets back on his feet, which seems to signal the Romans to return to beating him. This is a classic movie thing. The hero seems to be broken, but then shows he is still defiant and the abuse starts again. Though Gibson uses that gambit, it turns out to be a false note, as Jesus is later subjected to abuse no matter what his condition. But we get that heroic beat.

Then, the Romans select their next weapons to beat Jesus with. The maces are rejected, since they have been ordered not to kill Jesus. So they pick cat o' nine tales. But they aren't just any cat o' nine tails. In a moment right out of every magic show you have ever seen in your life, one of the whipping guards gives a full-out whip of his weapon to the desk of the officer overseeing the beating. We see that each "tail" has a sharp metal piece at the end, and one of them digs into the officer's desk, ripping out a significant chunk of wood. This is the classic magician's gambit to let you know that the weapon is real.

So the beating just continues with these horrible whips, right? Of course not. After a half dozen impossibly ugly and painful lashings (every one of which strips skin off of Christ and leaves blood-moist pulpy flesh), we get the one that we have been waiting for… the one where the end of one "tail" tears into Christ and yanks a piece of flesh out that seems to be the size of a thumb.

And so goes The Passion of The Christ.

I am not shy about movie violence. And, almost embarrassingly, I have to admit that Gibson's excesses left me feeling very little after a very short period of time. But it wasn't just the gore. It was the lack of real conviction. It is almost always a sign that a discussion is lost when one of the parties has to resort to yelling… and it is usually the person who is screaming who has lost. Gibson screams at the top of his lungs through 80% of this movie.

Then there is the matter of anti-semitism. Neither Marvin Heir nor the thugs of the ADL are in the business of deconstructing movies. So I will choose to believe them when they say that they don't think The Passion of The Christ is an anti-semitic film. However, on empirical data, I beg to differ.

It isn't the screenplay and it isn't in the magical lines from the Gospels that everyone seems to want to slobber over. Honestly, the line about the spilt blood of Christ being on the heads of Jews and their children, delivered by a Jew, would be a relief in this film. The historical context of violence caused by that line is one thing, but the line at least has some sense of guilt involved… which is more than Gibson allows any Jews in the film, with the exception of Jesus' family, disciples and two others, which I will get to shortly.

Gibson's anti-semetic turn is one of omission, not commission. And it will be too subtle for most people to really articulate, though I suspect that they may feel it.

At almost every turn in this film, Romans are given an out from any culpability in the death of Christ. Not just Pilate, who is played as a cuckold who is afraid for his own life, or his wife, who is unrelentingly against Jesus' death and is portrayed as a believer in The Christ. I'm talking about the Romans who are beating Christ, who are dragging Christ through the streets of Jerusalem, and who ultimately crucify him. Not every one of them gets redeemed. There are the thugs, who seem to have an unquenchable bloodlust and then there are those who are mean, but seem to be doing their jobs. The former types just fade into the background (after reveling in being sprayed with blood as though they were in a chop-socky movie). The latter types are almost always given at least one close-up where they seem sad for what they are doing and, in a few cases, take action to help Jesus, such as offering him water on a sponge when he says he is thirsty.

It's not that I take offense at Gibson being too easy on the Romans. It's that there is not a single example of a "regular" Jew taking pity on Christ. There could be an argument made that there were some sympathetic Jews in the crowds in various scenes, but none of them got a close-up, much less a line of dialogue or an action that showed sympathy, so if they are there, they might as well not exist.

There are two exceptions - one at the very start of the film and one at the very end. In the first scene of the Jewish priests "convicting" Christ in their own court, one of the priests says that the whole thing was a disgusting sham. He was shouted down, physically pushed out of the space and never turned up again. Later, in the third act, a tall, strong man is taken from the crowd to help Jesus carry the cross, which he can no longer carry himself. The man, noted as a Jew, at first refuses. But he is forced into service and eventually comes to feel Christ's pain. The convert is - no surprise here - the only darked-skin Jew (probably self-described as "black") with any dialogue in the entire movie. Was it a coincidence that with hundreds of light-skinned Jewish extras screaming for Christ's death throughout the movie, the one convert was black? Maybe there is some historical fact. But in my ignorance, I see a remarkable coincidence.

