The Passion of The Christ film

A remarkable Passion

John McDade
06 March 2004

Mel Gibson has made a stunning and justifiably violent account of a Christ who bears the weight of the world's sin. But, says our critic, his film is not anti-Semitic

Jesus (Jim Caviezel) carries his cross to Calvary

MEL GIBSON'S film, The Passion of the Christ, is a major addition to the canon of films about Jesus made by directors with powerful personal agendas. Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew, for example, is an Italian Marxist's religious vision of Christ as a disturbing whirlwind sweeping the world with his moral and spiritual clarity. But Gibson's film is best contrasted with Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

Scorsese's film gives us a psychotic Christ, lonely and internally conflicted, driven by disconnected impulses, a passive-obsessive forced to find his identity through the Cross. "I make crosses so that God will hate me," Christ says as a working carpenter. What is wrong with Scorsese's film is not its suggestion of a sexual dimension in Christ's personality. (Here the critics of the film got it wrong: a proper doctrine of Incarnation means that Christ is fully sexed.) The real problem is its portrayal of Christ as the prototypical man - the masculine is important here - whose strength of will in overcoming temptation signals the achievement of human existence at its pitch, the exemplification of the Nietzschean Übermensch. The male will is defined by its distance from all that impairs its loneliness. For Scorsese and his fictional source in Kazantzakis's novel, Christ (a male archetype on the "mean streets" of Jerusalem) overcomes the psychological hell of self-alienation by detaching himself from everything that infringes on his autonomy, finally knowing and healing himself through the Cross.

Gibson's film, too, is concerned with the way in which the human flesh of Christ bears the marks of human brutality, although from a radically different perspective. If Jesus' death in Scorsese's film is required by nothing more than the disturbance within his mind, benefiting no one but himself, Gibson, by contrast, gives us a strong interpretation of the weight of the world's sin being laid upon the body of Christ: in The Passion of the Christ, the Son of God's affliction enacts his willingness to bear the sins of the world. What is laid upon him - and in part, this is the justification for the graphic violence of the film - is nothing less than the world's evil. As one Jesuit said to me: "We don't want the Passion to be as bad as it is because it is our sin which is being borne." There is no evading the assault on the viewer's senses all the way through this film: when you see the instruments of torture ripping into his flesh you are seeing the sacrament, the outward sign, of the inner mystery of evil being pressed upon Christ that he bears for - in place of? - human beings. Gibson here is thoroughly orthodox, although some styles of Christian faith which have a weak doctrine of atonement and sin-bearing will find this theme incomprehensible.

The opening sequence in Gethsemane presents the theological themes that inform the rest of the film. The devil, an androgynous figure, appears to Jesus and tempts him; presumably the viewer is invited to see the Passion as the return of the devil predicted after the wilderness temptations (Lk 4:13) and which, in its Johannine equivalent, is presented as the hour of the world's judgement when "the ruler of this world" is cast out (Jn 12:31). The form of the devil's temptation is important: "Do you believe that one man can bear the weight of sin? No man can carry this burden. Who is your father? Who are you?"

Christ struggles with his capacity to be the sin-bearing Son. This is the point of the devil's attack. The seventeenth-century French thinker Blaise Pascal has one of the most acute phrases on this aspect of the Passion, and I suggest that Gibson's film will not be properly understood without these words: "Jesus suffers in his Passion the torments inflicted upon him by men," he writes in the Pensées, "but in his agony he suffers the torments which he inflicts on himself. He was troubled. This punishment is inflicted by no human but an almighty hand, and only He that is almighty can bear it." What we see, then, in the rest of the film, is the weight of the world's sin being placed upon Christ - by human beings certainly, but also "by an almighty hand" (the Father's) and by his own (almighty) hand. This is how one divine man bears the sin of all.

When Christ rises from his prayer in the Garden, he crushes under his heel the snake which has crept from the devil's bosom - in iconography it is Mary who crushes the head of the serpent, and this sends us back to the conflict between the serpent and Eve's offspring in Genesis 3:15. When Christ dies, there is a remarkable shot (a God's-eye perspective?) in which Golgotha, seen from above, is like a globe of the world from which the figures of Satan and his brood are summarily eliminated. The devil (and certainly not the Jewish people) is the real antagonist of Christ; one of the film's structural features is the polarity between Satan and Mary, eyeing each other on the road to Golgotha. "See, mother," Christ tells her as he falls a second time, "I make all things new" - a remarkable line from Revelation 21:5. Satan mimics Mary's motherhood by cradling a devil-child in her bosom (a child who drives Judas to kill himself for his suicide on the tree is the devil's counterpoint to Christ's tree of life), while at the end of the film, Mary holds her dead Son in her lap in a Caravaggio-style pietà, looking outwards towards the viewer - the one point in the film which explicitly engages the viewer in the drama.

In one of the most moving sequences, drawn from the writings of Sr Catherine Emmerich, an eighteenth-century German visionary, the Blessed Virgin and Mary Magdalene are given towels by Pilate's wife which they then use to soak up the blood from the scourging at the pillar. Gibson uses this action to give a flashback to Magdalene's rescue by Jesus from the Pharisees' stones: she is identified as the woman caught in adultery. The sequence of the scourging - lasting for 20 minutes or so - is dramatically the high point of the film. After the first series of beatings, Christ, already brutally scarred, raises himself up from the stones and prepares to take more: this is the Son of God carrying through his divine work. When, finally, the Cross is about to be lifted up and set in the hole prepared for it, we are shown in flashback Christ raising the bread at the Last Supper - "This is my body for the life of the world" - and then the Cross is dropped into place. The Eucharistic Body, the Sin-bearing Body and - right at the end, in a brief, silent, enigmatic sequence - the Risen Body, are the single locus of salvation. Gibson gives us profound themes from orthodox Christian faith in a popular medium; that, in itself, is remarkable.

