AKMA’s Random Thoughts

The Mystery of The Passion

Don’t accept any simplistic responses to this movie. Though there’s a sense in which there’s nothing whatsoever subtle about it, nonetheless subtleties abound; on topics as fraught as the suffering and execution of Jesus of Nazareth — especially when they’re taken up into a media-cultural phenomenon — you’ll benefit from seeking out as nuanced responses as you can find. I can’t make any promises, but here’s a best try. I’ve read a lot about the movie over the last six months or so, and I know where I can find more, but I’m not going to construct a linkfest right now; I want to record my impressions straight through, and make the connections later. I won’t make far-reaching claims for my originality; if I say something that someone else has already said (pretty likely, since so much has been written), I’ll allow in advance that I may have read and remembered what she or he wrote before me.

What was good about this movie? A lot, in a number of ways. I frequently found myself wishing Gibson had relaxed his egocentric isolation from scholarly advice. Even a conservative scholar, one who dissents from the recent emphasis on reading the New Testament in a context more open to the positive relation of the Gospels and Paul toward Judaism, could have helped Gibson out on some points. Heck, even someone with a decent sense of probability could have improved the picture at countless small points (why are the High Priest and his retinue all always dressed in their full uniform, from midnight Thursday straight through to noon Friday, and all without looking mussed?). But Gibson’s slips pale beside the gravity of his representation of a suffering without parallel. I’m not sure one could exceed Gibson in enacting a monument to shattering brutality directed against the innocent.

Most importantly, Gibson’s Passion removes the torture and execution of Jesus from the realm of abstraction, where it usually dwells for inhabitants of twenty-first century liberal democracies, where the premises of “freedom of religion” and “due process” have become so ingrained as to conceal the brutality that undergirds the order of the ancient (and, in some parts of the world at some times, modern) state. I hope it will be harder for viewers tritely to refer to one or another nuisance as “my cross to bear.” The Passion is about real suffering, not a thin theological veneer of suffering.

I found many aspects of the movie to convey well the scene of first-century life. I’m not an archaeologist, but Gibson avoided many of the most flagrant mistakes of mid-twentieth-century costume dramas (was the design of the table that Jesus supposedly made appropriate for the first century? I wouldn’t think so, since he hardly have been making a table-and-chairs set for dining). I was surprised by how much of the dialogue I understood. I’m weak on languages, especially Aramaic and Latin, but I think the actors must have been speaking slowly (as you’d expect) and pronouncing without the kinds of regional accent and rhythm that confuse auditors. At the same time, I expected not to understand any of the dialogue at all, so “more than nothing” still comes in light. The actors weren’t obviously out of touch with their lines, too. They probably weren’t well-coached enough to fend off criticism from fluent Aramaic- (and Latin-) speakers, but they did better than I’d have guessed beforehand. I was nettled by the switching back-and-forth between the languages; I had a hard time following the rationale of why Pilate would speak Aramaic one minute, Latin the next; maybe there was an underlying consistency, but it wasn’t obvious, and the unaccountable alternation distracted me. The device of recording the film in ancient languages seemed to work.

Many of the actors did well. I wasn’t particularly impressed by Jim Cazeviel (apart from his willingness to continue filming after having been struck by lightning twice); he wasn’t much of a preacher, nor did he convey much personality in the flashbacks to time spent with Mary and his friends. Mary (Maia Morgenstern) played her part very well, I thought, as did Mary Magdalene (Monica Bellucci) and Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shopov), and Abenader (Fabio Sartor), Pilate’s centurion-assistant. The Marys avoided scenery-chewing emotion, even when Gibson’s direction assigned them overdrawn scenes. Shopov played beautifully his part as the Pilate whom Gibson wrote; much as I dislike the historical Pilate, and much as I object to what Gibson did with him (on which more below), I found myself being impressed by Shopov’s Pilate. The Roman soldiers evidently play to Gibson’s instruction; apart from Sartor, they’re all sadistic louts with exaggerated facial expressions to match their exuberant cruelty. (They seem to have stepped straight off the set of a Mad Max or Lethal Weapon movie, and into Roman period costume. Gibson can’t seem to direct either a hero or a villain as a complex character; especially the minor characters overplay their narrative functions.)