(Late Note: A reader tells me that the black man is Simon of Cyrene and that he is commonly claimed to have been black, making the choice a historic one. The fact that he is the only still strikes me as odd.)

Then there is Jesus' line from John 15:18, 20, said directly into camera to the audience: "If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you too." What is this meant to mean?

One thing is clear in this film. Jesus is being persecuted by the Jews. The Romans had their hands forced. Why does Jesus speak that line directly to the audience? It seems obvious to me, but you should come to your own conclusions.

Later in the movie, Mary also has a "look directly into camera" moment as she sits with her dead son in her lap after the crucifixion kills him. That moment is, actually, the only moment in the movie where I feel that the film is saying to everyone, "Do not let him have died in vain." It is an appeal to all mankind, not just a religious group. And it is, probably, the one truly great moment in the film.

Beyond anti-semitism, the failure of Gibson's work here is a failure of any context. It's all well and good to say, "I'm just doing these 12 hours and that's it!" But he cheats on that premise… a lot. We are given some idea of why the Jewish priests first want to have Christ killed, but very little real detail. These bad guys are caricatures, embracing their goals with no doubt and no debate. On the flip side, Pilate explains his "situation" repeatedly and even lingers on the situation with his wife. Why Judas gave Christ up is a non-issue in this film… though we get a lot of his post-betrayal agony.

Part of this problem stems from the movie being told from the point-of-view of a believer. It is virtually a sequel. Gibson seems to be counting on your coming into the theater with the knowledge of the story and characters. So he is free to offer short cuts. But, as I keep repeating, the short cuts are selective.

Do the pieces of the movie work? Absolutely. Jim Caviezel is remarkable in a terribly demanding role. Maia Morgenstern's face offers every emotion thinkable. (Though it is probably blasphemous to say, Mary's constant appearance with Monica Bellucci's Mary Magdalene, who has very much the same features as Mary, save for being slightly taller, younger and, in turn, sexier, offers up some off oedipal thoughts during the film.) And the Italian cast acquit themselves gracefully. The production design is realistic enough, if a little uninspired. And, as I wrote before, Caleb Deschanel's work, even though sometimes quite stylized, is best of show.

And if you took scenes on their face value, most all of them would work. Gibson is a skilled director and I would put him in the very top group of action directors in the business. He has all the skills (and subtlety) of Michael Bay on amphetamines. If I were Joel Silver or Jerry Bruckheimer or Peter Guber, I'd be bugging this guy to direct one of their big movies even if he isn't going to be in it. He really knows what he is doing.

But I'm afraid that The Passion of The Christ tries far too hard to really be considered a success as a movie. As a way for Christians to find a new commitment to their faith… absolutely. As a recruiting tool… sure. As the source of a lot of dining room table debate… damned skippy. But does the film, in the end, hold up as anything more than a beautifully made curiosity? No.

Having seen the film, anyone who walks out of it looking to hurt Jews or anyone else on the streets of America or any other nation must already be a racist pig and a moron. This film is not built to incite violence, even if I do consider it actively anti-semitic.

I wish I had gotten more out of it. The best scenes were those in which Jesus spoke of loving one another and turning the other cheek. Even as a Jew, I have read the gospels in detail, actually building a short screenplay from them at one point. And I have always said, that everything Jesus said in the gospels is worth reading and repeating. I didn't need The Passion of The Christ to convince me that Jesus, though I don't believe in him as my savior, is worthy of my attention.

Unfortunately, I feel like I have as much additional insight into Christ after seeing this film as I did about heroin abuse after seeing Pulp Fiction or into police work after seeing Lethal Weapon. And that ain't much.

E ME: Feel free to offer your opinion…