If these ideas form the religious core of the film, there is also the question of history. In Gibson's narrative, the Crucifixion is the culmination of a series of events, initiated by Judas, one of the "judges" of the reconstituted Israel convoked by Christ, orchestrated by Judaean religious authorities and completed by a politically pragmatic Pontius Pilate to whom the authorities commit Jesus for execution. In this respect, the film presents a synthetic reading of events drawn from the four gospels.

Gibson has not given us a film that manipulates its audience, and certainly not one which provokes Christians to anti-Jewish sentiments. He does not incite the viewer to view Jews negatively, nor - although violence is pervasive - does he elicit any vicarious thrill at what takes place. Nor does he encourage hatred of any person or group in the film. This film is not in the tradition of Passion Plays. Christ's forgiveness of all, spoken from the Cross, is dramatically serious and guides the viewer about how to think and feel. Contrast this with real cinematic manipulation of hatred and violence. (Try watching Thelma and Louise, for example, and asking yourself afterwards what you have been persuaded by the director to approve.) In The Passion of the Christ, Gibson does not get inside the viewer's head to do nasty things there.

At the heart of the controversy over the film is the role of the Jerusalem religious authorities in Christ's death. The gospels do not offer a unified perspective on this: while agreeing the authorities had a role in pressing the Roman procurator for Christ's death, they give different presentations of the proceedings against Jesus. But Gibson accepts the testimony of all four gospels that the Judaean authorities were responsible for Jesus being handed over to Pilate. This has been attacked by those who, for exegetical and sometimes ideological reasons, judge that they had no role in how these events unfolded. The gospel narratives, they argue, are generated by anti-Jewish polemic rather than by historical actuality.

But the argument against the historicity of this theme is not wholly persuasive. Given Christ's public entry into Jerusalem, his ambiguous riddle about the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple and his provocative act of cleansing the Temple - all of which have high historical credentials - it is hard to think that Temple officials were uninterested in what he said and did in relation to the Temple. That a Judaean priestly aristocracy with positions of privileged power over the Temple and its treasury acted manipulatively and beyond its legal powers in relation to Jesus seems entirely plausible, and it does no good to conceal this if this is what happened. The consequences to be drawn from it are another matter: an anti-Jewish poison does not belong in the Christian consciousness. The new, spiritually fruitful relations between Jews and Christians in the present age (Nostra Aetate) are a divine gift to both traditions which will not be impaired by The Passion of the Christ. I do not think that this film will do evil; quite the reverse. Gibson's treatment is remarkable.

John McDade SJ is Principal of Heythrop College, University of London.

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Reader's Comments

Brutality and Betrayal; “The Passion of the Christ”

What’s a vicar supposed to do ? If I had been asked to review it for 352 I would probably have declined. Everything about the publicity for Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ made me feel that this was not for me, nor for anyone with any feelings for Jesus. Not even the news that churches in England were buying up block bookings and giving the tickets away for free made me want to see it or commend it to my congregation. My colleague Michel Faullimel of the Luxembourg Protestant Church wrote in Le Quotidien that he refused to see it; the blood and gore, the alleged anti-semitism and the sensationalism were some of the good reasons he cited, and I agreed with him.

But when I read a review of the film in "352" (Luxembourg's English-language weekly magazine) I felt challenged. Could any film which attempted to portray the suffering and death of Jesus deserve to be described as “ superfluous” and “totally unessential viewing” ? Surely not. So I went to the late showing on Maundy Thursday, just a short while after our church service commemorating Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples.

The acting was good and involving, even if the Jewish authorities were consistently made to look like stereotype baddies. There were some interesting features, such as a screenplay in Latin and Aramaic, which I had never heard spoken in this way before.

The big problem with the film is that it only tells us what Gibson thinks we already know. The film is pious and brutal; medieval in its imagery. Some of this might be a salutory reminder to cosy Christians of just how horrific crucifixion was. But some of it was not only un- Biblical but also highly implausible, such as the scene in which a converted Roman soldier drenches himself in the blood and water streaming from the pierced side of the dead Jesus.

Anything which might later become a holy relic is focussed on with loving attention, so we get plenty of close ups of shrouds, nails and thorns. Anything which might appeal to a generation brought up on spookiness also gets special treatment, even if it has no gospel connection. But absolutely no attention is paid to any sense of meaning in this death. We are given no idea of how it was that Jesus came to be crucified.

In the last thirty years historians, not all of them Christians by any means, have discovered a wealth of detail about the tremendous political and religious upheavals of that period, the results of which we are still living with today; but none of that is reflected in this film.

In the Bible, each of the four gospels offers a different understanding of Jesus’s life and death. Matthew’s gospel shows how Jesus’s obedience to the Jewish law causes him to reach out beyond the Jewish community to the Gentiles living around them. Mark shows Jesus healing the sick and coming into conflict with the powerful as he challenges the evil which causes so much sickness, and which they condone. One of the main themes of Luke’s gospel is Jesus preaching forgiveness to the guilt ridden, and being condemned by the religious authorities for being soft on sin. John’s gospel focusses on the relationships which Jesus had with his disciples, and the love which brings both pain and joy. The richness and subtlety of these apparently simple accounts is what makes adult Christians like me keep re-reading the Bible year after year, still finding fresh meaning in texts I thought I knew by heart. But no-one could possibly want to watch Gibson’s film again to look for deeper meaning, and if they did they would find none.

