Bruce Chilton sees the Passion and hates it (concluded)

In the latest of the excellent series of reviews on The Passion of the Christ on Bible and Interpretation, Bruce Chilton offers the following:

Mel Gibson’s Passion Play
Mr. Gibson has fashioned a blunt instrument of propaganda, edged with artistry, whose visceral power gives it the potential to become his most lethal weapon of all.
By Bruce Chilton

I am beginning to think that I am the only NT scholar who actually liked this film! Happily I know that there are a few others of us because I've had one or two supportive comments in response to the blog. Chilton's review is written with some wit and features some useful insights, but ultimately it descends into unsavoury rhetoric. Several of his observations are unrecognisable to me. Consider this remark, for example,

In consideration of the weeping popcorn chompers around me, I did not laugh aloud. But reflective silence only confirmed my conviction that this is the funniest Jesus-movie since The Life of Brian.

I am amazed that anyone could find this film funny, even as a means of expressing real distaste for it in a negative review. The notion that Satan and the ugly baby look like Dr Evil and mini-me from Austin Powers I find difficult to take seriously.

As one begins the review, it looks like it's going to be a positive one. This remark about the opening scene in Gethsemane is, I think, exactly right:

Jesus’ psychic pain is at its height at this point. In fact, the film reaches is climax within three minutes or so; everything that follows is denouement. This is a very brave dramatic gamble and a success.

I found the Gethsemane scene so powerful that I felt that I was likely to find the entire film really engaging. It captures you right at the start. On the Gethsemane scene, Chilton also comments:

As he lies on the ground in his prayer to God in Gethsemane, Satan releases a snake. But once again on his feet, Jesus crushes the snake’s head and marches out to meet his tormenters. No, of course that scene is not in the Gospels; Satan and his snake are imported from medieval imagination. They represent a Christological reading of Genesis 3:15, tinged with the imagery of the Revelation. That is allowed in a passion play, as are all the scenes Mr. Gibson invents from legend and imagination.

Indeed -- and I would want to add that one does not even need to go back to the passion plays. All Jesus films, to varying degrees, work legend and imagination into their screenplays. Those that do it the least are Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew, Jesus (1979), Matthew (Visual Bible, 1996) and the recent Gospel of John (Visual Bible, 2003), but The Passion of the Christ is by no means the richest user of legend and imagination. I would say that King of Kings (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Miracle Maker (1999) and Jesus (1999) all have far greater input from legend and imagination that Gibson's film.

On the imagery of Jesus stamping on the snake's head, I agree with Chilton that ultimately this is based in Genesis 3.15, but it should be added that the theme is developed in the New Testament and finds its most direct source in Luke 10.19, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you."

But Chilton goes on:

And as in the case of any passion play, the artistry consists in what is invented, not in fidelity to the Gospels, and history is beside the point.

I think that this is too strong. There is plenty of artistry in the way that material from the Gospels is adapted by Gibson. Consider, for example, the use of flashbacks based on Gospel material. In Luke 22.61, the narrator casts the reader's mind back to the Last Supper at which Peter's denial had been prophesied, saying "The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had told him, 'Before a cock crows today, you will deny Me three times.'" What Gibson does with this verse is to use flashback: Peter denies Jesus, Jesus looks at him and the viewer is then shown the prophecy at the Last Supper. There is artistry in the way that the film-maker uses this device to dramatise a Gospel text. I don't recall having seen flashback used in this scene in other Jesus films (though cf. two other recent films for the use of flashback, the recent Gospel of John, utilising black-and-white, and The Miracle Maker, moving between claymation for the main narrative and animation for flashback).

Chilton asks about the death of Judas:

These vivid images do tip into camp from time to time. Judas hangs himself by taking the rope off a rotting donkey, a rope big enough to pull a barge. He ties himself to a tree overhanging a cliff. The viewer is left wondering how he got up there: Did Satan levitate him?

In a way, the question is irrelevant -- the power of the scene is in the cut from the scene involving the pursuit and haunting by demonic children, the dead donkey and Satan, to Judas alone, hanging dead on the tree. If one must ask the question, surely Judas climbed the tree.

