The Passion of the Christ is a film
co-written, co-produced and directed by
Mel
Gibson. It is based on the
New
Testament accounts of the
arrest,
trial,
torture,
crucifixion, and
resurrection of
Jesus Christ, events commonly known as
The Passion. The film’s dialogue is
in
Aramaic,
Latin, and
Hebrew, with
subtitles. It is the
highest grossing non-English
language film.
Plot
The film
opens in Gethsemane
in medias res
as Jesus prays and is tempted by Satan, while his apostles, Peter, James, and John sleep. After receiving thirty
pieces of silver, one of Jesus' other apostles,
Judas Iscariot, approaches with the temple
guards and betrays Jesus with a
kiss. As the guards move in to arrest
Jesus,
Peter cuts off the ear of
Malchus, but Jesus heals the ear. The temple
guards
arrest Jesus and the apostles
flee.
John tells
Mary and
Mary Magdalene of the arrest, and
Peter follows Jesus at a distance.
Caiaphas holds a
trial of Jesus over the objection
of some of the other priests, who are expelled from the court. When
questioned by
Caiaphas whether he is the
son of God, Jesus replies "
I AM."
Caiaphas is horrified and tears his robes, and Jesus is condemned
to death for
blasphemy. Three times
Peter denies knowing Jesus, and the
remorseful Judas returns the money. Tormented by demons, Judas
flees the city and hangs himself with a rope from a dead
donkey.
Caiaphas brings Jesus before
Pontius
Pilate to be condemned to death, but after questioning Jesus,
Pilate sends him instead to the court of
Herod Antipas, as Jesus is from Herod's ruling
town of Nazareth. After Jesus is returned, Pilate offers the crowd
that he will chastise Jesus and then will set him free. Pilate
attempts to have Jesus freed by giving the people an option of
freeing Jesus or the violent criminal
Barabbas. To Pilate's dismay, the crowd demands to
have Barabbas freed and Jesus killed. Jesus is then brutally
scourged and mocked with a
crown of thorns but the crowd demands Jesus
to be crucified. Pilate is left with no choice but to reluctantly
order Jesus' crucifixion.
As Jesus
carries the cross along the Via Dolorosa
to Calvary, Veronica wipes Jesus's face with her veil. Simon of Cyrene is unwillingly pressed into
carrying the cross for Jesus. Jesus is then
crucified. As he hangs from the cross,
Jesus prays forgiveness for those who did this to him, and redeems
a criminal crucified next to him. After Jesus gives up his spirit
and dies, a single drop of rain falls from the sky, triggering an
earthquake which destroys the Temple and rips the cloth covering
the
Holy of Holies in two, to the
horror of Caiaphas and the other priests. Satan is then shown
screaming in defeat in
Hell. Jesus is
lowered from the cross to his mother
Mary, who looks directly at
the audience in this
Pietà. The movie
ends with Jesus's
resurrection
and exit from his tomb, with
the holes in his
hands from the nails visible as he walks, having triumphed over
Satan and his Temptation.
Themes
In
The Passion: Photography from the Movie "The Passion of the
Christ," Gibson says "This is a movie about love, hope, faith,
and forgiveness. He [Jesus] died for all mankind, suffered for all
of us. It's time to get back to that basic message. The world has
gone nuts. We could all use a little more love, faith, hope, and
forgiveness."
He also explains one of his appearances in the film, the close-up
of his hands nailing Jesus to the cross: "It was me that put Him on
the cross. It was my sins [that put Jesus there]."
Source material
New Testament
According to director
Mel Gibson, the
primary source material for
The Passion of the Christ is
the four
Gospel narratives of Christ's
passion. The film also draws
from other parts of the
New Testament.
The line spoken by Jesus, "Behold Mother, I make all things new,"
is taken from the
Book of
Revelation.
Old Testament
The Passion of the Christ also references the
Old Testament. The film begins with an
epigraph from the
Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant from
Isaiah.
In the opening scene set in the Garden of
Gethsemane
, Jesus crushes a serpent's head in direct visual
allusion to Genesis 3:15.
Throughout the film, Jesus quotes from the
Psalms, beyond the instances recorded in the
New Testament.
Traditional iconography and stories
Many of the depictions in
The Passion of the Christ
deliberately mirror traditional representations of the
Passion in art.
For example, the
fourteen Stations of the Cross
are central to the depiction of the Via Dolorosa in The Passion of the Christ.
All of the
stations are portrayed except for the eighth station (Jesus meets
the women of Jerusalem
, a deleted scene on the DVD) and the fourteenth
station (Jesus is laid in the tomb). Gibson was also
visually inspired by the representation of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin
.
At the suggestion of actress
Maia
Morgenstern, the
Passover Seder
is quoted early in the film.
Mary asks "Why is this night
different than other nights?", and
Mary
Magdalene replies with the traditional response: "Because once
we were slaves and we are slaves no longer".
The conflation of
Mary Magdalene with
the
adulteress
saved from stoning by Jesus has some precedent in tradition but
according to the director was done for
dramatic reasons. The names of some of the
characters in the film are traditional and extra-Scriptural, such
as the thieves crucified alongside the Christ,
Dismas and Gesmas (also
Gestas).