In the New Testament the same Greek word paradosis can be translated in English both as tradition or betrayal. Somehow this seems to be reflected in the film. Judas had a smaller budget, and the consequences of his actions were more direct; but it seems to me that in trying to make a film of all the traditional elements of the suffering of Jesus, Mel Gibson has managed to betray the Easter story, albeit unintentionally. As the credits rolled over a very brief and un-Biblical resurrection scene I just found myself wishing that I hadn’t made my contribution to his bag of silver.
The Rev’d Chris Lyon: Anglican Chaplain to the English-Speaking Church Community in Luxembourg
This review has appearred as a letter in "352"

When I saw the film some weeks ago, my immediate reaction was that the scourging could well have been reduced – Paul speaks of forty lashes less one, and perhaps to have limited the scourging to thirty-nine might have been more palatable. Certainly, anti-Semitism is not a problem. More, I felt, the film might be described as anti-Roman. The Gospels are surely the most reliable evidence of what occurred on Good Friday, and Gibson appears to have used them all and used them well. Australians are sometimes accused of being un-Australian simply because they might disagree with some decision of Government, but we all take that with a grain of salt. Similarly, Jews might be offended by the portrayal of their predecessors, but from all accounts Gibson appears to have shown them in their true colours, which is not to condemn their religion but perhaps their behaviour even in the name of that religion.
Douglas Stevens, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia.

Gibson "dares" to step beyond commonplace (e.g. Jesus' carrying of the cross is based on ancient painters' works rather than on modern scholars' books, and that has clearly been done on purpose, if we notice that vice versa the two thieves are crucified the way they "should have been" according to scholars), in order to present a powerful insight, that has been rendered in as much a powerful style. NOT a "lefebvrian" movie --- although the director does belong to the sect --- but, much more than that, and at last, a "maximalist" view on Jesus. I think we've had enough of silly, meaningless, boring Christs.
Controversies have hidden some very intriguing details, as well as the film's quite complex series of keys. For example, the horror entities; the fascinating (it's said by a Catholic basically not fond of her) character of his mother Mary, referring to Pasolini's Gospel; the rotting donkey, a symbol of death possibly taken from Dali's and Bunuel's Chien Andalou; and --- a funny side --- the carpenter Jesus as the inventor of modern tables. Just hints: time will be needed, I believe, to find out more interesting lines of understanding.
It's quite remarkable that, in the many flashback scenes, he's never seen as healing anybody. But that doesn't mean that he is reduced to his barely human nature, his conquering divine nature being shown especially by his strong personality (see St. Jerome, Hannah Hurnard etc.), that shines even while accepting his doom. Besides, from a visual point of view, it 's maybe not a chance if he looks taller than the other people around (as suggested by the dimensions in the Holy Shroud?). Finally, his Resurrection is something different than the coming back of a zombie, and --- unlike in most movies, paintings, religious comics etc. --- the event does not simply aim at "politically" founding the church, but first of all touches Jesus as a Person.
Dario Rivarossa, Jesus magazine, Italy

I saw the film and thought it was a genuine attempt to potray Christ's suffering as it probably really was .
I did not feel that I came out hating Jews as a race as most of the good people in the film were Jews and the bad were split amongst many as the Roman army at the time was recruited from all over the empire and a attempt was made to show this diversety.
The main problem is that the Schisms that followed the reformation took Christ of the cross and replaced it with a empty tree.The early Christians were at first bewildered that Jesus could die crucified as this was the way the most lowly and cruel criminals were punished it was only after much soul searching that it was realised that Christ had chosen this way in order to show that he was willing to suffer this as the lowest of the lowest had suffered and he did this for you and for me. for us.
John Cox, UK

I saw the film a few days ago. I think its the product of a very disturbed mind. The problem lies in the films gratuitous violence - which I feel was terribly unrealistic. If any person as treated in such a violent manner they would not survive as long as Gobson's Christ did.
Moreover. the films total focus fails to demonstrate that it is not so much the death of Christ that saves us, but the love of Christ that saves us. It (the film) lacks balance, sensitivity and depth. There was no context set to Jesus' ministry and some of the scenes that iterspered the violence did not even connect to the story. (For example, Jesus making tall tables!!)
Popcorn violence. I preferred the book!
Martina Moran, USA

It was a moving religious experience for me, and good cinema. The movie is a work of art, not another gospel, and should be seen in that light.
George Connolly PP, St Anthony's, Clovelly NSW, Australia

I knew that I would not 'enjoy' seeing a film about the Passion and so the experience to me was one of 'Good Friday on film' - perhaps what Gibson aims to do. It is however, only Good Friday and for that reason I felt the restriction a little unedifying. No one can fault the realistic violence which I think was handled well, allowing us to recognise with complete horror the continued extent to which we can torture and desert someone who has stood up for all that is true and good. The issue of anti-semitism is a distraction and present day Jews need to examine their own political interests if they really do take exception to the obvious parallel; that even the most revered religion of it's day must move with God's plan or it will inevitably succumb to its own political agenda - regardless of the religion. Most religions are struggling with that today in an effort to disown themselves of acts which are carried out in their 'name.' Terrorism, abuse etc.
In the genre of cinema you are always short changed when attempting an epic story in one film. Jesus Of Nazareth and The Godfather or indeed the Rings Trilogy are typical films where the audience 'journeys' through to the conclusion. Later, outside of viewing, it continues to affect you as you reflect upon scenes and stories within the whole story. Gibson, in calling his film a 'Passion' is making it clear what to expect and what not to expect. The parameters are set and he cannot be accused of not telling the story. However, he does include flashbacks to the Last Supper and previous encounters in an attempt to show the type of man Jesus was. In my opinion he doesn't succeed. We are meeting characters for the first time at the moment of crisis. We've not had a chance to care about them, and immediately we are called to appreciate their loss, their hopelessness. As Christian's the Passion is about Jesus and his faithful at the ultimate time in human history when God handed over his work of love to His people. That to see His Spirit as the way forward. None of this is really addressed. It really is only a film about Good Friday. The Passion as I see it begins at the Last Supper. That too was dealt with in flashback form.
A good film, but for only that part of the story to become the highest grossing film in history is a little dismaying to me. It's success owes more to misplaced controversy which wasn't entirely unengineered.
Danny McFadden, UK

