Sunday, April 11, 2004
Jason Watches The Passion (So You Don't Have To)
...So after three weeks of meaning to, I finally overcame the deadly sin of sloth, got off my duff, laid my blood-money on the cinema counter, and went to see Mel Gibson's version of The Passion of the Christ.
A few observations, and things I would have done differently...
First, and most importantly: Monica Belucci, the Italian actress who plays Mary Magdelene, has been vetted by the IraqNow editorial staff, and we--no, make that, I, have declared her officially hot.
Now that the important stuff is out of the way, we can get to the more trivial matters of assessing the artistic, historical, and theological merits of the film.
Overall--for what it is, and for what Gibson apparently intends for it to be--a vivid portrayal of the final hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and a gruesome account of the brutality of his death--it is riveting, and definitely worth a look.
If it were my screenplay, I would have probably tread more lightly on the Jungian nightmare aspects of the film.
Case in point: The skinny bald guy who appears constantly throughout the film who's supposed to represent evil.
(no, not THAT bald guy!)
Now we first encounter Evil guy in the Garden of Gesthemane, where he represents temptation--in the insidious guise of sympathy and understanding. As Christ pleads with the Father to "let this cup pass from my lips," the still small voice of Satan soothingly counsels, "No man can alone bear the sins of the world on his shoulders," whispers Evil. "It is too much."
Ok, I was with Gibson so far. I thought that was an effective way to portray the temptation--and writ large, the way evil works in all our lives--the soft and coaxing siren that leads us to avoid the real crises and challenges in our lives and leads us to, well, blog.
But Jesus finally says "not my will, but thine, be done," and victory over temptation is complete. With these words, Jesus dies to self and selfishness, offers himself in perfect submission to be the instrument of God, and only a fool could not get the message.
Mel Gibson, of course, knows that it's fools who make expensive movies profitable, though, and doesn't halt the sequence with the words of Christ. Instead, he invests another 30 seconds or so in coaxing a serpent out from between evil's legs, and letting it slither around Jesus's feet for a few seconds, before Gibson finally transmits his already clear message to the least among us by having Jesus crush the serpent's head under his foot.
Got it, Mel. Thanks.
Mike Myers, Eat Your Sacred Heart Out!
Now, ok--I'm down with the metaphysics of the crucifixion and scourging and the victory over death. And I can buy into the idea that a titanic battle between Good and Evil was fought that day. And I can therefore buy into a certain amount of interaction between this world and the spiritual world.
I was even with Mel when the little kids who were taunting Judas after his betrayal became demons. I'm sure that the whole world must have seemed that way to Judas--and that would have been his motivation to commit suicide in the very effective "Where's A Rope When You Need One?" scene.
(By the way--I loved the Cheshire Cat grin on the face of the dead donkey. That image alone was worth the price of admission.)
But the Evil Bald Guy shows up throughout the movie. In one scene--during the long and draining scourging of Christ, he actually shows up cradling another, diminutive Evil Bald Guy in his arms.
That's right--I couldn't make something like that up, folks! Mel Gibson meets Mini-Me.
But I can find no mention of an Evil Bald Guy of any size in that role in the Gospel. Ok, I'm all about artistic license. I loved Jesus Christ Superstar. But his role was inconsistent. For example, having first attempted to sabatoge the sacrifice of Christ in the opening sequence, he seems to spend the rest of the movie delighting in it--even egging it on. Helping come to pass.
Now, I'm not a charter member of the Evil Bald Guy Association. But if I were, I wouldn't have made such a mess of it. Any real, self-respecting Satanic figure worthy of the name--having failed to lure Christ into temptation (c'mon, He's God. The contest was rigged from the get-go!), would immediately go to work on the easier targets--the knuckle-dragging troglodytes in the Roman army, and the morally blind scribes and Pharisees. He could have sabatoged the crucifixion by, say, trying to convince the Romans to break some bones. By appearing as a centurion and stopping the soldiers from casting lots and dividing up his clothing (Psalm 22, v. 19), offering Christ water to drink, Or by encouring them to break a bone--thereby rendering the sacrifice of Christ at variance with the proscribed sacrifice of the passover lamb in the Old Testament (Exodus 12: 46, Psalm 34:20 , and Numbers 9:12
A REAL Satanic figure would have tried to separate the Crucifixion as it happened from the way it is prophesied in the Old Testament, and the way it is foreshadowed in the Jewish feasts.
