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UNWISE
BLOOD
Mel
Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ
When The
Passion of the Christ was shown at the Vatican,
the Pope was reported as having commented “It is as it was.” Within
a couple of days, the quote – which had already become the most famous
film ‘review’ in history – was abruptly denied. What his Holiness probably
meant to say was “It is what it is.” Because, although the
Passion phenomenon has divided most viewers and critics into polarised
camps of ‘believers’ and ‘heathens,’ a middle-of-the-road, objective,
agnostic view is perhaps the most sensible reaction to what has become
a tiresomely overheated debate.
Gibson’s Passion
is a take-it-or-leave-it movie that does pretty much what it says
on the tin: using the cinematic language of the 20th century
blockbuster, it retells the last twelve hours in the earthly life of Jesus
Christ (Jim Caviezel, saintly fool Pvt Witt from The Thin Red Line).
That’s the 20th century, not the 21st
– this is essentially an old-school bible-movie that adheres fairly closely
to the genre’s previous examples. Its two major divergences are (1) an
unstinting approach to Christ’s physical suffering – which means lashings
of gore when he’s scourged and crucified – and (2) the use of ancient
languages (mainly Aramaic and Latin) instead of English.
These two
elements were reckoned to spell doom at the box-office, and the project
languished in distribution limbo for several months before being picked
up by Newmarket Pictures. Their gamble paid off more lucratively than
anyone could have predicted: at the time of writing (Easter week, 2004)
The Passion of the Christ has taken more than $300m in North America,
where it’s predicted to end up with a total very close to the $380m for
The Return of the King.
All this on a budget, stumped up by Gibson himself, of a relatively paltry
$25m (most of the filming took place in Italy,
with the crew paid ‘Italian scale’ rates.)
These startling
figures say much more about the current state of the USA
– the most religiose of countries, if not the most religious – than about
The Passion of the Christ. Likewise the film itself much more about
the man who made it than about its ostensible subject. The film is a self-portrait
in blood, a guided tour around the inside Gibson’s head: not an especially
pleasant place to visit, and God only knows what it must be like to live
there permanently.
This ‘inadvertent
self-portrait’ phenomenon isn’t new in cinema, of course: as David Thomson
persuasively argues in his book Rosebud, Citizen
Kane is really much more about Orson Welles than it is about William
Randolph Hearst. And this isn’t the only connection between the two films:
both were made by men with outsize egos and generous budgets, operating
beyond the control of Hollywood studios. Welles’ carte-blanche was
the result of his awe-inspiring boy-genius reputation. Gibson’s freedom
was of a rather different origin: if he wanted to sink his money into
a hairbrained project based on his own religious beliefs, the consensus
went, let him do so – look what happened to Travolta and Battlefield
Earth.
Travolta didn’t
actually direct or write Battlefield Earth, of course. But Gibson
performed both duties on The Passion – he shares the screenplay
credit with Benedict Fitzgerald. Another Kane parallel: the thorny
question of authorship. The controversy over the input of Welles’ co-scriptwriter
Herman J Mankiewicz has raged for decades – Pauline Kael once wrote a
whole book on the subject. The role of Fitzgerald has, however, so far
been overlooked by critics writing on The Passion.
This is an
unfortunate omission – because Fitzgerald has only one other feature-film
credit to his name: John Huston’s acclaimed 1979 filming of Flannery O’Connor’s
novel Wise Blood. Which ends, in the words of Time Out’s
Chris Auty, with its protagonist Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) being driven
“into a real-life imitation of the martyrdom of Christ.” In the book,
Motes obeys his instinct: his ‘wise blood’ that tells him what to do.
Until he achieves, against all odds, a state of grace – which is only
conveyed in the final words of the final paragraph of the novel’s 226
pages. Likewise, in The Passion a mere thirty-odd seconds are devoted
to the Resurrection (this sequence seems to beg out to be followed by
a title-card reading ‘To Be Continued’) after two hours during which Christ
is, in effect, brutally tortured to death.
The scourging
and crucifixion have, unsurprisingly, proved too much for many people
– Christ’s flagellation seems interminably protracted, with the Roman
superintendent unwilling or unable to call “satis” (‘enough’). Though
the resulting gore-fest is not, it seems, too much for America’s
Christian self-proclaimed ‘Moral Majority,’ who’ve been remarkably accepting
of the explicit bloodshed. They’d have surely been noisily outraged if
the individual suffering so spectacularly on screen had borne any other
name than Jesus: ‘Brian’, for example. Then again, perhaps this time they
have a point: if nothing else, Gibson reminds us about aspects of Christ’s
death which are too often airbrushed out of artistic renderings: the extremities
of pain and indignity he suffered in his final hours.