The overriding message of the film is love- Jesus' love for His Father, and love for human beings. Gibson has powerfully communicated the message of the Gospel and presented an accurate depiction of the Son of God. The violence is difficult to watch, but emphasises the awesome sacrifice of Jesus, and causes you to watch in wonder as you become aware of God's awesome and passionate love.Gibson has produced a masterpiece which God has already used to convert individuals . Imagine if every Christian took Christ's command to preach the Good News as seriously as Mel Gibson-the world would be set on fire with the Gospel. A lesson for us all, to be zealous and explicit in sharing our faith in Christ!
Andy Drozdziak, Dorking, UK

Unlike Zeffirelli's masterpiece, 'Jesus of Nazareth, Mel Gibson focuses mostly on the physical passion of Christ.
That God was prepared to descend to the level of man, worse still to the lowest level of man to be treated as a common criminal is a mystery and for believers has to say a great deal about the power of evil unleashed by the 'fall of man'.
Gibson gives as true a picture as possible... if anything reality was worse. For example, a learned Jesuit taught us many years ago that nails were hammered in the wrists and not in the palms of the hand if the victim was expected to hang from his hands. The film is a moving experience and the accusation of anti-Semitism is unfounded. Anti-Semites will never hesitate to exploit the Bible to their advantage. Any anti-Semitism, any animosity and hatred to anybody or ethnic or religious group are diametrically opposed to Christ's message of love that is clearly restated in Gibson's film. Besides the injunction "love your enemies', Christ himself says; -"They do not know what they do." Elementary logic, let alone theology tell us that those who commit certain actions without the awareness of their responsibility are exonerated in the eyes of God.
Klaus Vella Bardon, Malta

Thank you for the opportunity to add my comments on Mel Gibson's depiction of the Passion. Why all the fuss? My friends and I went to the same movie but in coffee discussions after, we all found that each of us got something differrent and personal from this marvellous depiction. None of us closed our eyes, felt sick, felt like blaming jews or anyone, wanted to drive into a river or such nonsense as has been reported. Negative press had sensitised us into believing that this film was barbaric, old fashioned Catholicism at its worst etc. Quite frankly, if I was to take the stations of the cross, put them together in graphic sequence and put it on celluoid, I would be fairly close to the movie version. From media reviews I have read, I would have to say that this movie perhaps strikes to close to home for the comfort of those reviewers. For us, it was easy to recognise that Jesus willingly gave up His life for us and He was in a position of empowerment the whole time. Methinks thou protesteh too much!
Steve O'Brien, Brisbane Australia

Bravo on an excellent piece. I completely agree; this film is a masterpiece, which compares in my view to the great religious works of art of the past. It is both intensely modern(and I argue, far from being anti-Semitic, has a post-Holocaust sensibility)and richly traditional. I think Mr Mc Dade's comparison to The Last Temptation was most apt; I too felt that the problem with the interpretation of Jesus in that film was not his sexuality, but his actual psychology. Who would really follow a man like that? And i thought the interaction with Judas was both monstrous and convoluted. The film did not ring true; no wonder that after the first controversy, it just fell by the wayside.
Gibson's film does not leave one feeling hatred or anger, but intense pain for the cruelty of the world, intense admiration for Jesus' courage, and a great lightness, which is love and forgiveness.Woven out of both the dark and light, it reaches deep inside the human soul.
Sophie Masson, Australia

I'm afraid the film simply reminds us all of the appalling blood lust and violence that sits at the very core of Christianity - a mythical chapter of such equalled brutality which has been used by subsequent 'followers' of that faith ever since to meter out similar abuse and depravation on Jews, Arabs - even, through programs like The Inquisition, on its own people!
A sick doctrine of violent death and 'martyrdom's that has now produced an untimely sick film for an already very bruised and divided world.
It is about as far removed from 'life-enhancing' as its is possible to get.
Shame on all involved and all who attempt to justify such pornography in the name of 'belief'.
Gerard Brown, UK

I went to see the Film today. I went supplied with much of the negative criticism that is around - and especially re its violence and alleged anti-semitism - I went ready to be a severe critic!
I wept for most of the second half! I found it an immensley powerful film. i was very interested in the way certain individuals were reflected upon. A lot of time given to Judas and one or twpo toehgrs. note taken of Jesus looks towards Peter; Judas; His Mother, etc; the looks on some Jewish faces; those Roman soldiers obviously unhappy about the turn of events. The Bravery of some members of the Sanhedrin about the unlawfulness of the "Trial".
I did not find it Anti-Semitic; very anti-establishment as both Roman and Jewish Authorities stood by while others carried out their dirty work.
I felt that The Christ was so powerful in his weakness, and in it so dignified - that was what infuriated the authorities, i think; but it is the very message of love; of the Gospel - it made me set off speedily to concelebrate Mass at my local parish, and to recommend the film to others; at least to give themselves the first half!
So I with surprise find myself thanking Mell Gibson - as what was protrayed in the Christ touched into me in a very special way as I have been apparently rejected by my Clerical Establishment since October 2003 and had to undergo various humiliations.
I would think no one can go away from the film wothout taking note of The Man - ECCE HOMO! I would also like to know more of mel's thoughts/spirituality behind the film.
John Robinson, By Broughton, UK

My son asked me when I got back from the cinema whether this film had increased my faith. "No", I replied, "It has increased my love".
Nicholas Steven, Bournemouth

The group with whom I saw the film in a large, packed auditorium responded with complete silence at the end of it. They left the cinema hall as if leaving a church on Good Friday, not a word, not a whisper until outside, and even then in hushed tones they spoke of its impact, each in a different way. So when I offer my comment I realise that it is one from among very many who appreciate the religious artistry of this director. The figure of Simon of Cyrene was not touched upon by John McDade, yet for me it was the most evangelical, in that it portrayed response to the proclamation of the person of Jesus. The Cyrenian , a family man, is forced to assist Jesus, and at first, with loud emphasis appeals to the crowd that he has nothing to do with it. His manner and attitude changes during the long struggle with the cross and his look of admiration for Jesus,along with his berating of the Roman soldiers ‘Stop this! haven’t you done enough!’ makes him the onlookers’ hero. The Cyrenian speaks for us, his growing loyalty to Jesus calls out to us, and he in fact evangelises us, who wish that we could have his strength and honesty. Thanks for this proclamation of faith.
Chris Fuse, Rome, Italy