And herein, sadly, lies Mel Gibson's missed opportunity. The viewer is vaguely aware that the trial and crucifixion occur during Passover--but there is no connection made between the two intimately-connected events. Indeed, the Christian cannot separate the crucifixion from Passover, because the crucifixion's metaphorical meaning is entirely rooted in the Passover.
A House Built Upon Sand
Gibson's Passion unfortunately, is decontextualized from its biblical foundations. Or more precisely, Gibson assumes his viewership can bring their own contextualization to the movie, from a simultaneous understanding of Christian and Jewish religious thought and practice.
Very few people, alas, are conversant with both sides of the equation. And so layers of meaning--and layers of mutual understanding--are lost to both Jewish and Christian viewers.
And without a firm grasp of the old testament lamb metaphor, Yom Kippur, sacrifice, and the vitality of Mosaic Law on the part of Christians, and a simultaneous grasp of the Christian idea that Christ was a Lamb of sacrifice, and that Christ was simultaneously God, and herein lies the profundity of the sacrifice and the expression of God's love, then the Passion of the Christ appears banal.
It's been said by one critic that the movie is really a mirror. How you perceive it reflects more about you than it does about Christ. I agree. But I wish that the movie could have been more of a two-way window between the two traditions than a mirror.
Perhaps with all the discussion, it is becoming just that.
Which brings us to the question of the hour:
Is the movie Anti-Semitic?
Here's what most goys don't get: non-Christians do not share the same set of cultural associations that Christians do.
Christians associate the Crusades with a noble struggle on behalf of God's will; Jews and others (with a more finely delineated grasp of history, in my view), associate it with pogroms and monstrous atrocities such as nailing Jewish babies to fenceposts--a favorite pasttime of crusaders in transit through Europe on the way to the wars.
We see this cultural misunderstanding manifest even today--to wit: the Bush Administration's original, tin-eared and ignorant label for the war against the Taliban: "Operation Noble Crusade." The very name of the operation threatened to undermine the needed support of other Muslim countries, because of this differing historical perspective. Fortunately, the name was quickly changed.
More en point, I see churches still hanging "Passion Play" signs on their bulletin boards. But while Christians associate "passion play" with holidays and wonder and bring their children, many Jews still associate the term with a prelude to a rape. Which in some ways it was.
Is The Passion an anti-semitic portrayal of Jews? My review is decidedly mixed.
No portrayal of the trial and execution of Christ which is remotely faithful to the Gospels is going to portray Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin as all sweetness and light. That is simply not possible for an intellectually honest person. To suggest that a negative portrayal of Caiaphas, the priests, and the mob calling for Christ's crucifixion is, in and of itself, anti-semitic is to suggest that all portrayals of the trial and execution of Christ must be anti-semitic. Shall we just never refer to one of the great singularities of world civilization at all? I would argue that to suggest that any portrayal of Caiaphas is by definition anti-semitic is itself an anti-semitic position, because it buys into the underlying assumption that a specific, corrupt political body in 1st Century C.E. Judea is somehow representative of Jews today: an absurd and vile assumption.
So if Gibson's portrayal is going to be anti-semitic, then the devil is going to be in the details. And in that vein, it is truly unfortunate that at least one of the Pharisees--one given to screaming rants, as it happens--looks for all the world like a Nazi propaganda cartoon from Der Sturmer. So in this regard, I believe Gibson's critics have a point. And while, ok, it's not entirely unreasonable to imagine that 1st century Jews looked Jewish (although I have my doubts about that, too), Gibson should have known the kind of scrutiny his film would have received. One or two careless decisions, and the anti-semitism flap has been a terrible distraction from Gibson's intended message.
We Don't Scourge; We Fisk
A couple of other minor quibbles: Gibson's portrayal of King Herod--as a soft, pudgy mascara-wearing libertine-- doesn't move anything beyond Joshua Mostel's portrayal in Jesus Christ Superstar. (Prove to me that you're no fool--Walk across my swimming pool!). Indeed, it even lacks the redeeming virtue of humor. I would have liked to have seen Herod portrayed as an altogether different kind of person. For one thing, he would have been significantly older than Jesus at the time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Herod Antipas (Not Herod the Great--his father, who died in the year 4 BCE) would have been old enough, at the time of Jesus's birth, to have sent his soldiers to Bethlehem looking to kill Jesus--hence his brief exile in Egypt. Herod would not have been exercising State power before he became a legal adult at the age of 13. So if Christ was about 33 at the time of his death, Herod could not have been younger than 46. Add another 4 years or so (give or take a few years) to account for the date we know Herod the Great died, and he must have been 50 years old.
