Saturday, March 06, 2004

My thoughts on The Passion of the Christ (concluded)

I went to see The Passion of the Christ yesterday. I had my own trauma trying to find a place to park in Birmingham City Centre, eventually driving past the cinema and getting lost in a one way system, abandoning the car at the nearest available car park, wishing I had got the bus, and running like fury down Broad Street to make it in time. The viewing was essentially for Church leaders so I felt a little like Abe Foxman in Florida who sneaked in to a preview screening there; but I was honest about who I was and where I came from and they were happy to wave me in and give me a copy of the "promotional DVD" which I have yet to watch. I sat between two Anglican clergymen, both of whom I knew, and one a former colleague in the department here Birmingham so I did not feel too out of place.

I was absolutely dreading seeing the film. That may sound a little odd if you have followed my blog with its multiple postings on this film over recent weeks and months; you might almost think that I had an obsessive interest in the film. My worry was essentially focused on one thing: the violence. I am one of those people who just hates seeing violence anywhere in life. When the kids at school called "scrap", I was the one child who chose not to run to watch. I detest violence, find it very upsetting, and am not one of those people who finds is palatable as soon as it is represented on screen. And I know I am not alone in this. One colleague has told me that he has no intention to view the film at all. "I don't do violence", he said. Another friend emailed me and suggested I took a stand and did not go. But my problem is that I have followed Jesus films since I was a child. I have always been fascinated by the attempts to depict Jesus' life. I remember gathering round with the family to watch Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth on Sunday nights in 1977, something of a major national event. I always loved seeing King of Kings when it was shown every Easter and learnt to think of Jesus as looking like Jeffrey Hunter. Later, as a teenager, I loved Jesus Christ Superstar, the film, the soundtrack, the stageshow; I could not get enough of it. I still love it now. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why I also loved Life of Brian when it came out in 1979. I had grown up on Monty Python and Jesus films, and here were the two combined!

When I began lecturing in Birmingham, I found that using clips of Jesus films were a marvellous way of sparking off discussion, of getting students interested in the subject. At this stage I discovered Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, the lecturer's dream, so full of interesting scenes to spark discussion, whether historical, theological or filmic. When I began lecturing on Jesus films, I often used to say that it was unlikely that we would get a major Jesus film in the old Hollywood epic tradition. How wrong I was. First The Miracle Maker and the CBS Jesus in 1999-2000, and now The Passion of the Christ. I simply had to see this new film, albeit allegedly one of the most violent films ever made.

I am not going to try to write a review on The Passion of the Christ. There are reviews galore in this film, and I have repeatedly drawn attention to them here. And, as I have frequently commented, these film critics really know how to write; academics could learn a few things from them. Many of my thoughts have thus already been expressed more coherently by other critics. The review that came to my mind most frequently when watching the film was Mark Kermode's. He is quite right that the film is "shocking . . . but utterly compelling". I thought several times about his comment on Newsnight Review last week that one had a kind of "ominous dread" of what was to come next.

This is a very powerful film. This film gets inside your head and makes you think about it. You wake up at night thinking about it. The images are so compelling, so moving that they demand a lot from you. I wonder whether those reviewers who have reacted with vitriol are actually trying to expel the images from their minds, to prevent the film from doing its work.

Having seen the film, I am surprised about just how over the top some of these reviews are. The repeated charge of "pornography" seems quite out of place to me. Yes, the film is horribly violent but it is not gratuitously violent. Pornography is all about titillating the viewer, drawing him/her to want more to satiate their appetite for flesh. Mel Gibson does not encourage the viewer to want to see more. All the time he is asking you to turn away, to think about what is happening, to be appalled at the Roman guards' brutality, to share both of the Marys' grief. This is not pornography. Indeed the scourging scene, so often commented upon in the reviews, is not twenty minutes of watching Jesus being scourged. The camera itself cannot bear to look on and repeatedly draws away, sometimes so far that you can only hear it in the distance. I am not saying that it is not traumatic. It is. Very traumatic, deeply disturbing, very upsetting. Of course it is possible that a particular kind of viewer might derive sadistic pleasure from looking upon this, but if so they do so against the grain of the film. Unlike pornography, it is not beckoning you to watch more, much less to revel in it. The real villains of the piece, the sadistic Roman guards, are the ones who are utterly depraved. They are able to look on, to laugh, to increase the torment. The viewer turns away, cries, demands them to stop.

Many of the reviews have said that the crucifixion almost comes as an anti-climax after the scourging. I disagree. Watching the soldiers crucify Jesus was easily the most traumatic part of the film. Really upsetting. The use of flashback here is particularly moving, the Last Supper, "Love one another . . .", the Good Shepherd, the Sermon on the Mount,"Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors . . ." Very powerful. The Greatest Story Ever Told attempted to do something similar by juxtaposing John the Baptist's beheading and Antipas's demand that Jesus be arrested with "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake . . .", which is brought forward as the first beatitude. But the link is easily lost; Gibson really makes it work with the use of flashback.

