Passion of the Christ, The

This is a film about the final 12 hours in what is believed to be the life of Jesus Christ. Mel Gibson directs this film with extraordinary passion and wants to shove it down our throat as a medicine that he feels will make us stand up and take notice of what a great man Jesus was and how he give his life for our sins. This is generally a noble thought and coming from Mel it clearly is more than just a picture. Mel Gibson is a well known orthodox Christian who clearly believes in his faith and good for him that he does. Coming from him it also means that he has an agenda: an agenda to make us remember what we seem to have forgotten. Whether that is ‘who killed him’ or whether that is ‘how and why he died’ is a different question: the answers to which lead you to one controversy or another.

Leaving aside Mel and his belief and looking at the picture just as what it is – a picture – makes us see it in a different light. First of all, it is a well made movie. The cinematography is excellent and the music divine (sic). The language of the film is ancient Aramaic and sounds incredibly sweet with strikingly similar vocabulary to Sanskrit. The subtitles are a help – though there isn’t that much to hear. There is very little talking and a bit too much shouting, laughing and crying. The film is also exemplary in its brutality. The type that makes you cringe and close your eyes and jerk your head in disgust – through most of the film. Now this is a big problem for them film. The only major problem. The violence so completely desensitizes you that by the time Jesus is crucified you are ready to run out of the movie hall holding your stomach. You have already lost interest in what the story is and what the director is trying to tell you. You are praying for it to stop and you don’t care how.

James Caviezel plays Jesus. While there isn’t much for him to do, he is probably as good or as bad as anyone else. The only actor who seems to have understood the great moral complexity of the situation is Hristo Shopov who plays Pontius Pilate: the roman governor of Judea who doesn’t want to but ends up condemning Jesus anyway. Maia Morgenstern as Mary does a pretty good job as well. She looks the mother who would be strong enough to see here son go through hell and still believe in what he stood for. Monica Bellucci as Magdalene has a beautiful and painful face that is almost out of place in the harsh film.

The Passion of Christ would have been a better movie if Mel Gibson had concentrated less on the brutality and more on the underlying theme of hatred and human frailty and human strength.