On 3 Mar 2004 at 8:59, Gary Blankenship wrote:
> Mel's camera loves the bloody spatters,
> Reaction shots, and skin in tatters;

> Marcus, good expansion.
> I haven't seen the flick and may not.  Does it end with his death or
> the resurrection?

        I hope this isn't more than you really want tol know about my
opinion of it.

        After seeing Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, maybe “The
Texas Chainsaw Baptism” would be a better name for this movie.

        I was reluctant to see it because I have wondered about Gibson’s
view of the world: to cite just one example, after several tries I
just can't get through “Braveheart” -- and "Passion" arrived already
notorious for its gore. I was prepared to steel myself for the
violence, from the hundreds (or so it seemed) of times Jesus fell in
slow motion beneath the weight of the cross, to the Romans’ flipping
of the prone cross with Jesus on it so he was face-down and then face-
up, to the crow pecking out the eyes of the crucified man next to
Jesus, and so forth.

        I was also prepared for the antisemitic elements, so they were not
surprising, from the absurd depiction of a helpless Pilate
manipulated by the evil temple priests to a contrast between the
physiognomies of Caiaphus and his cronies and the handsome Aryan
features of Jesus (and what lovely teeth he has!).

        Hollywood has long conditioned me to expect them to consider actual
history bunk. Despite Gibson’s boasts — the use of Aramaic, notably —
this film’s multi-million dollar budget clearly had no loose change
to scrape together for hiring any historians as consultants. Spikes
through the hands instead of the wrists, Pharisees as the alleged
Jewish powermongers (a transition which did not take place until
after the Jewish War ended four decades later), Pilate as a sensitive
nice guy, John son of Zebedee as clean-shaven -- the revisionist
history plods on.

        What did seem unexpected was the theology. Early in the film, Satan
asks Jesus, “Do you really believe that one man can bear the full
burden of sin?” Even the opening citation from Isaiah makes it clear
that Gibson’s interpretation begins and ends with God’s sacrifice of
Jesus to pay the penalty for the sins of all humanity, and I suppose
this simplistic soteriology is meant to justify all the brutality —
Gibson wants us to feel properly guilty. If we were not sinners,
Jesus would not have had to suffer so outrageously seems to be the
extent of it.

        Elie Wiesel’s comment that the Jewish God stopped Abraham from
slaying Isaac but the Christian God actually did kill His own son
might well be applied to Gibson. But sophisticated theological
inquiry—e.g., precisely where is the justice in substitutionary
atonement?—is apparently beyond Gibson’s capacity.

        So, as I watched the film, I realized that the movie’s title might
be appropriate after all. What matters to Gibson is the passion of
the Christ, not the years leading up to those final dozen hours.
Since Jesus died for our sins, he lived for nothing; all that counts
is the sacrificial death, not the life or the ministry, not the
teachings or the example.

        This exclusive focus on the passion explains why the film’s
occasional flashbacks seem so random and disjointed, and so cavalier
in their sloppy use of gospel material — Mary Magdalene, for
instance, misidentified as the woman taken in adultery.
Significantly, the most poignant of the flashbacks (the other Mary,
seeing Jesus stumble as he carries his cross, remembers her little
child tripping while playing) is not scriptural at all.  Scripture,
finally, does not seem to signify for Gibson; only suffering and
slaughter does.

        Gibson’s perspective wrecks the story's -- and the film’s -- plot
line. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God in what he said and did: he
turned the world’s selfish and cynical set of values inside out, and
discredited the world’s exploitative power structures. If anything
like “the cleansing of the temple” actually took place, it is no
wonder the ruling caste was determined to get rid of him. But, since
Gibson is preoccupied with Jesus’ death rather than his life, Gibson
must find some other turning point — and so he tries to foist off on
us the ridiculous proposition that Jesus was condemned for claiming
titles like “son of God” and “messiah.” The fact is that “son of God”
was a familiar Jewish expression — the Hebrew Bible has many sons of
God, from kings to angels — and history records numerous “anointed”
figures in Jewish history; the appellations were the stuff
of controversy but hardly of capital punishment.

        Gibson is not just a pre-Vatican II “Traditional Roman Catholic,”
but rather he is a medieval Catholic. The graphic visuals are
straight out of medieval European art. Little children’s faces
metamorphosing into devilish gargoyles and similar grotesqueries
spring straight out of Hieronymus Bosch; Gibson owes more to Dante’s
Inferno than he does to mainstream theology. The heavy emphasis on
Jesus’ mother is medieval Mariolatry. All that implicit antisemitism
has medieval roots.

        Because Gibson's "Passion" has its theological and artistic head so
firmly buried in the medieval sand, it is pernicious. This is a film
that will divide people, not bring them together. What any age's
sick, dangerous world needs is the merciful and healing love of
Jesus, not a reversion to the thinking that spawned the Inquisition.

Marcus