AKMA’s Random Thoughts

On The Passion, Before I See It

The pressure’s building for me togo see The Passion of the Christ; I really have to see it within the next two weeks, but at this point it’ll be a case to the sooner, the better. (It would be convenient if a cinematic obligation excused me from marking the four stacks of papers that are scheduled to come in this week, but alas! no such luck). Some friends have been goading me to see it soon, though; in #joiito the other night, we ended up in a re-titling slam that began with one participant connecting The Passion with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I noted that I was anticipating something like “St. John the Evangelist meets Quentin Tarantino”, so I proposed Kill Jesus. But Jeannie Cool topped all with her brilliant, Pulp Crucifixion.

Although I haven’t seen the film yet (it feels strange to be saying that, since as I write, The Passion opened less than a week ago), I’ve been keeping a fairly close eye on its progress through production. Reading Mark Goodacre’s blog certainly helps in that respect — since film and the New Testament is a special interest of his, this topic has occupied his attention since he started blogging six months ago. Without ever having seen a frame of the movie, I find myself well-able to bluff my way through a casual conversation about it.

Without the pretense of bluffing, though, and in response to numerous inquiries, I’ll begin my response to The Passion with some observations that don’t depend on having seen the picture.

First, regarding the controversy over the scholarly early-response team and the allegedly-stolen script: I know several of the scholars in question, and there’s simply no question in my mind of their participating in a group evaluation of the script if they didn’t understand the enterprise to have been entirely above-board. I’ve seen Paula Fredriksen’s version of the events several times, and it sounds quite plausible to me. Readers should bear in mind that some of the members of the small group number among the busiest biblical scholars around (eminent scholars with no need of publicity); just how credible is the notion that they’d have time to participate in a sub rosa plot to discredit Mel Gibson?

Moreover, Gibson and his allies have portrayed the group as a bunch of hypersensitive complainers. This, too, reflects poorly on Gibson’s side of the story. I know Amy Jill Levine well, and I am acquainted with Paula Fredriksen, and they’re two exceptionally level-headed New Testament scholars. Far from being querulous cavilers, they represent a reliably high standard of Jewish interpretation of early Christianity — critical, generous, sensible, and erudite. If Gibson and his entourage perpetuate the improbable yarn of a “stolen” script and the defensive charge that the joint Catholic-Jewish committee comprised professional whiners, then so much the worse for Gibson’s own reputation.

Second, Gibson has set himself a very peculiar challenge. Making a movie about the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life seems as counter intuitive as making a movie of just the fifth act of Hamlet, or of Abraham Lincoln’s trip to the theater; it’s all the degradation and misery without any of the contextual cues that might render the events comprehensible. It’s no wonder people feel deeply moved by this presentation — one would hope we’d feel sympathetic to an inoffensive civilian being dragged off the street, beaten to a bloody pulp, and executed in a uniquely agonizing way.

Now, the matter of context remains an interpretive choice — by opting out of a portrayal of Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry, by ignoring the closely-reasoned controversies with his theological rivals, Gibson chooses to represent Jesus as unaccountably persecuted; he contrasts obscene suffering with utter innocence. But that’s neither the gospels’ narrative version of Jesus’ life and significance nor even the passion narrative that, even in Mark, constitutes a heightened, concentrated narrative exposition of how Jesus ends up on the cross. Gibson chooses to film only the grimmest moments from a narrative that ranges from shared joys to confusion and dismay to transcendent ecstasy to brutal, dehumanizing torture. He has the artistic freedom and theological rationale for so choosing — but that’s a choice, not a simple restaging of historical events.

Third, why Latin? I know, everyone’s on him about this, but it’s worth underscoring. Virtually all of the communication among Romans and Israelites would have taken place in Greek, and who knows how much Galileans and Judeans used Greek in conversations among themselves? With Gibson’s decision deliberately to misrepresent the story by casting it in the language cherished by partisans of anti-Vatican II Roman Catholicism, he plays a card that weakens any claims he might make to an ideologically-innocent production.

Fourth — and here I switch from questioning Gibson to defending him slightly — if you’re going to make a movie from so short a segment of story, so under-narrated a textual artifact, then you’ll have to flesh out the film version with material that’s not in the text. So when people observe that Gibson has imported motifs, scenes, and characters from non-biblical sources, I say, “Well, of course he has.” It would take only a few minutes to film the last few hours of Jesus’ life as the gospels narrate them — he has to fill up the screen time with something.

But fifth, if he’s going to add material to his source narrative, why does he select the amplifications that he does? He can’t simply claim to be re-telling the gospels; he rejected that opportunity at the outset. He’s composing a macabre theological alternative to the gospels, grounded in a pastiche of ancient, medieval, and nineteenth-century theologies and visions. In Gibsonian theology, the two-word statement “they flogged him” (two words in Greek) becomes the centerpiece, so I am told, of his cinematic Christology.

That’s not idiosyncratic, but neither is it nonpartisan. And unfortunately for Gibson’s protestations, some of the partisans with whom his theology keeps company are — whatever his personal intentions — virulently anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic. Gibson himself may be as righteous a Gentile as ever walked the earth, his deliberate plans as irenic and compassionate as the eunuch who rescued Jeremiah from prison. He’s just chosen a singularly unpropitious staging ground from which to make that case.

Posted by AKMA at March 2, 2004 07:12 AM | TrackBack