John McDade's review is one of the best pieces I have read about Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". This is a very powerful and deeply touching film. What it does is what the Church has done ever since the event: meditating on the Passion of Christ, who laid down his life for the salvation of the world. Parts of the film are indeed hard to watch, because the suffering of Christ is shown in a in a very graphic, realist way. The film gives an idea what it meant that the weight of the world’s sin - our sin - was laid upon the body of Christ. There is a lot in it that has touched my heart, and I find its Eucharistic and Marian dimensions particularly striking. The charge that the film should be anti-Semitic is groundless. There was one scene I found particularly stunning. When Jesus is nailed to the cross, his mother falls to the ground, because she simply can't bear it anymore (neither can the viewer). But then, when the cross is raised, Mary gets up with an incredible dignity and clarity on her face. She seems to remember the words from John 12: 'And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself', and realises that this is happening now.
Michael Lang, London

The most touching moments for me were the flasbacks e.g when Jesus spoke of loving your enemies. The scenes relating to the arrest, trial, and beating before the crucifixion were so violent that I found it difficult to believe that a man could survive such punishment and then carry his cross even with help. These scenes made me realise that the ability to manipulate crowds and to behave with so much brutality has not changed. I was saddened by the film and not uplifted!
Neville Moar, Lincoln, New Zealand

I would disagree with John McDade on one point: to me, the greatest distortion in the movie occurs in the opening scene of the agony in the garden. A hooded, hairless satanic figure tempts Jesus by telling him that no one can take the sins of all upon himself and urging him to doubt that he really is God's son. There is no recognition of what the gospels say was the real gist of the temptations presented to Jesus, as we just saw in the Gospel for the 1st Sunday of Lent: Satan tempted Jesus to think of himself as special, as someone to whom the rules do not apply, who does not need to accept the will of God humbly and trustingly like everyone else. In contrast to the overall tone of the movie, Gibson portrays Jesus not as the suffering servant but as a man with delusions of grandeur, except that we are expected to think that they aren't delusions. This part of the portrayal is not true to the gospels.
Gibson does try hard to help the viewer to see the Jewish opponents of Jesus as a small band of cronies of Caiaphas. But the good that Gibson tries to do in that way may be undone by his portrayal of Pilate as a conscientious but pragmatic man who lacks the cruelty and sadism of his soldiers. From history, Pilate seems more likely to have been a violent and ruthless man (think Saddam's henchman "Chemical Ali") than this nice but rather spineless guy. With Pilate cleared of his major responsibility, Jesus' Jewish opponents are likely to be assigned too much. Gibson could and should have handled this better.
Michael Slusser - USA

I have seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ, twice. It's not easy to watch, but it is a masterpiece. To me, it's not just a movie. When I looked up at the cross, I saw not an actor there, but Christ. I can't get the scenes out of my mind. It makes me realise that what I always believed about my faith, and the crucifixion in particular, was believed on a superficial level. Sure, I knew the crucifixion was a nasty business, I knew the facts, intellectually. But now those facts have depth. It's finally hit home, just what my Lord and Saviour has done for me, for all of us.
God bless Mel Gibson for making a fine film, and for courageously telling the world he's a Catholic and he's not ashamed of it. He's a model for the rest of us to live up to.
Valerie O'Doherty - Toronto, Canada

I disagree with your reviewer that the Satan figure in the film is androgynous. The juxtaposition of Satan carrying a devil child with Mary very much makes the figure of Satan into a woman. Also in the garden again we see the serpent coming from a woman Satan with memories of Eve. Your reviewer does not seem to have any problem with the little boys taunting Judas taking on the likeness of satanic beings. I was appalled.
Joan - Australia

What this film shows most is how much Jesus loves us. What needs to be "put out there" is that Jesus died for all people, not just christians. He paid for the sins of all, not a select few.
Rita Russo - USA

Mel Gibson is a type of Jonah. He has been given a message from God to deliver to the world - repent and convert before it is too late.
Hugh Girod, Perth, Western Australia

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Christ in the crossfire

Austen Ivereigh
21 February 2004

Mel Gibson's 'The Passion' opens in America next week, and has already caused controversy. Will it stir anti-Semitism, or be an inspiration to faith?

Bruised and blooded from a Calvary of controversy, the greatest story ever told is stumbling into a cinema near you this Easter. In the countdown to its release in the United States on Ash Wednesday (and in Britain on 26 March), church networks are block-booking multiplex screens - 2,000 at the last count - to view Mel Gibson's film of the last 12 hours of Christ's life. Christians on both sides of the Atlantic who can stomach it face an unusual Lenten exercise: to decide whether The Passion of the Christ is a cinematic milestone which will allow people as never before to contemplate the Crucifixion, or an unbiblical, gory depiction by a quirky traditionalist which could fuel anti-Semitism.

The film is shot in the mostly dead languages of Aramaic and Latin, with obscure actors, and with a gritty realism never before seen in Jesus films. It also contains numbing brutality: an uninterrupted 25-minute scourging scene is not for the faint-hearted. But the question marks are less over the film's use of violence than Gibson's direct use of Scripture, unmediated by biblical scholarship. The portrayal of the Jews in The Passion of the Christ is taken from John's Gospel, the account which has traditionally been used to pin the blame for Jesus' death on the Jewish people as a whole. Should Gibson be allowed to ignore modern scholarship for his own direct rendition? It is a question that has pitted interfaith specialists and Jewish lobbies against conservative Christians of all stripes.