Gibson and
Fitzgerald would point out (and have point out) that their script draws
heavily on the Gospels – some prior knowledge of Christ’s story is essential
(newcomers would be mistaken for thinking that John [Hristo Jivkov] is
Jesus’s brother.) But they add a few grand guignol touches of their
very own: the eye-pecking raven which messily punishes another of the
Golgotha crucified for laughing at Jesus’s plight; the demon/zombie children
which provide a couple of cheap shocks and harrass Judas (Luca Lionello)
towards suicide; a demonic/wizened baby-thing cradled by a hermaphroditic,
ghostly figure we take to be Satan (Rosalinda Celentano); a briefly-glimpsed
creepy-crawly inside Satan’s nostril which looks like a luminescent living
snot.
Each of these
additions pushes The Passion of the Christ closer and closer to
the territory of the horror film – but this doesn’t seem to be something
that Gibson has thought through especially carefully. Like almost all
of his directorial contributions, the horror effects are crudely applied
– barely a scene goes by without Gibson indulging his fondness for slow-motion,
invariably accompanied by the standard-issue inspirational muzak of John
Debney’s score.
Gibson clearly
believes passionately in what he’s doing, but while his faith is evident
in every frame (unless one reckons he doth protest too much?), the matter
of his talent behind the camera is much more open to question. Subtletly
and ambiguity are very thin on the ground indeed – Celentano’s chilly
calm; Hristo Naumov Shopov’s conflicted, exasperated, compellingly charismatic
Pilate; a brief, vertiginous God’s-eye shot (by cinematographer Caleb
Deschanel) of the Crucifixion.
In almost
every other aspect, Gibson’s film is naive, blunt, monotonous – the tone
is set before it even begins, when a scary lightning-bolt loudly splits
the screen to introduce the logo of Gibson’s production-company Icon.
The spoken Aramaic and Latin has been questioned by many linguists, ridiculed
by some. The presentation of Jewish high-priest Caiphas (Mattia Sbragia)
has been called anti-Semitic, though Gibson’s denials convincingly suggest
an absence of mens rea on this hyper-controversial point.
The well-chronicled
issue of the shameful ‘blood libel’ line (removed from the English subtitles,
but present on the soundtrack) doesn’t reflect well on anyone concerned,
however. And the Roman soldiers fare arguably even less well – rolling-eyed
(just like “notorious murderer” Barabbas [Pedro Sarubbi] and possessed
by a seemingly-insatiable blood-lust they may be, but is this any justification
for failing to provide translation for most of their dialogue during the
scourging?
And all of
those who’ve knocked the film certainly have plenty of justification –
among them Paul Schrader who, as a writer-director raised in an extremely
strict religious household, is perhaps uniquely well-placed to comment:
I thought it was medieval. My guess is that Mel has a problem with
the Enlightenment, because his film really does go back to the visceral
cult origins of Christianity, and the fervour it has created is more akin
to a gospel tent than a motion picture. I’m just troubled by it. It’s
a kind of primitive religion I don’t want to return to. I reminds me
more of Shiites than Episcopalians.
[The Guardian, 23rd March 2004]
He’s spot
on. But whatever brickbats he and others hurl at Gibson, he has at least
three get-outs, or rather ‘defences.’ First: the extremity of Christ’s
suffering demands no less than an extreme representation. Second: Gibson’s
version of the Passion is as subjective and as valid as anyone else’s
– including those by the authors of the Gospels, from which he copiously
draws. And the third defence is the most appropriate of all, given the
fact that Mr Gibson’s name is indeed ‘Mel’ and not ‘Melvin’ – he was named
after an Irish saint about whom very little is known. Apart from this
tidbit:
According to an ancient tradition, Mel professed Saint Brigid as a
nun. During the rite, he inadvertently read over her the episcopal consecration,
and that Saint Macaille protested. The ever serene Mel, however, was convinced
that it happened according to the will of God and insisted that the
consecration should stand.
Enough said.
Or rather, satis.
3rd
April 2004
by Neil
Young
Buy The Passion
of the Christ on DVD
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