Flak Magazine: Review of The Passion of the Christ, 03.03.04

"Ooh! That digital sound really lets you hear the blood splatter!" Mel Gibson said that, but, suprisingly, not about The Passion of the Christ. He said it on an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Mel and Homer reshoot the ending of a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington remake featuring Gibson as Jefferson Smith. Smith arises from the filibuster to javelin an American flag through Senator Payne's chest, and when the senator falls over a table, the flag stands upright and waves patriotically. Smith then shoots up the senate chamber ("With a vengeance!" notes Homer), the Capitol dome explodes and Smith slices off the head of the president with the Senate's seal, as a gaggle of children run into the bloodsoaked chamber to cheer their hero.

That this episode now seems darkly prophetic (Homer suggests to Mel that he should wear a "funny hat" to "show his papal side," to which Mel forcefully replies, "No!") exemplifies Gibson's strange and fascinating duality. The Gibson that critics of The Passion of the Christ have focused on is Sadomasochist Mel, the one who was drawn and quartered in Braveheart, was covered in blood after hatcheting a British soldier in The Patriot and, of course, was Mad Max. There's also the popular, sunshiny Star Mel who won the People's Choice Award in January despite not having released a movie in the past 18 months, who was People Magazine's inaugural Sexiest Man Alive, who is a torchbearer for the Three Stooges and who even knows what women want.

Just who is Mel Gibson? The Gibson featured in the Jan. 27th Star tabloid (featuring a 40-something woman's wet dream of Mel — very handsome, standing ankle deep in the ocean with blue jeans and a white shirt buttoned down to his chest with the sleeves rolled up) is one who lends a helping hand to Robert Downey Jr. and Courtney Love, says he's "hurt" by the charges of anti-Semitism leveled at the movie, works (secretly, of course) for numerous charities and is "passionately devoted" to his wife and kids. The Star's Mel loves his fans, thanking them "from the bottom of his heart for honoring him, receding hairline and all." This Mel says of his new movie, "It's the biggest adventure story of all time … the biggest love story of all time." And why this material? Star Mel is "religiously devoted" and just thinks that "most great stories are hero stories. There is no greater hero story than this."

Does this sound at all like the Mel Gibson who has called the critics of his new movie "the forces of Satan?" Who said of reporter Frank Rich, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick … I want to kill his dog?" Whose father denies the Holocaust? Whom David Denby says made "one of the cruelest movies in the history of the cinema?" In truth, Sadomasochist Mel has always lurked underneath Star Mel, occasionally leaking into the latter persona; now even Mel's seemingly innocent love for the Three Stooges (he helped produce a TV biopic about the Stooges in 2000) seems a little creepy. Gibson admits in a foreword to a 1995 history of the Stooges to "laugh(ing) like an idiot while watching Curly strip the teeth off a tree saw when it's run across his nubby cranium; or Larry wince as Moe tears chunks of the little hair he has left from Larry's head." Gibson confesses that he enjoys the Marx Bros., but he finds the Stooges "immensely pleasing in some primal way."

This duality has yielded a passion play equally as bipolar: a wrenching and deeply personal Hollywood spectacle. Gibson has said that the Holy Spirit worked through him on The Passion of the Christ, which is a way of saying that he operated totally on instinct, going for something primal. Unfortunately, the story is beyond Gibson's abilities as a filmmaker. The unanswerable questions of "historical accuracy" don't even need to be dealt with because the film's narrative doesn't make much sense: If Jesus was so dangerous to the temple elite, where are all his supporters threatening rebellion? If Pontius Pilate is such a cruel ruler whom the Jews feared, why does he treat Jesus with such compassion? If Pilate is so easily manipulated by the Jewish people, how did he maintain control in such a distant outpost of the Roman Empire? Many more questions go unanswered.

Gibson doesn't have the intellectual heft and directorial control to mold his various sources into a traditional narrative. In fact, there's barely any story here at all. Jesus is offered as an object of torture, and then we watch just that for two hours. Gibson provides some semi-helpful flashbacks for a little context, but time that could have been utilized for fully fleshed-out scenes is chewed up by the slow-motion depiction of flesh being chewed up.