The row has spread, exposing anger at the "excesses" of ecumenism in the modern Church, and leading to a grubby scene in Rome earlier this year in which Vatican journalists were trapped between contradictory accounts of John Paul II's supposed endorsement by his personal secretary and his spokesman. That episode drew in curial heavyweights as well as members of Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ. With such a colourful cast, it is hardly surprising that The Passion of the Christ is predicted to be the most widely-watched Jesus film ever.

It is Gibson's life work - he has stumped up more than $25 million of his own money to fund it - and inseparable from his own journey of faith. Gibson was born into a strict Catholic family of 11 children in Peekskill, New York, in 1956. His father, Hutton, took his family to Australia, where he began a lifelong argument with the direction the Catholic Church took at the Second Vatican Council. Hutton Gibson went on to publish documents denouncing the "fraudulent election" of Pope John XXIII and the Council as a "Jewish-Masonic plot". Like some others traumatised by the shattering of the secure Catholic world of the 1950s, he found his way into the camp of the traditionalists - Tridentine massgoers who reject what they regard as the Vatican's 1960s apostasy.

PA pious teenager, Mel Gibson briefly considered the priesthood before he discovered acting and marriage (he and his wife Robyn have 11 children). In the 1980s Gibson starred in a string of successful films, was lionised as one of the world's most attractive men, won an Oscar as a director, and became rich. But he also grew away from his faith into drugs, heavy drinking and womanising. It was the beginning of a personal crisis which in 1990-91, when he was 35 or 36, broke over him like an electric storm. He contemplated suicide, but held back.

What lifted Gibson out of his darkness was The Passion. As the film's Jesuit translator, Fr Bill Fulco, professor of classics and archaeology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, puts it, in the early 1990s Mel was "bottoming out" when he had a religious experience in which "Christ reached down and embraced him". Since then "he has had an obsession with The Passion of Christ as a saving factor in his own life".

Mel returned to the faith of his father with the zeal of a reformed backslider. Fulco admires Gibson, but says he is "desperately trying to hang onto something that is stable and unchanging - whereas the modern Church is not stable and unchanging".

In California, Gibson worshipped until recently at a traditionalist church some distance from his home in Malibu. Oddly, it was his decision to build a chapel in the hills above his house that sparked the chain of events which guaranteed his film notoriety.

An objector to construction of the chapel suggested that his son, a freelance journalist, should write about it. Christopher Noxon's article in the New York Times in March last year described the beliefs of Gibson's 100,000-odd traditionalists as a "strain of Catholicism rooted in the dictates of a sixteenth-century papal council and nurtured by a splinter group of conspiracy-minded Catholics, mystics, monarchists and disaffected conservatives". More damagingly - and to Gibson's fury - the article suggested that he shared the views of his 86-year-old father, who has downplayed, even if he has never denied, the Holocaust.

The suggestion was enough to catch the attention of Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), America's leading Jewish lobby, and of his friend Dr Eugene Fisher, interfaith adviser to the US Bishops' Conference in Washington DC. Fisher and Foxman decided to convene an ad hoc committee of Jewish-Catholic experts to advise Gibson on conforming the film to modern theological understanding. Some of the group of nine scholars had been involved in the overhaul of the medieval pageant at Oberammergau in Germany.

"Jews have legitimate historical concerns about Passion plays," says Fisher. "We're only 50 years from the Holocaust. They're still a little nervous, and this is understandable."

The tragic history of Christian anti-Semitism - the backdrop to the Holocaust - shows the dangers of literal readings of the Gospels. The charge that Jews were guilty as a people for the death of Jesus for centuries distorted in the minds of many Christians the truth that their sins were responsible for Jesus' death. So pervasive was this misconception in the sixteenth century that the Roman Catechism specifically rebutted it: the sins committed knowingly as Christians, it pointed out, were much worse than whatever was done by the few Jews actually involved in the historical event. But that barely filtered down. For many centuries, Passion plays were often followed by pogroms.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, two developments allowed the Church to reassess its relationship with the Jewish people: biblical study, which developed a fuller theological understanding of the Gospels and their context, and the Second Vatican Council's groundbreaking declaration Nostra Aetate, which made clear that "neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during The Passion". 

Cardinal William Keeler, episcopal moderator for Catholic-Jewish relations in the US, spells out the implications of that shift: "Any Christians involved in the presentation of Jesus' death must hold, in the words of the 1974 Guidelines of the Holy See to implement Nostra Aetate, 'an overriding preoccupation not only to avoid portrayals of Jews that might lead to collective guilt, but also to replace them with positive ones'." In 1998, the US bishops issued a set of criteria to be followed in dramatising Christ's passion, warning that mixing the four Gospel accounts and "extra-biblical records" offered "the widest possible latitude for artistic creativity and insight, but also for abuses and prejudices".

The Fisher-Foxman ad hoc committee had legitimate concerns about The Passion. One was that Gibson had chosen John's Gospel as the basis of his drama, the one traditionally exploited by anti-Semites. Second, he had incorporated into his script the writings of a stigmatic German nun now close to beatification, Sr Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), whose visions were published posthumously in 1833 as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The text - which reflects the anti-Semitism typical of Catholic writings of the period - was strongly recommended in the Vatican of Pope Pius XII. It also became a firm favourite of Gibson, who carries an Emmerich relic in his pocket, after his return to faith. Sr Emmerich's text had given him "amazing images" and "stuff I never thought of", he told the New Yorker. (Preview reports suggest that at least one scene is recognisable from The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ - after Christ is scourged, Pilate's wife takes towels to a grief-stricken Mary so she can wipe up the blood.) Third, Gibson's traditionalism suggested that he would be uninfluenced by modern scriptural exegesis and conciliar documents: The Passion, he has made clear, is his interpretation of the Gospels sine glossa.