Some have commented that the flashbacks are all too brief. I understand those comments. One longs to see more, especially as Jim Caviezel's Jesus is so warm and personable. The scene in Nazareth, when Jesus builds a tall table and shows it to Mary, is delightful. It is the kind of table that people may use in the future ("It could catch on"). Jesus and Mary both laugh. There is a trend here in recent Jesus films that bucks the trend of all the older films. In an article I wrote in 1997 about Jesus Christ Superstar, I commented on how rare it is to see Jesus smile anything other than a beatific smile in a Jesus film. Yet since then, we have had several portrayals of Jesus as a man with a sense of humour, from Bruce Marchiano's American applie-pie Jesus in the Visual Bible's Matthew (1996), to Jeremy Sisko's Jesus (1999), the first Jesus to dance, to the claymated Jesus voiced by Ralph Fiennes in The Miracle Maker (2000) who jokes with Mary and Martha and makes his parables amusing, to the most recent Jesus, Henry Ian Cusick in the Visual Bible's The Gospel of John (2003), who pulls off the remarkable feat of making the Johannine Jesus warm and friendly.

But having said that the flashbacks in The Passion of the Christ are terrific, I think the timing is about right. It just tantalises the viewer with reminders of Jesus' life. They provide the film's context, encouraging the viewers to fill in more from their own knowledge. It would be interesting to ask how the film would view to someone who had no knowledge at all of the Jesus story, like the Japanese viewers John Dominic Crossan was referring to in his most recent piece on beliefnet. My guess is that the flashbacks would appear so fascinating, so tantalising, that it would leave one wanting to find out more, perhaps even to read the Gospels! Perhaps Mel Gibson will think of cashing in by doing a film on Jesus' ministry. After all, prequels are all the rage these days. And, in my humble opinion, it is how the Gospels were themselves built up; the Passion Narrative came first, the extended introduction afterwards. (Go on, Mel, do us another Jesus film!)

Now some reviews have said that the film has no real feel of joy, of triumph, of redemption. That was not my experience of it. [Note: SPOILER COMING] It is true that it gives us the briefest of glimpses of the resurrection, but it leaves the viewer on that note -- Jesus has not even emerged from the tomb yet -- and you are left dwelling on what happens next. Again, it drives you back to the Gospels. In fact the ending reminded me a little of the ending of Mark's Gospel; it has that tantalising feel of "But I want to know what happened next". Given the historic difficulties faced by Jesus films in portraying the resurrection effectively, this could be seen as a brilliant decision. Gibson has resisted what would have been an obvious and perhaps clichéd final scene with Jesus meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden, so that the film could have been framed by those two gardens at each end of the story.

But also there was redemption in the cataclysmic events that happen at the death of Jesus, a tear from heaven, an earthquake, the devil cast to the pit of hell, a remarkable scene. I thought it was implied pretty strongly that the soldiers, the Temple authorities, Pilate, everyone realised that something world shattering had happened. Nothing was ever going to be the same again for any of these characters.

On the alleged anti-Semitism, in the film itself, this has been at best greatly overstated. Many of the elements that troubled the so-called ad hoc committee about the early script do not appear in the film. Perhaps, after all, their views were taken into account. With respect to the Matt. 27.25 line, "His blood be on us and on our children", it is not only that there is no subtitle but that it is lost in the crowd -- you can hardly even hear Caiaphas say it. Part of the problem now is that it is difficult to watch the film without scrutinising it at every turn for signs of anti-Semitism and one can end up seeing things that really are not there. Paula Fredriksen commented on Caiaphas's bad teeth, for example. Well, yes, he has bad teeth but so do many of the other characters on screen.

One of the ways of looking at this is to ask how the film's depiction of Jewish leaders compares with that of other Jesus films. I would say that Jesus Christ Superstar comes off far worse. In that film the Jewish authorities are on the whole played by Jewish actors whereas Jesus and his disciples are not. It carelessly writes in phrases like "permanent solution". The Passion of the Christ does not, on the other hand, enhance any of the admittedly troubling elements in the Gospels. Perhaps it could have done more to make some of the Jewish authorities less clearly out-and-out baddies; it could have done more to show Pilate's nasty, ruthless side. All these and similar elements might have been given some more attention had Gibson assembled an advisory committee consisting of Jews and Christians and others as did Garth Dabrinsky on The Gospel of John.

But that point having been conceded, I think those who have gone looking for anti-Semitism in the film have missed some pretty important elements that severely limit the plausibility of the charge. In particular, I am amazed that no one in any review I have seen (and I have read a lot!) comments on Simon of Cyrene. This is a wonderful character, beginning very reluctant to help this random criminal but in time realising that he is in the presence of someone special and encouraging Jesus. And he is directly castigated by one of the Roman guards as "Jew!" Now, I think I am correct in saying that this is the only character in the entire film who is specifically characterised as a Jew, and he is one of the most sympathetic characters in the film. I regard this point as significant and am annoyed that something so blatant has been universally missed by critics.

I would also want to echo those who say that the baddies in this film are without question the Roman guards, nasty, depraved, violent, selfish men who occupy a great deal of screen time.

One or two other random thoughts: Bob Schacht's review on Xtalk, focusing on the stations of the cross, provides a brilliant insight into the film and I was grateful to have read that before seeing it. It is quite right. It explains why the road to Golgotha is so long -- it occupies much of the film.

In reviews I have seen, no one has mentioned Veronica's appearance on the road to Golgotha. Perhaps people are not familiar with this legend, that Veronica gave Jesus a cloth and he wiped his face and his face was imprinted upon it for ever more. And one more thing -- in the subtitles Caiaphas was repeatedly spelt "Caiphas". An error?

In conclusion, a powerful film. Shocking, violent, utterly compelling; an amazing cinematic experience. On the Guardian's film site, I rated it at 8/10.

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