Mel Gibson's Passion

You asked what I thought of Mel Gibson's "Passion", but I hardly know what to say. Whether you get anything out of the movie depends on what you are looking for. If, for example, you were a professional in the movie business -- I mean a cinematographer, or a makeup specialist, or a set designer, or a costumer, or whatever -- then yes, there is no question that you should go see the film multiple times, so that you could study it as a professional piece of work. Viewed simply as a piece of craftsmanship, it is excellently done; Mel Gibson had something quite specific in mind with this movie, and he executed his design superbly.

If you were a professional art historian specializing in the development of Catholic iconography over the centuries, again I would tell you to go see the movie for professional reasons. Gibson is, of course, a schismatic Catholic; most of the propaganda for the movie in this country, however, has been undertaken by Protestant groups. But there is absolutely no doubt that many of the scenes were informed by great Catholic art. Throughout the movie you catch glimpses that go past almost before you blink where Gibson has apparently constructed a scene around one or another famous painting or sculpture. He is subtle about this ... it's not like the movie is a tour of "Great Moments in Art History." But the whole "look-and-feel" of the movie is informed by the traditions of the best Catholic art, no question about it.

But if you then ask, "Never mind that it was done so well -- should it have been done at all?" ... well, the answer gets a lot murkier. Another friend and I disagreed on this point. He reminded me that all Mel Gibson personally ever said in favor of his film was, in effect: "Look, this subject has a great deal of personal meaning for me, because I got through a really rough part in my life a few years ago by meditating on the sufferings of Jesus; and I happened to have $20 million lying around with nothing to spend it on, so I decided to make a movie. The movie's audience will number at least one -- namely me, because the subject matters to me; and if nobody else wants to go see it, I can live with that."

My own take is that, judged morally instead of artistically, the movie is obscene, not (lest I be misunderstood) on account of sex (there is none) but on account of the violence. I mean the word "obscene" in the most literal sense possible: the movie shows things that should be hidden from view, that should be done offstage and reported by a herald. Aristotle would never have allowed it to be screened.

Nor do I mean that it is obscenely violent merely because the subject matter is unavoidably so. Instead, Gibson revels in the violence; the movie is grossly, luxuriantly, gluttonously, rapturously violent. Next to this movie the most lurid Euripidean tragedy looks refined and prudish, and even a horror like "Titus Andronicus" looks almost decorous and restrained. Reviews that describe the movie as "two hours spent watching a guy get beat up" oversimplify, but they are not too far off the mark.

I have heard it objected that the movie is so bloody only because it is historically accurate. I have heard it said that this is what it would really look like if somebody were to undergo the tortures described in the Gospels. I'm sure this part is true. The Romans did not become masters of the known world by being pussycats ... at least, not unless the rest of us are mice. The Romans were ferocious and brutal and sadistic; their rule depended on it, and they were grimly effective at maintaining that rule. I have no doubt that a prisoner who fell into the hands of Roman justice would have fared every bit this badly.

But Gibson is making a movie, a work of art, not a newsreel. The news reporters who followed American troops as they liberated Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald had a reason to capture the horror of those places on film, because it was their job. They didn't have artistic choices to make; they just turned the cameras on and let the film roll. Gibson does not have their excuse, although for sheer brutality his film ranks way ahead of something like "Schindler's List."

Is this a good thing? That depends heavily on how you understand the Crucifixion.

1. For someone who believes that Jesus's suffering has a cosmic significance, yes it is a good thing. For that person the movie's graphic brutality drives home, in a very visceral way, how much God must love us if he was willing to undergo so much torment in order to free us from the burden of Adam's sin. I have heard any number of people (Protestants, mostly) praise the movie in exactly these terms.

2. For someone who believes that the flesh is inherently sinful, that virtue resides in the spirit alone, and that suffering therefore purifies us -- in other words, for the latter-day Gnostics and Flagellants among us -- yes it is a good thing. For if suffering purifies us, think how much suffering it must take to wash away the sins of the world! And this movie shows us every quivering spasm of all that suffering, in breathless living color. For someone who believes that (in effect) pain is good, our ability to share vicariously in Jesus's punishment through watching it on the screen must (I suppose) be salutary.

3. But anyone who thinks that Jesus's suffering and execution were simply gross injustices, the movie was finally just too much. There are days that I think the Passion may be the biggest red herring in Christianity; it is so dramatic that it draws attention away from other (arguably more important) parts of Jesus's life, such as the Ministry and the Resurrection. I can only shake my head ruefully that the World prefers to focus on the Nativity and the Passion. But this is only to say that I wish Gibson had made a different movie. And if you ask me what I think of Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" it does you no good for me to answer "Well I wish he had done 'Coriolanus' instead ...." And that is more or less what I am saying here.

I'm almost inclined to say that you should go see the movie just so that you can come up with your own reasons to hate it. Or I could say "See it because it is certain to become a touchstone of modern culture and you will want to know what everybody is talking about." Certainly it is a serious-enough movie that "liking it" is really not an applicable concept; some of the people I've heard who are most enthusiastic about it say that they didn't "like" it. It is certainly not a "date movie." People leave the theater afterwards in stunned silence, because it is so awesome and so draining. If you take your wife to see it one Friday night, bear in mind that it is about as romantic as "Schindler's List" or "Macbeth" or "King Lear." Do not under any circumstances let your children anywhere near it -- at least not until they are older.

I can't advise you. To tell you to see it and to tell you to avoid it both sound wrong to me. I don't know what more to say than that. I hope I have told you enough here to let you make your own decision.