Fisher approached Gibson's Jesuit adviser, Bill Fulco, whose role in the film had expanded from translator and coach in Latin and Aramaic to become "a chaplain and a peacemaker" among the cast, whom he accompanied during their gruelling days of film-making in Italy. Fulco assured Fisher that the film complied with the bishops' 1998 guidelines. But the scholars wanted to check for themselves. When they eventually got to see the script, they were aghast. It included, for example, the "blood curse" - since excised - from Matthew's Gospel in which the crowd tells Pilate: "His blood be upon us, and on our children." Another example which alarmed them: as Jesus is pulped to a bloody mass by a cat-o'-nine-tails, the eyes of the high priest, Caiaphas, are described in the screenplay as "shiny with breathless excitement".

Paula Frederiksen, a Jewish scripture scholar at Boston University, warned that the script deviated "from magisterial principles of biblical interpretation" and warned that around the world the film could fuel anti-Semitism. The scholars' report in May last year called for "major revisions" to the script.

There are conflicting versions of what happened next. Frederiksen wrote recently in the Christian Science Monitor that "Icon Productions leaked our report to the media, presented our assessment as an 'attack' on Christianity, and has worked hard to keep the controversy alive". Gibson's film company accuses the scholars of breaking their agreement by going public before producing the report. Fisher meanwhile insists Gibson agreed with him in an hour-long conversation to look at the report, and that the scholars only went public after an infuriated Gibson went to his lawyers. Whatever the order of events, Gibson's lawyers accused the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) of being in possession of a stolen script and demanded its return under threat of legal action. Although Fisher had kept the USCCB informed of his committee, the bishops had never voted to establish it. The matter was resolved when Gibson appeared suddenly at the bishops' headquarters. The USCCB decided to distance itself from the scholars, making clear it had never authorised or approved the committee. "When the film is released, the USCCB will review it at that time", the statement said.

The suspicion of anti-Semitism - plus Gibson's quirky Catholicism - was making Christians nervous of the film. But Gibson's team had a plan to counter the negative publicity: selective pre-release screenings, hosted by the director himself, for Christian groups. The screenings proved a hit: over the summer and autumn last year, a never-ending string of enthusiastic testimonies seeped into the press. A New Yorker reporter who accompanied Gibson to some of these, Peter Boyer, observed how Gibson "was received with an enthusiasm that seemed to reach beyond the movie itself, to a deeply felt disaffection from the secular world".

The screening that made Gibson most anxious was at Fulco's university in Los Angeles, where 400 Jesuits watched it during a gathering at Loyola Marymount. Gibson explained to Boyer why he and Lauer were so nervous: "We're Catholics, right? We're scared of the Jesuits. Every good Catholic is."

Christof Wolf, a young German film-maker studying at Heythrop College, London, was at the screening. I asked him what they made of it. "If you have 400 Jesuits you have 400 opinions", he laughs. "But the reaction was very positive. We loved it."

He believes The Passion is a "milestone". Following Sr Emmermich, Gibson includes the figure of Satan (played by a woman) as a silent, brooding presence; the camera-work, Wolf says, creates a "mystical" presence both of God and of evil. Using Latin and Aramaic is "an excellent idea", Wolf thinks. The language does not distract, but gives the Jesus story a universal, transcendent quality.The violence to which Jesus is subjected - he takes up his cross when he is almost dead from scourging - "serves the purpose of the movie, to show how deeply Jesus suffered", he believes. If the violence is so disturbing, he adds, it is because people are unaccustomed to the naked, real brutality of the Crucifixion.

Does he believe that, in the wrong hands, The Passion could give comfort to anti-Semites? Wolf, who has seen the bishops' 1998 guidelines, believes not. "It is a disturbing film, but because it asks, 'Who is Jesus for you?'" he says. "You certainly don't have the feeling, 'What did the Jews do to Jesus?'" The Passion does not make use of the chapters in John which have fed anti-Semitism, he points out, adding that in the infliction of violence, "no Jews touch Jesus". The long scourging scene could have been interrupted by cutting to the crowds, making them responsible in the viewers' minds, he adds. "But that's not what Gibson does. He shows Jesus being tortured for 25 minutes - you forget completely about the Jews. In this way, Gibson universalises responsibility for the Crucifixion."

Gibson has not helped his case by his choice of audiences for the pre-release screenings. It has been shown to evangelicals and celebrity Catholic conservatives such as Peggy Noonan and Michael Novak while requests from Jewish leaders to see the film have been refused. At the Vatican, screenings were held at the college of the Legionaries of Christ, the Regina Apostolorum, among other locations. Fr Augustine Di Noia OP, under-secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, the Colombian prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, were among those who have gone public with enthusiastic reviews, making clear that the film is "faithful to the Gospels" and not at all anti-Semitic. But Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican's council for relations with Jews, has never been invited to see the film - unlike the Pope, who saw The Passion during two screenings in his apartments in December.

The comment John Paul II was said to have afterwards made - "It is as it was" - was subsequently denied by his personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, although the Pope's spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, had privately confirmed the Pope's remark. It later transpired that Navarro-Valls had written to the film's producer, Steve McEveety, urging him to use the quotation "again and again".

The quote arose from a private meeting between Dziwisz and McEveety in which the secretary reported the Pope's reaction. Present at that meeting was Jan Michelini, who had worked on the film in Rome as an assistant producer. (Jan was the first baby baptised by John Paul II after his election and the 25-year-old son of Alberto Michelini, one of the leading Opus Dei figures in Rome and a personal friend of the Pope.) This personal connection explains why the Pope saw the film, and why Dziwisz later granted an audience to McEveety. Whether or not the reported remark was true, it was an abuse of trust to have relayed it to the press; the dignity of the papacy is preserved by not commenting on art, as Navarro-Valls was forced to concede in an eventual opaque press statement.

The affair showed just how strongly feelings run in Rome over the film and how organised is the attempt to secure its endorsement. Some of Rome's support cast may simply be anxious to rescue what they see as a fine film that fell victim to political correctness. But The Passion's Roman endorsements - including the gnomic utterance placed in the mouth of the Pope - have a consistent message: that the film is "faithful to the Gospels". It is hard not to see this as a rebuttal of the insistence of interfaith experts that depiction of the Gospels must be mediated by biblical criticism and the insights of the Second Vatican Council. Are curial conservatives signalling their impatience with this idea? Is their view that ecumenism has conceded too much to Jewish hypersensitivities?