Instead of making a motion picture, Gibson has made a motion painting of Christ's passion as a meditation on torture. To this end, Gibson and his team are quite successful. Italian production designer Francesco Frigeri and set decorator Carlo Gervasi construct the temple, praetorium and Pilate's palace to absorb direct sunlight but reflect limited light in the shadows; the effect is a look of tarnished gold. Indeed, the Romans' cruelty toward the Jews mars the empire's gilded ambitions. Legendary costume designer Maurizio Millenotti contributes to the effect, creating thick off-white robes adorned by ostentatious gold and black designs for the high priests.

Most principal to Gibson's vision, however, is Caleb Deschanel's striking cinematography. Deschanel has essentially made 24 Caravaggios a second for two hours and 15 minutes. Caravaggio's Christ canvases cover roughly the same scope as The Passion of the Christ, from "The Betrayal of Christ" to "The Flagellation of Christ" to "The Entombment," and provide Deschanel with a distinctive filming strategy. Caravaggio revolutionized Baroque painting with a technique called tenebrism, in which the figures stand out from a dark background via a painter's version of a spotlight. The light in a Caravaggio stems from a single source off-canvas, often as if the light is fighting its way into the frame. This form evokes the idea that God himself illuminates the scene, shining His light into a world of darkness. Deschanel adapts this method to film, God's narration on the scene conveyed by how the light enters into the frame.

In a way, Deschanel creates a fully-rounded character out of God solely from the cinematography — in fact, if you accept that premise, then God has the clearest narrative arc in the film, beginning with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to his Father, symbolized by the crystal-white moon casting shards of light through the trees, to when Jesus finally makes it to the cross, with Deschanel reflecting the sun off the dried blood caramelized on his ravaged body, as if Christ is radiating light brighter than the world around him by his wounds. With the tarnished walls and dirty marble floor functioning as the darkened backdrop, Deschanel films the scourge with a few rays of sun peeking through the courtyard's walls at Jesus, the darkness conveying God's disapproval of the Romans while highlighting Christ's suffering for his cause. Perhaps the most striking scene in the entire movie is the opening of the cave, with a ray of Easter dawn shining right through the stigmata.

The most striking difference between Gibson's film and Caravaggio's canvases is the physical depiction of Christ's wounds. Much has already been made of Gibson's fixation on the physical violence inflicted on Jesus, even to that inflicted literally on Jim Caviezel, whose performance is so convincing that you never question that we are watching a man suffer unthinkable pain. Caviezel has always had a weird persona, as if he's uneasy sharing the screen with the likes of Ashley Judd. His characters cry out internal distress from under an external calm. Here, Gibson inverts Caviezel's mysterious demeanor, exuding internal calm under external distress. Perhaps Caviezel's own religious devotion (his own Catholicism is so devout that he turned down a sex scene with Jennifer Lopez in Angel Eyes) drove his willingness to offer his body to the role (including a few real lashings, a separated shoulder and, most forebodingly, a lightning strike). This willingness, however, has contributed to the personal charge of sadism against Gibson. For Gibson, this may not be true, but at least for the audience, there's no pleasure in witnessing this carnality. Considering the physiological evidence of what happens to body during crucifixion (from which the word "excruciating" is derived), Gibson's fixation may not be overly sensationalized. Thus, the film isn't pornographic because the violence is, at least in theory, in the service of a higher purpose.

Yet you can't help but question Gibson's purpose. The intense detail is one thing (the sound and make-up people earn their pay), but when Gibson gobbles up a third of his running time with slow-motion scenes of whipping and Christ falling down, you have to wonder how he thinks we will react to this meditation. Even a Baroque realist like Caravaggio didn't cover Christ's body with canals of lash marks. The reaction is, of course, entirely personal: The true believers I sat with wept openly, and some simply recoiled. I have listened to preachers speak in downright physiological terms about why water and blood spurted from the wound in Jesus side while he was on the cross, but the power of film transcends even that. The word "operatic" has been used, but with opera, there's still the safety of the stage. Being dwarfed by a 40-foot screen with Dolby Surround Sound pumping in your ears, though? It feels as if Gibson is beating his audience into submission, continuing to pound on Jesus long after he's made his point. Maybe we're supposed to feel guilty that Jesus' punishment is wrought by the sins of mankind, or even anger at those who perpetrate the violence, but Gibson's extremism is so extreme that it makes us ask whether it's the Romans who are cruel, or the filmmaker.

