Review: The Passion of the Christ (2004)

It is difficult to write about The Passion of the Christ (2004), a film which has evoked so much controversy. Reviews have been, and still are, mixed, often coloured by ideological sympathies. My review too is slanted according to my convictions.

The film focuses on the last twelve hours Christ lived, from His Betrayal to His Crucifixion, as interpreted by Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson is a director tormented by alcohol abuse and marital issues, which weighs heavily on his stance as a traditionalist Roman Catholic. Combined with his other eccentric behaviours and allegations of racism, Gibson has become an outcast in the world of mainstream filmmaking.

As a director, Gibson has shown little concern for historical accuracy and authentic portrayal of other cultures. Braveheart turned the story of William Wallace into a farce, and scrubbed away all the nuances of the Scottish struggles to create a simple-minded action flick. Gibson kept the adrenaline pumping in Apocalypto (2006), but missed an opportunity to give the viewer a true glimpse of the pre-Columbian cultures, and instead only succeeded in ending his career as a director for a decade.

The Passion of the Christ was strongly criticized for its extreme violence, and for alleged racism, both in the negative portrayals of the Jewish priestly elite and the casting choices. A “Catholic-Jewish scholarly group convened by the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Department of Inter-religious Affairs of the Anti-Defamation League” condemned a leaked script of the film:

When we did begin a group discussion of the script, we quickly concluded that it was one of the most troublesome texts relative to anti-Semitic potential that any of us had seen in 25 years. It must be emphasized that the main storyline presented Jesus as having been relentlessly pursued by an evil cabal of Jews headed by the high priest Caiphas who finally blackmailed a weak-kneed Pilate into putting Jesus to death. This is precisely the storyline that fueled centuries of anti-Semitism within Christian societies. This is also a storyline rejected by the Catholic Church at Vatican II in its document Nostra Ætate and by nearly all mainline Protestant churches in parallel documents. […] Unless this basic storyline has been altered by Mr. Gibson, a fringe Catholic who is building his own church in the Los Angeles area and who apparently accepts neither the teachings of Vatican II nor modern biblical scholarship, The Passion of the Christ retains a real potential for undermining the repudiation of classical Christian anti-Semitism by the churches in the last 40 years.

The mentioned document, Nostra Ætate, does indeed condemn the story of Jewish Deicide — as it commonly called — in favour of reconciliation. Yet, repudiating this Deicide narrative risks going against some of the core patristic and liturgical heritage of Roman Catholicism — for better or for worse. Saint John Chrysostom, one of the most important Early Church Fathers, pioneered the term Deicide and strongly advanced the narrative. He still remains a Saint and Doctor of the Church, and the Liturgical rite named after him — which also furthers the Deicide narrative in its Holy Week prayers — remains the most celebrated Divine Liturgy of the Byzantine tradition.

Now, this Deicide narrative, the excessive violence, the western actors portraying those who are Good and the foreign actors portraying those who are Evil, it all does clearly point to what the movie manages to accomplish. There was no honest attempt to recreate the Jerusalem of the first century. Instead of Greek, which was the lingua franca of that part of the Roman Empire, the movie opts for the Italianate tones of Ecclesiastical Latin. Gibson acknowledges his debt to Anne Catherine Emmerich, a stigmatist who wrote down her ecstatic visions of the life of Christ. The Passion of the Christ is not an adaptation of the Gospel, but of the post-Biblical Passion narratives. It is a Passion Play transported to cinema.

The violence of The Passion of the Christ is grounded in the detailed realism of late medieval art and the devotions that grew from it, such as the Five Holy Wounds. It is Latin Catholicism at its most carnal. Gibson shocks, he pushes further and further, hitting raw nerves. It is a bleak contemplation of the Via Dolorosa. The aforementioned use of Ecclesiastical Latin drenches the film in the Romanitas in which Gibson was raised. It is, however, not the sum of Christianity. Easter is absent, safe for a vague hint of resurrection. It is Good Friday, and Sunday is still two days away.

As an adaptation of Passion Plays, The Passion of the Christ succeeds. And that is why it remains a part of my personal film collection, while Braveheart and Apocalypto are excluded with disgust.