Opens Wed Feb 25.
Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, "Take heart daughter; your faith has made you well."--Matthew 9:22
One wonders if Mel Gibson's faith has made him well. His new film, The Passion of the Christ, does not suggest as much: It is the type of religious spectacle that is usually accompanied by a fever, and I wouldn't be surprised if his overwhelming need to make the film was born from some sort of ailment, either spiritual or mental. Now that the film is being released, however, crashing ashore on a predictable wave of controversy, perhaps the healing touch of the Holy Spirit will finally ease his burdened shoulders. Perhaps now Gibson can get back to more important matters. Perhaps he can finally get to work on Mad Max 4.
It's not that the matters of Jesus are not important matters; they are indeed important to many, many people--I just don't happen to be one of them, despite (or possibly because of) years spent in Catholic halls of learning. As I walked into the screening of The Passion of the Christ it occurred to me that whatever I felt about the finished film, I would never approach the spiritual involvement that so many people of faith surely will. I will never fully appreciate Mel Gibson's fever.
So what then does The Passion of the Christ offer us questioners? In a word: brutality. In two words: unrelenting brutality--so much so that the picture at times feels like little more than a Catholic snuff film. So much of The Passion of the Christ is spent with Jesus under fists and whips and tangles of thorns that, by the time hammer and nails are finally brought out by the Romans, a sense of relief washes over the audience. "It is accomplished," Jesus famously musters near the end of his agonizing stint on the cross, and those of us in the seats, having witnessed it all--from the beatings to the lacerations to the grotesque stripping of flesh from Jesus' oblique muscles--can only mutter "Thank God" in reply. There is very little enjoyment in The Passion of the Christ, only the chasing away of pleasure. It is, in other words, very Catholic.
Still, this doesn't mean the film is void of beauty; there are many powerful moments in The Passion of the Christ, and Gibson's direction, drenched with blood though it is, still achieves a level of grace that rivals anything found in his thick-headed Braveheart. Gibson has, apparently, grown as a director following his Oscar triumph, and now, surprisingly, he may have some talent after all--a turn of events that will be cause for celebration if the coming breakdown hinted at during his chat with Diane Sawyer fails to materialize. What will the next Mel Gibson film be like? The outlook is cloudy at the moment, for so much of him appears to have been poured into The Passion of the Christ, both in bringing it to life and in the barrage of criticism that has already greeted him, that it remains to be seen whether he will be able to fully pull himself back out. Say what you want about the film and its intentions (and there are indeed a great many things to say about both), but one can't deny that Gibson is fully committed to the picture. Whether or not he should now be committed outright remains to be seen.
This wouldn't be the first time a director has teetered on the edge of madness following a foray into the New Testament. Martin Scorsese ran into both spiritual and critical conflict while filming his Catholic opus, The Last Temptation of Christ. But while Scorsese's picture offered Willem Dafoe as a conflicted Messiah taunted by Satan with the vision of a final escape, Gibson's film can only give us Jim Caviezel, whose vacant eyes not only fail to offer conflict, but conviction as well. Where is the fire in this Jesus? Where is the passion that made him such a threat? Caviezel, whose detachment worked so well in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, flounders as the Son of God in The Passion of the Christ, and as a result his executioners--the Romans in action, the members of the Jewish council in desire--approach a level of evil that feels greatly overheated. Under Gibson's direction, there is not a whiff of threat in Caviezel's Jesus, and once all the blood has dried, the major villains are little more than mindless monsters, with the Jews, in the end, receiving the brunt of the blame.
Because of this, Jesus himself loses most of his humanity as well, and causes The Passion of the Christ to lose its effectiveness for anyone beyond rigid believers. The man in Jesus has always been one of his most important traits, allowing an earthly connection between believers and their God, especially when compared to the distance, anger, and, quite often, lunacy of the Old Testament God. But Gibson's film weakens that connection to the point of disaster, and whatever dispatch he hopes to deliver gets lost in the slaughter. Gibson is quoted in the film's press notes saying, "My ultimate hope is that this story's message of tremendous courage and sacrifice might inspire tolerance, love and forgiveness." Sadly, his version of the Passion buries Jesus' courage and sacrifice in a flood of violence. There is no message for viewers to embrace, only the blood of Christ--beaten, whipped, and hammered out of him for two hours.
