God would be an atheist... A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life

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Review The Passion of the Christ dir. Mel Gibson Icon Productions (2004) I finally got round to watching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ the other night. Considered simply as another Hollywood film, I would give it 4 out of 10. The direction and script were pedestrian and unimaginative. The acting, by a multinational Mediterranean cast hampered by unfamiliarity of speaking Latin and Aramaic (in theory at least, a good decision), was stilted and relied heavily on the Meaningful Glance School, where the camera dwells on a motionless frowning face to express emotions that both the script and the actor fail to provide. The editing and continuity were competent - certainly more so than Spiderman I, which sticks in my memory as the worst in Hollywood in recent years. As for accuracy... The Pope is reputed to have said "It is as it was" after viewing the film. Well, the Pope doesn't know what he's talking about. The prolonged brutality and violence that Gibson insists on showing us may have been close to reality, but little else was. From the opening scene, where Jesus and the disciples are shown in an unnaturally misty blue Garden of Gethsemane, to the final moments on the cross where Jesus is covered in make-up that bears no resemblance to the blood, mucus and mutilated flesh it is supposed to portray (while, incidentally, retaining unbroken teeth), what we see is not the reality of first-century Jerusalem but merely another made-in-the-USA film with an airbrushed view of history. Given that heritage, it is not surprising that the priests all wore new, perfectly made robes, that the leading actors were all good-looking, that the extras were well-fed, that the streets were void of dung and stray animals and so on and so on and so on. And its spiritual content? Some believers may find their faith reinforced by the film, but for the rest of us, there was little spirituality. There was no sense that Jim Caviezel's Jesus was a man who truly represented God or who was opening our eyes to a new understanding of the divine. All he offered were pleasant metaphors that were absorbed with difficulty by disciples of apparently limited intelligence and capacity for speech. Occasionally and disturbingly, we saw shadows of David Koresh, Jim Jones, Oral Roberts and any of the hundreds of well- and lesser-known leaders of cults that over the centuries have destroyed their followers' lives. At such moments the Messiah appeared deluded rather than divine. By the end of the film, I had some sympathy for the man and his new-found companions on their crosses - no-one should have to suffer such brutality. But the character I felt most empathy for was Pontius Pilate (played by Hristo Naumov Shopov - note the irony of his first name), the Roman Consul unable to resolve peacefully the challenges to his authority set him by mystics and bigots. If I had to spend eternity with any character in the film, it would be with that honest and very human man. More reviews

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