The cinematography follows Gibson’ cues, amplifying the impact of Gibson’s plot. Si suggested that both the cinematography and makeup should put up a fair bid for Oscars next year, and I suspect he’s right. Those would be nice, safe categories within which the Academy could acknowledge the magnitude of Gibson’s accomplishment without endorsing the project itself.

On the other hand, the first thing to strike me about the film was its audience, the most racially-integrated audience that I’ve seen in Evanston (especially noteworthy, since the cast is so distinctly white- or light-skinned). That sets this movie apart in a variety of important ways. Much of the violence in this film will trigger cultural and racial cues; Jews will see the movie very differently from Christians, and I expect that African-Americans will see it differently from whites, and so on through a variety of varieties of cultural experience. That may work to the good, if the movie engenders an explicit discussions about the representations of violence and injustice — though defensiveness surfaces more commonly than dialogue in such circumstances.

I was watching out for the production’s alleged anti-Judaism, and it didn’t take very long to spot. Toni Bertorelli, the Italian actor who plays Annas, could have been selected for his resemblance to the Hostile, Hook-nosed Jew of bitter experience. Gibson’s decision to enlist increasingly large crowds of hostile inhabitants of Jerusalem likewise will convey clearly a sense that “the Jews” were responsible for Jesus’ death. A few lonely locals and disciples (all depicted as quite Jewish, to Gibson’s credit as far as that goes) support or defend Jesus, but the vast preponderance of the inhabitants of Jerusalem seem to have heard about and formed an active detestation of Jesus. Gibson dresses the High Priest and his colleagues in full regalia for everything from their midnight inquisition to their scrutiny of Jesus’ flogging to their attention to the crucifixion. He goes far beyond the gospels in depicting the Caiaphas (named “Caiphas” here, the Latin version of his name) and Annas and their retinue attending almost every gory moment of the passion. Apart from a moment when Mary cites the first of the Four Questions of the Haggadah, one wouldn’t know that the events took place at Passover; the execution of Jesus seems to be the main event in the city. No lambs are being sacrificed, no meals being prepared. Judaism serves only as a (negative) backdrop for Jesus’ suffering — and when Gibson exaggerates the extraordinary events at Jesus’ death by ruining the Temple (instead of simply tearing the veil), it takes no great stretch of the imagination to read the event as the destruction of Judaism.

Moreover, the notorious scene when a group of Judeans demand Jesus’ crucifixion persuaded me to see the matter in a way quite opposite to Gibson’s representation. Where Gibson packs a crowd into Pilate’s court, all demanding that the Roman crucify Jesus, all I could see was the staggering incoherence of a mob of oppressed people insisting that their oppressor’s agent exact imperial carnage on one of the people. Imagine a movie that shows a crowd of southern Blacks insisting that the local White sheriff lynch an accused troublemaker — then turn up the volume, repeat the chant several times, and play the scene through two distinct times. (That image also conveys how unlikely it would be that Pilate/the sheriff would pause to examine his conscience about the guilt or innocence of the accused.) I listened closely for the blood curse from Matthew’s Gospel*, and heard it in Aramaic (there was no subtitle for the line), but I found it less disturbing and provocative than the explicit, repeated, emphatic demand, “Crucify him!”

Although Gibson justifiably makes the beatings, flogging, and crucifixion a more gruesome affair than most modern sensibilities are willing to imagine, his villains seem unanimously to have become unhinged at the prospect of torturing this particular man. There’s nothing gratuitous about violence in ancient governance; it’s part and parcel of maintaining order. Still, the various guards, floggers, spectators, attendants, soldiers, and miscellaneous onlookers all spare no opportunity to strike, choke, trip, cut, abuse, spit on, and otherwise brutalize Jesus. One might say, “Well, Satan has possessed everyone to make this the worst torture-and-execution ever,” but if so, the movie needs to make that explicit. Instead, a viewer has hardly any alternative but to regard the people of Jerusalem and their Roman occupiers to have singled Jesus out as someone who had to be spend the grimmestpossible twelve hours in Jerusalem. And although Romans do an ample share of the abuse, the Judean populace incite, and participate in, most of the violence. Even when the torture has been limited by authority figures or would be counter-productive (when Jesus carries the cross on the way to Golgotha), soldiers and by-standers do not lighten their relentless assault on the helpless prisoner.