Until Christ begins the journey to Golgotha, Gibson retains some sense of sanity. But as the crucifixion nears, Gibson leaves realism and ventures into abstractions so strange that they approach gallows humor. The miscalculation is that Gibson has so concentrated on "realism" that his final touches seem outlandish, as if David Lynch momentarily grabbed the reins: An androgynous Satan watches the proceedings, mixing about in the crowd of Jews, carrying what looks to be a baby with Don Rickles' head. King Herod resembles a late-night cross dresser Dave Attell might encounter on "Insomniac." A crow lands on the cross, plucking out an eyeball with Three Stooges-ish "squish" and "plop" sound effects. After Jesus dies, an earthquake shakes all of Palestine, while Satan looks on horrified in the middle of a cracked desert — and then Herod's wig blows right off his head! When a single raindrop (presumably God shedding a single tear) falls to the dirt of Golgotha, the camara shifts to an overhead shot of the crucifixion, and the camera plunges toward the earth, shifting away just in time to capture the individual specks of dirt kicked up. Clearly, Gibson means to interpret the passion on some artistic level, but doing so undermines whatever power was left of his visceral realism.

Gibson is a true believer, so those lashings are no metaphor. Gibson's brutality challenges the safety of the secular, Joseph Campbell-bred notion that the passion story is merely symbolic — it's hard to think in figurative terms when Jesus' rib is sticking through his skin, particularly since we know such things happened in the Roman empire. In many ways, The Passion of the Christ resembles — to the point of borrowing a few shots and much of its design — Ridley Scott's similarly brutal Roman epic Gladiator. In that film, Scott positions the audience as the Roman mob: "Are you not entertained?" Russell Crowe asks us. But Gibson's violence is agonizing rather than thrilling, so we can't relate to the mob — they're irredeemably bloodthirsty. Rather, the audience is positioned as the weeping Mary, mopping up the blood after Christ's scourge. That the Jewish high priest Caiaphas revels in Jesus' punishment, and the mob so enthusiastically calls for it, is the truest fuel for a charge of anti-Semitism: No, Mel, we are not entertained, and because of the slow-motion and the vicious sound effects, we can't figure out why those Jews are either. Or, for that matter, why Judas' kiss lingers a little too long on Christ's neck, or why Peter gazes so longingly at the nearly naked body of Jesus.

Not to downplay the offense this movie might pose to the Jewish people, but what's really at stake in 21st century America is not anti-Semitism. Mel's audience for this movie is primarily evangelistic protestants, most of whom have already allied themselves staunchly with Israel. Simply put, the evangelicals flocked to this film because it's been marketed as a religious experience, a direct rebuke of the perceived anti-Christian bias in the nation's media and culture. The culture war in this country is real, with Hollywood at the crucible. More than sex and violence (a distrubing number of evangelicals have brought their children to see Mel's movie), it's Hollywood's secularized worldview that's the target of the Christian right's ire. They seem to be flocking to Gibson's film for the same reason Democrats flocked to John Kerry — someone identified with the other team (a Hollywood icon in one case, a Vietnam vet in the other) is on our side, thus inoculating us from their criticism.

This culture war, whose embers have been flamed by The Passion of the Christ, is important because it's not just about what's a tolerable amount of grinding during the Super Bowl halftime. It's being fought at the highest levels of government in a deeply divided nation. The president himself is a "true believer," and by the strength drawn from the same energized base of true-believing conservatives that gave Gibson an amazing $125 million five-day box-office total, he has crusaded straight to the cradle of civilization. For all of Gibson's claims of "authenticity," The Passion of the Christ is less about first-century Palestine and more about the organized evangelical movement in this country intent on winning this war. Listen to Rev. Jack Graham of the Southern Baptist Convention: "This is the providence of God that in the midst of an international war on terrorism, in the midst of a cultural and domestic war for the family, God raises up a standard." Tthe question is how and to what "standard" The Passion raises these "wars." What are the true believers crusading for, other than victory itself?