Fr John Pawlikowski, president of the International Council of the Christians and Jews and a member of Fisher's team, agrees that the backlash against the scholars' criticisms signals a deeper agenda. The question at stake over The Passion, he says, is "whether Vatican II in its principal thrust is to be upheld and further amplified or whether what is considered its 'excesses' need to be excised".

If so, Gibson's film is a perfect stalking horse. Consider, for example, his reaction when he received Fisher's committee's report: "I couldn't believe it," he told the New Yorker. "It was like they were more or less saying I have no right to interpret the Gospels myself, because I don't have a bunch of letters after my name."

Fulco, too, is impatient with some of the scholars' arguments. The film, he says, is quite different from the script and certainly not anti-Semitic.

But will Jews feel the same? And how far should those feelings be respected in making a film about Christ?

Answering those questions could prove a challenge for Jewish-Christian relations - but also an opportunity. Diocesan ecumenical officers in the US have been busily arranging encounters between Christians and Jews in response to interest in the film.

Christof Wolf is convinced that The Passion of the Christ has the power to touch people beyond the Christian family. "A non-Christian seeing the film would ask himself, 'so why did he choose to undergo all that? What was it for? What is happening here?'" he says. "They will see the responsibility we all have for Jesus' death. That is what Mel has managed to convey." His fellow Jesuit Bill Fulco is also certain. "We have not made a mistake," he says. "The Passion is a beautiful work of art."

Tablet review - Related article - Reader's comments

Propaganda or masterpiece?

Mel Gibson’s film of Christ’s Crucifixion is a number one box office hit in America. As it goes on general release around the world, we asked experts for their views

A humbling experience
The film brought me face to face with the saving work of Christ. It was a humbling experience, which left me feeling profoundly grateful. And I believe God will use it in an amazing way to both strengthen the Church and bring many to saving faith … I won’t ever think about the Crucifixion and what happened in the few hours that preceded it in the same way ever again.
Peter Kerridge
Managing director
Premier Christian Radio, London
Premier says it is “facilitating the Church’s response to the film” in the UK

Mel Gibson oversees a scene from The Passion of the Christ.Photo: Philippe Antonello

Hard to understand
For kids struggling with their faith, the movie didn’t help at all. If you don’t understand Jesus’ life and mission, it’s hard to understand the Crucifixion. I was hoping it would be more of an evangelisation tool.
Nancy Longo
Youth minister
Parish of St Bernard’s
Bellflower, Los Angeles

A popcorn movie
The Passion over-individualises the Christian message by portraying violence against Jesus himself as a central concern of Christian faith, separating this violence from violence in our own lives today. At the showing I attended in Boston, people were eating popcorn, drinking Cokes and eating pretzels, while we all sat in comfortable cushioned reclining chairs during the mayhem. The movie further over-individualises Christianity by divorcing Jesus’ Crucifixion from other crucifixions, as if his were utterly unique, as if he were the only one to suffer such intense and humiliating violence. In this way, we are kept from seeing the banality of his death as something suffered by thousands of other political prisoners in his day. For these reasons, The Passion cannot be called a Christian film.
Tom Beaudoin
in the National Catholic Reporter
Kansas City

Rekindling of prejudice
Ideologically, the film provides cinematic expression for the world of the American Christian Right post-11 September. That world is a dark and violent place, where the only reasonable response is to do battle with the Axis of Evil whose threat is ever-present. Its sense of God is drawn to visions of judgement and of wrath, close to apocalypse and anticipating Armageddon. A religion of intimacy, love and hope is at odds with experience; human viciousness can only be atoned for in terms of entering into its darkness and its horror as an expiatory sacrifice. The film does not target Jews collectively; it is aimed at specified individuals and groups rather than Jews in general. It is, however, a close-run thing. Gibson is surely well aware of the impact of some of his scenes on Jews down the ages, but he does not hesitate about intensifying them; clearly they will rekindle prejudices in at least some of his audiences, and Jewish leaders have every right to be concerned.
Revd Jonathan Gorsky
Council for Christians and Jews, London

An eighteenth-century Jesus
The Second Vatican Council marks the entry of the Roman Catholic Church into the modern world, and especially the beginning of a process of reconciliation with Judaism. This is rejected by Gibson. By focusing solely on the negative – the suffering of Jesus – rather than on the positive – the willingness of Jesus to give himself up to the will of his Father – Gibson returns to a time when visions of Christ centred wholly on his suffering. His is an eighteenth-century vision when Christians took it for granted that Jews were collectively cursed for the Crucifixion, and when narratives emphasised Jewish evildoing as well as the graphic suffering of Jesus. Jews and Christians have, in the past 100 years, transformed their relations for the better. Part of this is through the realisation that Jesus was a Jew: he was circumcised, attended synagogue, observed the dietary laws, participated in Temple sacrifices and, like other first-century rabbis, taught a group of disciples. Even up to his Crucifixion by the Romans he never abandoned his Jewish heritage. Jews and Christians alike need to remember that Jesus was not only born and lived as a Jew – he also died one.
Dr Edward Kessler
Director, Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge

Nothing anti-Semitic
If telling the story were anti-Semitic, it would create a problem for Jewish-Christian dialogue because it would be tantamount to affirming that the gospels are not historical… If the Pope saw the film, the successive silence of the hierarchy is very eloquent. There is nothing anti-Semitic in it; otherwise they would condemn it. It is absolutely clear, precisely because there is nothing to object to. Otherwise, the hierarchy would have spoken: both the Vatican as well as local bishops.
Joaquín Navarro-Valls
Pope John Paul II’s spokesman
Interview with Il Messaggero

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