Thoughts on "The Passion" with spoilers
Mar. 7th, 2004 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaA full moon over the Garden of Gethsemane...
That embarassingly inaccurate image is the first shot of "The Passion of the Christ." (Well, maybe there was a full moon over the Garden during the night of Jesus' arrest, but if so, then it didn't happen during Passover...) Edit: The embarassing error is mine; my memory failed me, and after double-checking I found that the first day of Passover occurs on a full moon. I could erase the error, but I will leave it for posterity.
In many ways this movie was not at all what I expected. In other ways, it was exactly what I expected.
For one thing, the movie was slightly more anti-Semitic than the gospels themselves. Most problematic for me in this regard were three scenes in particular: one showing Satan drifting in a floaty way among the high priests; another showing Satan floating in the same way among a crowd of screaming Jews; and a gratuitous scene showing Caiaphas gloating at Jesus and ridiculing him while he's on the cross.
Actually though I think the movie is distressingly homophobic. Firstly I found personally offensive the depiction of Satan as androgynous; Gibson could have chosen any number of ways to depict Satan, but he chose this one. Secondly, Herod was shown as a sterotypical 'flamer,' leering sexually at Jesus while mocking him. Herod was, you'll recall, enticed into executing John the Baptist at the suggestion of a girl, "Herodias's daughter," traditionally Salome. Herod might have been a libertine, but this depiction of him as a morally-corrupt gay man is also gratuitous.
Next, I was surprised to see that while the imagery was vivid, even lush, there was an otherwordly feel to most of it. Many scenes have a detached, slow-motion feel. Then there are the demons, whose appearance veers in a dreamlike way back-and-forth between human and inhuman. This detachment surprised me because of the number of comments I've seen from Christians insisting that the movie is a "real" depiction of what happened. It is vivid, yes, but highly stylized. This is important because I think the movie is a reflection of a dehumanized flesh-hating death-cult, rather than the product of a life-affirming belief. Edit to clarify: by which I don't mean Christianity itself, but the version of it which Gibson intends to portray.
Then there is the violence. The movie can be described as an orgy of bloodletting, and I would compare the scourging of Jesus to the kind of "buckets of blood" violence you'd see in a slasher movie, meaning that it is so overblown it is unbelievable. (Not LJ-cut because the violence is hardly a spoiler.)
There is an awkward mingling of the two passion narratives in the gospels, the synoptic version which shows Jesus as terrified and angst-ridden, and John's version which shows Jesus in command. The blending doesn't work and Jim Caviezel is asked to go from lamenting forlornly on the cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" to immediately and authoritatively proclaiming, "It is accomplished."
The net effect is that while Gibson tried to portray Jesus as a human who was tortured and murdered, he actually portrayed events in a very unreal, otherworldly way.
I was, however, moved by one aspect of the film, and that was the portrayal of Mary's agony over seeing her son arrested, tortured, and executed. One scene shows her running to comfort him as he falls while carrying the cross, overlapped with her memory of Jesus as a boy, falling and scraping his knee, and her rushing to comfort him with motherly love. The scenes where he is interacting with Mary are the only scenes in which Jim Caviezel's performance has any real life to it; the rest of the time he seems barely more than an animatronic prop, unsure I imagine of how "human" or how "divine" to allow his portrayal to be. Several of the scenes with Mary had me literally in tears.
That embarassingly inaccurate image is the first shot of "The Passion of the Christ." (Well, maybe there was a full moon over the Garden during the night of Jesus' arrest, but if so, then it didn't happen during Passover...) Edit: The embarassing error is mine; my memory failed me, and after double-checking I found that the first day of Passover occurs on a full moon. I could erase the error, but I will leave it for posterity.
In many ways this movie was not at all what I expected. In other ways, it was exactly what I expected.
For one thing, the movie was slightly more anti-Semitic than the gospels themselves. Most problematic for me in this regard were three scenes in particular: one showing Satan drifting in a floaty way among the high priests; another showing Satan floating in the same way among a crowd of screaming Jews; and a gratuitous scene showing Caiaphas gloating at Jesus and ridiculing him while he's on the cross.
Actually though I think the movie is distressingly homophobic. Firstly I found personally offensive the depiction of Satan as androgynous; Gibson could have chosen any number of ways to depict Satan, but he chose this one. Secondly, Herod was shown as a sterotypical 'flamer,' leering sexually at Jesus while mocking him. Herod was, you'll recall, enticed into executing John the Baptist at the suggestion of a girl, "Herodias's daughter," traditionally Salome. Herod might have been a libertine, but this depiction of him as a morally-corrupt gay man is also gratuitous.
Next, I was surprised to see that while the imagery was vivid, even lush, there was an otherwordly feel to most of it. Many scenes have a detached, slow-motion feel. Then there are the demons, whose appearance veers in a dreamlike way back-and-forth between human and inhuman. This detachment surprised me because of the number of comments I've seen from Christians insisting that the movie is a "real" depiction of what happened. It is vivid, yes, but highly stylized. This is important because I think the movie is a reflection of a dehumanized flesh-hating death-cult, rather than the product of a life-affirming belief. Edit to clarify: by which I don't mean Christianity itself, but the version of it which Gibson intends to portray.
Then there is the violence. The movie can be described as an orgy of bloodletting, and I would compare the scourging of Jesus to the kind of "buckets of blood" violence you'd see in a slasher movie, meaning that it is so overblown it is unbelievable. (Not LJ-cut because the violence is hardly a spoiler.)
There is an awkward mingling of the two passion narratives in the gospels, the synoptic version which shows Jesus as terrified and angst-ridden, and John's version which shows Jesus in command. The blending doesn't work and Jim Caviezel is asked to go from lamenting forlornly on the cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" to immediately and authoritatively proclaiming, "It is accomplished."
The net effect is that while Gibson tried to portray Jesus as a human who was tortured and murdered, he actually portrayed events in a very unreal, otherworldly way.
I was, however, moved by one aspect of the film, and that was the portrayal of Mary's agony over seeing her son arrested, tortured, and executed. One scene shows her running to comfort him as he falls while carrying the cross, overlapped with her memory of Jesus as a boy, falling and scraping his knee, and her rushing to comfort him with motherly love. The scenes where he is interacting with Mary are the only scenes in which Jim Caviezel's performance has any real life to it; the rest of the time he seems barely more than an animatronic prop, unsure I imagine of how "human" or how "divine" to allow his portrayal to be. Several of the scenes with Mary had me literally in tears.
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Another point of view
Date: 2004-03-07 03:05 pm (UTC)I went to a play last night that was presented in a manner like those espoused by Bertolt Brecht. Brecht wanted to keep the audience from identifying with the characters in the play and so devised various techniques to to this, such as using placards held by people in the play.
All of these things that people are objecting to in Gibson's film -- the grim flogging scene, the sexually ambiguous Satan, Herod's lasciviousness, etc., may (inadvertently?) function like this. In the end, viewers won't identify with anyone, even Jesus, because the way the story is presented keeps the viewer from identifying with the characters.
I certainly don't think that this was Gibson's intention, but it may be the ultimate effect that the film has on a lot of viewers. The exception will be Lefebreites like Gibson and the Fundies, who have such a load of guilt that this is the only way they can imagine the events having taken place ... assuming that they took place at all as recorded in the Gospels, of course.