All of this undermines the power of Gibson’ presentation, to some extent; I couldn’t help noticing tht I’d have had a hard time dragging that cross (unhistorically, Jesus bears the entire cross, not just the beam of the cross) from the city to Golgotha on a good day. Jesus shouldn’t even have been able to walk to Golgotha in his medical condition. Even the temple guard (who would have ample reason to be cautious in their treatment of their captive) begin the ghastly fun by pummeling Jesus and dropping him off a bridge on their way from Gethsemane to the High Priest’s court.

Speaking of which, how did Peter survive that incident with Malchus’s ear? Why didn’t someone just kill him on the spot? Attacking the guard can’t have been something they tolerated lightly (and if they were hesitant about killing in self-defense, why were they so giddily violent toward their possibly-important, possibly-innocent prisoner?

Gibson’s depictions of Pilate and Herod bothered me a lot. He draws a Herod straight out of the Jesus Christ Superstar school of fatuous buffoonery. Gibson depicts Pilate as a disgusted imperial enforcer, but one with an active conscience. His Pilate pays attention to Jesus, mulls over his words, and only sends Jesus for crucifixion when the High Priest and his mob outmaneuver him (Pilate is “rattled by a rabble of rowdy rebels,” as the Pilate of Monty Python’s version might have said). The Pilate of history, on the other hand, was a callous, pragmatic despot. He wouldn’t have hesitated a minute before handing Jesus over for crucifixion; his administration crucified thousands of Jews. One more wouldn’t matter in the slightest.

Gibson finds Mary at every scene of significance, as a bystander or (often) arriving on the scene after Jesus has left, retracing his footsteps and feeling his presence. I’m a supporter of Mary; I delight in the way that medieval sources often treat Jesus’ life and ministry as a distracting side-effect of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and continuing intercession for us. The sight of Mary trying to mop up the puddles of blood after Jesus’ flogging suggested that she’d lost her senses, but in this she was simply fitting in with everyone else in Gibson’s Grand Guignol Gospel of grotesquerie.

When I pre-reviewed the movie, I cited the absence of the heart of the gospels from Gibson’s Passion. I was wrong, insofar as Gibson does introduce some very brief flashbacks to Jesus’ ministry, but I was right that one would never develop from those short scenes any sense of the Jesus of the Gospels. Jesus heals the Roman soldier’s ear, but we see no program of healing; Jesus utters pithy sayings, but we see no career of teaching in parables or of wisdom teaching; the Jesus who suffers through this Passion doesn’t offer us a sense of what the suffering is all about. The Gospels show little interest in abstract “sin,” and great interest in the shape of a life that follows Jesus. Gibson shows little interest in the contours of Christian living, and a genius’s obsessive fascination with Jesus’ remediation of “Sin.”

At the end of the film, I was shaken and drained. I earnestly hope I will never again see such harrowing scenes of brutality. My appreciation of the physicality of the crucifixion has increased tremendously. My anger at the way that Christians casually emphasize general Judaic responsibility for Jesus’ horrible death, while they trivialize or shrug off Rome’s blame, has grown also. My sense of the historic embroideries of the Passion tradition has modulated from detached curiosity to engaged fascination and repulsion. My faith, such as it is, was perhaps least affected by the experience; what I saw this afternoon involves my feelings more than my understanding of who God is.

But that points to one of the tremendous aspects of this film, its strength and its weakness: Gibson has wrought a cinematic artifice that almost entirely escapes his intentions. I said at the beginning that Gibson has achieved what may be an unsurpassable illustration of innocent suffering, but how many viewers will take up their crosses? How many others will look at Pilate’s lackeys and go and do likewise? Gibson has disclaimed responsibility for the harm this movie may cause to Jews, to relations between Jews and Christians, to the Christians whose self-hatred succumbs to a spirit of destruction and mortification, since he did not intend those effects. He did undeniably intend, however, to sow the wind that has stirred up more-than-merely-human forces already. Who will reap the whirlwind — and who will cash the checks that flow to Icon Productions?

* In Matthew’s Gospel, of course, the words “His blood be on us and on our children” function not as an invocation of eternal retribution, but (at worst) as a claim of responsibility by those present at the scene. Christians who have through centuries made of these words a “blood curse” themselves stand condemned for their hateful misprision of a cry that should have humbled and silenced their own Christian hatred. I’m reluctantly beginning to read those words differently still, in a more intra-Judaic, Passover context; but I’m not all the way convinced yet.

Posted by AKMA at March 6, 2004 04:53 PM | TrackBack