The Mother of All Performances
James Cavieziel is no great shakes, but doesn't get much of a chance to be. His Jesus is basically a vehicle for abuse. He seems to have little intrinsic personality throughout most of the film. You gotta bring your own Jesus baggage in with you to get much out of his role.
Hristo Shopov is deft and restrained, and as the "I can't believe these rabble-rousing nutcases want to KILL this guy" Pilate.
Monica Bellucci is touching in her role as Mary Magdalene. Gibson has her as the prostitute Jesus saves from stoning ("let him without sin cast the first stone"). She is warm and human and comes across as devotion and faith personified.
Did I mention she's hot? Yes I did.
But the real tour-de-force performance comes from Rumanian actress Maia Morgenstern. Morgenstern, as Mary, does more than play a role in a film. She does more even, than make Mary come alive. Any decent actress does that. And what reward is there in that? Do not even the B-movie actresses do the same?
No, Morgenstern's performance transcends the screen. Her performance transcends even the suspension of disbelief. Rather, through her performance, the audience becomes Mary. She does not allow us to maintain the rational detachment of the sceptic. Her presence forces us to view the scourging and execution of Christ through the eyes of his mother. When Jesus collapses under his cross for the second time, Mary--who had been following him through the procession, witnessing everything, and trying to get near him--Mary runs up to him and kneels near him and tries to comfort him, saying "Yeshua, I'm right here," She takes all of us with her.
And THAT--in a hundred small ways throughout the film--is more than anything else what makes The Passion memorable.
Verily I say unto you, the Academy will remember her when they vote for the Oscars.
The Bottom Line
The movie does not stand on its own merits. It is not a complete, self-contained unit, and is not meant to be. It is no substitute for doing your own homework. Christians should first prepare themselves by understanding more about Jews and Judaism. Jews should learn more about Christianity on its own terms. Everybody should do some reading about the historical context of the time.
Then, see the movie. I mean, I can't bear the burden of seeing it for all of you. It's too much for one man.
Happy Easter
Splash, out
Jason
(P.S., I mentioned Monica Bellucci was hot, right?)
A few observations, and things I would have done differently...
First, and most importantly: Monica Belucci, the Italian actress who plays Mary Magdelene, has been vetted by the IraqNow editorial staff, and we--no, make that, I, have declared her officially hot.
Now that the important stuff is out of the way, we can get to the more trivial matters of assessing the artistic, historical, and theological merits of the film.
Overall--for what it is, and for what Gibson apparently intends for it to be--a vivid portrayal of the final hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and a gruesome account of the brutality of his death--it is riveting, and definitely worth a look.
If it were my screenplay, I would have probably tread more lightly on the Jungian nightmare aspects of the film.
Case in point: The skinny bald guy who appears constantly throughout the film who's supposed to represent evil.
(no, not THAT bald guy!)
Now we first encounter Evil guy in the Garden of Gesthemane, where he represents temptation--in the insidious guise of sympathy and understanding. As Christ pleads with the Father to "let this cup pass from my lips," the still small voice of Satan soothingly counsels, "No man can alone bear the sins of the world on his shoulders," whispers Evil. "It is too much."
Ok, I was with Gibson so far. I thought that was an effective way to portray the temptation--and writ large, the way evil works in all our lives--the soft and coaxing siren that leads us to avoid the real crises and challenges in our lives and leads us to, well, blog.
But Jesus finally says "not my will, but thine, be done," and victory over temptation is complete. With these words, Jesus dies to self and selfishness, offers himself in perfect submission to be the instrument of God, and only a fool could not get the message.
Mel Gibson, of course, knows that it's fools who make expensive movies profitable, though, and doesn't halt the sequence with the words of Christ. Instead, he invests another 30 seconds or so in coaxing a serpent out from between evil's legs, and letting it slither around Jesus's feet for a few seconds, before Gibson finally transmits his already clear message to the least among us by having Jesus crush the serpent's head under his foot.
Got it, Mel. Thanks.
Mike Myers, Eat Your Sacred Heart Out!
Now, ok--I'm down with the metaphysics of the crucifixion and scourging and the victory over death. And I can buy into the idea that a titanic battle between Good and Evil was fought that day. And I can therefore buy into a certain amount of interaction between this world and the spiritual world.
