A film with no redeeming features, which claims to be an accurate, thoroughly researched portrayal of the last 12 hours of Jesus life, and is in fact a travesty of the gospels, drawing as much on later legend as on the text of the Bible. I think it is scandalous that churches and Christian organisations are actively promoting it. The violence in the film is absurd. There is a gratuitous quality to much of it, that one finds it hard to believe this is based on the very restrained accounts of the Passion in the gospels. I had to sit in the back row and keep thinking special effects . But I could not help laughing at the moment when a raven lands on the cross of the bad thief and pecks his eyes out. The film is definitely odd in its portrayal of the Devil, who is there in the background from the beginning. Other imagery - of a snake and later, weirdly, of a child - is overlaid on to this figure. Given the implicit racism of much of the film, one has to be thankful that the Devil is apparently white! There is also an extraordinary scene in which Judas is chased out of Jerusalem by a group of children, whose faces are demonised. God only knows where that came from. The film has an 18 rating in the UK on account of the violence. It is prolonged and vivid. And yet, for all this frankness the stripping of Jesus does not extend to his underwear. What we have in this film is a movie version of much European art. So of course the legends faithfully reproduced here include that of Veronica, an absurd scene in which Jesus carefully presses the cloth to his face - wiping it would spoil the image! The gospels tend towards blaming Jewish leaders and excusing the Romans, so that too is reproduced here. It is, to me, absurd that at this stage in history anyone serious about the gospels can simply reproduce that scenario uncritically. One of the worst of these texts (Matt 27.25) is omitted from the subtitles, but is, I am told, there in the Aramaic speech of the crowd. Gibson goes out of his way to emphasise the guilt of the temple clergy by having Jesus say the lines Father, forgive them for they know not what they do in response to a taunt from one of the priests, whereas the gospels have these words as Roman soldiers crucify him. And Gibsons Pilate is really quite a nice man, not at all like the merciless martial law administrator that he was. Is it especially hard for a church that looks to Rome for its origins to see Pilate for the brute he was? The brutality of the soldiers again appears as caricature, reminding me of Brueghel paintings and of the countless times when the ranks are caricatured as mindless thugs. There is, of course, a tradition of Christian devotion that has the worshipper acknowledge that I crucified thee, as one Passion hymn puts it. More fruitful still, yet perhaps inaccessible to Christians of the West, is the liberation perspective, that sees ones own suffering in the face of Christ. But there is no hint of this in the film. Many scenes are stereotypical Jesus film stock. There is a flashback to the sermon on the mount, which for me recalled The Life of Brian, but the best Brian moment was the release of Barabbas (again, dubious historically), as the latters glee is truly comic.
Passion of Christ
Have you seen Mel Gibson's controversial film? What did you think of it? Let us know your views.
Please leave your full name and address if you'd like your comments used in the Birmingham Post or Evening Mail
|
The other joke in the film is in a flashback to Jesus in his workshop turning out a three foot high table. Mary asks who its for. A rich man says, Jesus, his eye, like Gibsons firmly on the market. Must be a tall man says Mary and she doubts whether anyone will every want such a thing. Itll catch on, says Jesus. Its incredibly unfunny, and also racist. Still in Asia most people use low tables or none for eating. But here is Hollywoods Christ, Founder of Western Civilisation. The whole film is Eurocentric in tone. The people of Israel were then, as now, a very mixed bunch. The Bible clearly indicates what an extraordinary mix of ethnic groups and cultures there were in this place. Yet in the whole film, in all those crowd scenes, we see only one or two black men. Amazingly even Simon of Cyrene (on the Libyan coast of North Africa) looks white. Jesus mother, Mary, is of course beautiful and also immensely stoical. She does allow a tear or two to fall, but she does not wail or lament, despite watching everything that is done to her son. It felt like watching a stabat mater tableau than anything real. Gibson even has her mopping up the blood after the scourging. What for? My final reflections are more personal. I sat there thinking, If this is Christianity, then I am not a Christian. At one moment I remembered the year when Jewish friends invited me to observe Yom Kippur with them. It was a very beautiful day. And in the middle of those long services I sat wondering what was the difference between me, a Christian, and my Jewish neighbours. What difference did it make that I was a Christian? Do I have anything more profound to experience or say about sin and forgiveness and reconciliation than is said and manifested in this holy day? The answer is very definitely negative. When Christians see this film, we need to question very deeply what and how we worship. We cannot any longer allow the Passion to be read uncritically in our churches. Far more needs to be said about the relationship between the late first-century church and the synagogue. Far more needs to be said about the abuse of gospel texts by those who have hated, scapegoated and slaughtered Jews down the centuries. But also, we Christians need to ask ourselves what devotion focused on a man being tortured to death actually does to our own souls. I emerged from the cinema feeling sick and angry. And sorry, very sorry, for the evil that has been done in the name of Christ and for the churches role in perpetuating versions of the Jesus story that divide us from a people who are our closest neighbours. | 