One of the most common criticisms of The Passion of the Christ is that it speaks so little of the teachings of Jesus. For Gibson, that may be beside the point beacuse he has chosen to focus solely on the human suffering of Jesus, as a painter might focus on a single image for a painting. But how do we love our neighbors, nonetheless our enemies, when we're being called to battle? This gaping wound in the movie's theology unwittingly reinforces the worldview of the evangelical audience. As Peter Boyer wrote in his New Yorker article, Gibson has filmed the story of Christ as if it were a war movie. When the hero Christ rises in the cave at the end of the film, God's anointing light shines on him from the opening. We see the light shine through the wounds on his hands, the rousing sound of a militaristic drumbeats marshalling the savior to war.

That's the essence of the evangelicals' obsession with this movie: We're fighting a war here, people — a war against terrorists, gays, secular humanists, Muslims, the NEA (both of them), the Palestinians, Hollywood, the French, Janet Jackson's right breast and, above all others, liberals. And Jesus is the co-pilot of this B-2 bomber of moral righteousness. With so little reference to the teachings of Jesus (especially those from, say, the Book of Luke, which tell of the good Samaritan, the rich man and Lazarus), the modern evangelical Christian crusader's worldview is never brought into question — in fact, The Passion of the Christ reinforces it.

The question Gibson's passion poses is not why Jesus was crucified, but can you stomach that he was crucified? The film's unbearable realism dares the audience: Do you believe in a God that would allow flesh to be ripped and bones to be cracked in the name of salvation? As the returns roll in from the many overwhelmed evangelical Christians who have seen the film, it seems that your opinion of the film is sort of an initiation into the fraternity of true believers — if you are moved, then you are one of us. In the end, the evangelical audience identifies with Christ's lashings because they too feel lashed for their beliefs. General Jesus Christ is reborn, is awarded the most earned Purple Heart in history, and summons his Christian soldiers to march forth and fight whatever battles He calls us to. By resurrecting the savior as a military man, both Gibson and the evangelcals license the manifest destiny of Christian empires. If Paul Wolfowitz is a neo-conservative, then Mel Gibson is a neo-Roman, or worse.

As for the film itself, many critics have narrowly projected the film onto Gibson's psyche, either as shots at Mel's masochistic fixations or exaltations of Mel's passion for his art. But that the public can identify the man as simply "Mel" points to something deep in the soul of the moviemaker itself. The movie industry is at once and necessarily passionate and vain; Mel Gibson's duality (entertainment media icon and fundamentalist true believer) embodies Hollywood's own messiah complex. These counterparts are necessary just to get a movie made. Epic films require so much capital that only wealthy Hollywood-made mythmakers with the status of George Lucas or Gibson can create such uncompromised spectacles without studio interference, and the spectacle itself requires true belief in the man himself on the part of the cast, crew and, most importantly, the audience. There's hubris in making movies — the artist's guilt in exalting himself as an icon just to cast his deepest passions onscreen. Gibson, who gave up on a life in the priesthood after stardom was thrust upon him at an early age, returned to his traditionalist religion after a decade-long life of Hollywood vanity. These two Gibsons seemed at war with each other in Braveheart, resulting in the drawn-and-quartered crucifixion of the secular Mel. For the secular moviegoer, Mel Gibson doesn't so much as offer Christ to his audience, as he offers himself to his audience. "Flagellate me if you must," he seems to say. "But this film is who I am, its volume of blood equal to my volume of guilt. And if this kills my career, then so be it." Gibson seems to be apologizing to God for violating the second commandment and making himself into a graven image of Hollywood worship. While this passion calls controversy upon itself — and Mel is more than willing to fight his critics to the death of his career — the basic dynamic is no different than that of a James Cameron or Stanley Kubrick. Through The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson has martyred himself for the cause of the passionate but conflicted Hollywood filmmaker.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)