I was even with Mel when the little kids who were taunting Judas after his betrayal became demons. I'm sure that the whole world must have seemed that way to Judas--and that would have been his motivation to commit suicide in the very effective "Where's A Rope When You Need One?" scene.
(By the way--I loved the Cheshire Cat grin on the face of the dead donkey. That image alone was worth the price of admission.)
But the Evil Bald Guy shows up throughout the movie. In one scene--during the long and draining scourging of Christ, he actually shows up cradling another, diminutive Evil Bald Guy in his arms.
That's right--I couldn't make something like that up, folks! Mel Gibson meets Mini-Me.
But I can find no mention of an Evil Bald Guy of any size in that role in the Gospel. Ok, I'm all about artistic license. I loved Jesus Christ Superstar. But his role was inconsistent. For example, having first attempted to sabatoge the sacrifice of Christ in the opening sequence, he seems to spend the rest of the movie delighting in it--even egging it on. Helping come to pass.
Now, I'm not a charter member of the Evil Bald Guy Association. But if I were, I wouldn't have made such a mess of it. Any real, self-respecting Satanic figure worthy of the name--having failed to lure Christ into temptation (c'mon, He's God. The contest was rigged from the get-go!), would immediately go to work on the easier targets--the knuckle-dragging troglodytes in the Roman army, and the morally blind scribes and Pharisees. He could have sabatoged the crucifixion by, say, trying to convince the Romans to break some bones. By appearing as a centurion and stopping the soldiers from casting lots and dividing up his clothing (Psalm 22, v. 19), offering Christ water to drink, Or by encouring them to break a bone--thereby rendering the sacrifice of Christ at variance with the proscribed sacrifice of the passover lamb in the Old Testament (Exodus 12: 46, Psalm 34:20 , and Numbers 9:12
A REAL Satanic figure would have tried to separate the Crucifixion as it happened from the way it is prophesied in the Old Testament, and the way it is foreshadowed in the Jewish feasts.
And herein, sadly, lies Mel Gibson's missed opportunity. The viewer is vaguely aware that the trial and crucifixion occur during Passover--but there is no connection made between the two intimately-connected events. Indeed, the Christian cannot separate the crucifixion from Passover, because the crucifixion's metaphorical meaning is entirely rooted in the Passover.
A House Built Upon Sand
Gibson's Passion unfortunately, is decontextualized from its biblical foundations. Or more precisely, Gibson assumes his viewership can bring their own contextualization to the movie, from a simultaneous understanding of Christian and Jewish religious thought and practice.
Very few people, alas, are conversant with both sides of the equation. And so layers of meaning--and layers of mutual understanding--are lost to both Jewish and Christian viewers.
And without a firm grasp of the old testament lamb metaphor, Yom Kippur, sacrifice, and the vitality of Mosaic Law on the part of Christians, and a simultaneous grasp of the Christian idea that Christ was a Lamb of sacrifice, and that Christ was simultaneously God, and herein lies the profundity of the sacrifice and the expression of God's love, then the Passion of the Christ appears banal.
It's been said by one critic that the movie is really a mirror. How you perceive it reflects more about you than it does about Christ. I agree. But I wish that the movie could have been more of a two-way window between the two traditions than a mirror.
Perhaps with all the discussion, it is becoming just that.
Which brings us to the question of the hour:
Is the movie Anti-Semitic?
Here's what most goys don't get: non-Christians do not share the same set of cultural associations that Christians do.
Christians associate the Crusades with a noble struggle on behalf of God's will; Jews and others (with a more finely delineated grasp of history, in my view), associate it with pogroms and monstrous atrocities such as nailing Jewish babies to fenceposts--a favorite pasttime of crusaders in transit through Europe on the way to the wars.
We see this cultural misunderstanding manifest even today--to wit: the Bush Administration's original, tin-eared and ignorant label for the war against the Taliban: "Operation Noble Crusade." The very name of the operation threatened to undermine the needed support of other Muslim countries, because of this differing historical perspective. Fortunately, the name was quickly changed.
More en point, I see churches still hanging "Passion Play" signs on their bulletin boards. But while Christians associate "passion play" with holidays and wonder and bring their children, many Jews still associate the term with a prelude to a rape. Which in some ways it was.
Is The Passion an anti-semitic portrayal of Jews? My review is decidedly mixed.