I would also like to comment on the following:

The burial, by the way, completely eliminates the role of Joseph of Arimathea that is pivotal in the Gospels: an opportunity to portray crucial sympathy by one of Jesus’ contemporaries in Judaism is squandered. In any case, his immaculate linen shroud trembles in the breeze, awaiting shipment to Turin. He stands, his face, butt, and punctured right hand in profile. He marches out of the tomb much as he marched out to his tormenters in Gethsemane but to the marshal beat of a drum.

The point about Joseph of Arimathea is an interesting one -- yes, this is an opportunity missed. On the other hand, I don't know that the burial shroud particularly evoked the Turin shroud. Indeed if Gibson had been influenced by the latter, would he not have had the nails driven through the wrists in the crucifixion scene? Perhaps Chilton is being sarcastic. On the marching out of the tomb, I am puzzled -- this was not in the version of the film I saw, unless I am not remembering it accurately. Can anyone shed any light?

Another passage of interest is on stoning:

She [Mary Magdalene] is nearly stoned by a ring of people with rocks, much as in the stoning scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian rather than by the method of being thrown from a cliff and crushed with a large rock, which both the New Testament and the Mishnah refer to.

A couple of comments here. First, one does not need to go to Life of Brian to see depictions of this kind of stoning; the films Life of Brian is parodying depict stoning this way; likewise The Last Temptation of Christ, which postdated Life of Brian, again depicts it this way. In other words, the mention of Life of Brian in this context is unnecessary. Was there anything else in this scene in The Passion of the Christ that evoked Life of Brian? [Footnote: not a rhetorical question. Last Temptation self-consciously pays homage to Life of Brian in its Sermon on the Mount scene that follows on from the stoning. It's possible that Gibson did something similar, but if he did, I didn't notice it.]

And my second comment on this. Chilton refers to "the method of being thrown from a cliff and crushed with a large rock" as occurring in the New Testament and the Mishnah. However, the NT evidence is much less clear than Chilton implies. Presumably he is referring to Luke 4.29, "And they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff". But this does not specifically describe this process as stoning and it is only one text among several. Other texts suggest that the standard filmic depiction is reasonable:

• John 8.59: Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.
• John 10.31: The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.

Further, Acts 7.58-59 also appears to depict stoning in the traditionally understood way. And surely the very story under discussion (John 8.1-11) imagines the protagonists with stones, or what could the line, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8.7, NASB), mean? In other words, there is no need to invoke Life of Brian here; standard filmic depictions based on New Testament evidence would be enough.

By the end of his review, I have the feeling that Chilton's rhetoric is running away with him and there is little sense of proportion:

By mixing together the genre of the passion play with the pretension of historical accuracy, Gibson has inadvertently made his passion play into pious vaudeville. Claims that this film reflects the Gospels or history are cynical. Critics who treat it as a historical work have confused their profession with self-promotion. Were this film directed by Mel Brooks, we would have something to watch with pleasure. But Mr. Gibson’s Passion is libelous farce, poor art, and an incentive for credulous viewers to confuse Christian faith with hatred.

While I remain sceptical about any claims of special historical accuracy for this film, I do not think that it is "cynical" to suggest that it reflects the Gospels. Many of its lines are straight from the Gospels and on the whole more of its script is derived from the New Testament than is the case with several other Jesus films (cf. Darrell Bock's excellent guide). I would personally regard associating the film with Austin Powers, Monty Python and Mel Brooks as more peculiar than associating it with the New Testament. Nor is the film, for all its flaws, "poor art", as Chilton appears to acknowledge earlier in the review. And I find the assertion about "credulous viewers" confusing "Christian faith with hatred" a difficult one to assess in the light of the film's major, repeated theme through the crucifixion narrative of love of one another, love of enemies, prayer for persecutors and forgiveness of sin. For many viewers it is this theme of overwhelming love in the face of such appalling hatred and wickedness that makes the film so powerful. I do not think that viewers who feel this way are credulous, nor that there is any confusion of the Christian faith with hatred. Quite the contrary.