No portrayal of the trial and execution of Christ which is remotely faithful to the Gospels is going to portray Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin as all sweetness and light. That is simply not possible for an intellectually honest person. To suggest that a negative portrayal of Caiaphas, the priests, and the mob calling for Christ's crucifixion is, in and of itself, anti-semitic is to suggest that all portrayals of the trial and execution of Christ must be anti-semitic. Shall we just never refer to one of the great singularities of world civilization at all? I would argue that to suggest that any portrayal of Caiaphas is by definition anti-semitic is itself an anti-semitic position, because it buys into the underlying assumption that a specific, corrupt political body in 1st Century C.E. Judea is somehow representative of Jews today: an absurd and vile assumption.
So if Gibson's portrayal is going to be anti-semitic, then the devil is going to be in the details. And in that vein, it is truly unfortunate that at least one of the Pharisees--one given to screaming rants, as it happens--looks for all the world like a Nazi propaganda cartoon from Der Sturmer. So in this regard, I believe Gibson's critics have a point. And while, ok, it's not entirely unreasonable to imagine that 1st century Jews looked Jewish (although I have my doubts about that, too), Gibson should have known the kind of scrutiny his film would have received. One or two careless decisions, and the anti-semitism flap has been a terrible distraction from Gibson's intended message.
We Don't Scourge; We Fisk
A couple of other minor quibbles: Gibson's portrayal of King Herod--as a soft, pudgy mascara-wearing libertine-- doesn't move anything beyond Joshua Mostel's portrayal in Jesus Christ Superstar. (Prove to me that you're no fool--Walk across my swimming pool!). Indeed, it even lacks the redeeming virtue of humor. I would have liked to have seen Herod portrayed as an altogether different kind of person. For one thing, he would have been significantly older than Jesus at the time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Herod Antipas (Not Herod the Great--his father, who died in the year 4 BCE) would have been old enough, at the time of Jesus's birth, to have sent his soldiers to Bethlehem looking to kill Jesus--hence his brief exile in Egypt. Herod would not have been exercising State power before he became a legal adult at the age of 13. So if Christ was about 33 at the time of his death, Herod could not have been younger than 46. Add another 4 years or so (give or take a few years) to account for the date we know Herod the Great died, and he must have been 50 years old.
The Mother of All Performances
James Cavieziel is no great shakes, but doesn't get much of a chance to be. His Jesus is basically a vehicle for abuse. He seems to have little intrinsic personality throughout most of the film. You gotta bring your own Jesus baggage in with you to get much out of his role.
Hristo Shopov is deft and restrained, and as the "I can't believe these rabble-rousing nutcases want to KILL this guy" Pilate.
Monica Bellucci is touching in her role as Mary Magdalene. Gibson has her as the prostitute Jesus saves from stoning ("let him without sin cast the first stone"). She is warm and human and comes across as devotion and faith personified.
Did I mention she's hot? Yes I did.
But the real tour-de-force performance comes from Rumanian actress Maia Morgenstern. Morgenstern, as Mary, does more than play a role in a film. She does more even, than make Mary come alive. Any decent actress does that. And what reward is there in that? Do not even the B-movie actresses do the same?
No, Morgenstern's performance transcends the screen. Her performance transcends even the suspension of disbelief. Rather, through her performance, the audience becomes Mary. She does not allow us to maintain the rational detachment of the sceptic. Her presence forces us to view the scourging and execution of Christ through the eyes of his mother. When Jesus collapses under his cross for the second time, Mary--who had been following him through the procession, witnessing everything, and trying to get near him--Mary runs up to him and kneels near him and tries to comfort him, saying "Yeshua, I'm right here," She takes all of us with her.
And THAT--in a hundred small ways throughout the film--is more than anything else what makes The Passion memorable.
Verily I say unto you, the Academy will remember her when they vote for the Oscars.
The Bottom Line
The movie does not stand on its own merits. It is not a complete, self-contained unit, and is not meant to be. It is no substitute for doing your own homework. Christians should first prepare themselves by understanding more about Jews and Judaism. Jews should learn more about Christianity on its own terms. Everybody should do some reading about the historical context of the time.
Then, see the movie. I mean, I can't bear the burden of seeing it for all of you. It's too much for one man.
Happy Easter
Splash, out
Jason
(P.S., I mentioned Monica Bellucci was hot, right?)
Comments:
Post a Comment