Catholic devotional writings
Screenwriters
Mel Gibson and
Benedict Fitzgerald said that they read
many accounts of Christ's
passion for inspiration, including
the devotional writings of Catholic mystics. A principal source is
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ the
meditations of the
stigmatic German nun
Anne Catherine Emmerich
(1774–1824), as told to the poet
Clemens Brentano. Among the many elements
taken from the Dolorous Passion are scenes such as the suspension
of Jesus from a bridge after his arrest by the Temple guards, the
torment of Judas by demons after he had handed over Jesus the Jews,
the wiping up of the blood of Jesus after his scourging, and the
dislocation of Jesus’ shoulder so that his palm would reach the
hole for the nail. A second source mentioned was
The Mystical
City of God by
Maria de Agreda
(1602–1665), a 17th century Spanish nun.
Differences from traditional Passion story
Certain elements of
The Passion of the Christ do not have
precedent in earlier depictions of the
Passion.
In the Garden of
Gethsemane scene, within the movie, Jesus converses with the
devil and crushes a serpent beneath his heel (this is a reference
to the protoevangelium, Genesis 3:15 - a prophecy of Messiah); this
does not occur in any of the gospels. In another example,
Judas Iscariot is tormented by demons
who appear as children to him. The film gives focus to the fragile
relationship of
Tiberius Caesar with
Pontius Pilate through Pilate's
discussion with
his wife about
imperial orders to avert further Judean revolts. The movie clearly
identifies
Simon of Cyrene as
Jewish, although the
Synoptic
Gospels provide only his name and place of origin. In the film,
a Roman soldier derides Simon (who helps Jesus bear the cross) by
derisively calling him
Jew. In contrast, Simon is
described as a pagan in
The Dolorious Passion of Our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Other scenes unique to
The Passion of the Christ include
when the crucified thief who taunted Jesus has his eye pecked out
by a crow. The flashback of the carpenter Jesus building an
elevated, four-legged table for a
Roman
is also particular to this film. The scene of Satan carrying a
demonic baby during Christ’s flogging has been construed as an
imitation of traditional depictions of the
Madonna and Child. Mel Gibson described
this scene as follows:
"...it's evil distorting what’s good.
What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a
child?
So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little
bit.
Instead of a normal mother and child you have an
androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old ‘baby’ with hair on his
back.
It is weird, it is shocking, it's almost too much –
just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest
is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when
this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes
place."
Production
Script and language
Gibson originally announced that he would use two
old
languages without subtitles and rely on "filmic storytelling."
Because the story of the
Passion is so well-known, Gibson felt
the need to avoid
vernacular languages in
order to surprise audiences: "I think it's almost counterproductive
to say some of these things in a
modern
language. It makes you want to stand up and shout out the next
line, like when you hear 'To be or not to be' and you instinctively
say to yourself, 'That is the question.'" The script was written in
English by Gibson and
Benedict Fitzgerald, then
translated by
William
Fulco, S.J. into
Latin, reconstructed
Aramaic, and
Hebrew.
Gibson chose to use
Latin instead of
Greek, which was the "lingua franca" of
that time, so that the audience could easily distinguish between
the sound of Italianate
Latin and Semitic
Aramaic. Fulco sometimes incorporated
deliberate errors in pronunciations and word endings when the
characters were speaking a language unfamiliar to them, and some of
the crude language used by the Roman soldiers was not translated in
the subtitles. The pronunciation of Latin in the film is closer to
ecclesiastical Latin than to more historically accurate classical
Latin. (Clear instances of this can be heard when Pontius Pilate
says "veritas" and "ecce".)
Filming
The movie
was filmed in Italy
,
specifically in Matera
and Craco
(Basilicata) and Cinecittà Studios
, Rome
.
Gibson consulted several theological advisors during filming,
including
Fr. Jonathan Morris, who would later go
on to become a news analyst and contributor. During filming,
assistant director Jan Michelini was struck twice by
lightning. The second time this happened, the
lightning bolt also hit
James
Caviezel.
Post-production
Title change
Although Gibson wanted to call his film
The Passion, on
October 16, 2003 his spokesman announced that the title used in the
United States would be
The Passion of Christ because
Miramax had already registered the title
The Passion with the
MPAA for the 1987
novel by
Jeanette Winterson.
Later, the title was changed again to
The Passion of the
Christ for all markets.
Distribution and marketing
Gibson began production on his film without securing outside
funding or distribution. In 2002 he explained why he could not get
backing from the Hollywood studios: "This is a film about something
that nobody wants to touch, shot in two dead languages.
In
Los
Angeles
they think I am insane, and maybe I am."
Gibson and his
Icon Productions
company provided the film's sole backing, spending about $30
million on production costs and an estimated $15 million on
marketing. After early accusations of anti-Semitism, it became
difficult for Gibson to find an American distribution company.
20th Century Fox had a first-look
deal with Icon and passed on the film in response to public
protests. In order to avoid the spectacle of other studios turning
down the film and to avoid subjecting the distributor to the same
intense public criticism he had received, Gibson decided to
distribute the movie in the United States himself, with
Newmarket Films.
Gibson departed from the usual film marketing formula. He employed
a small-scale television advertising campaign, and added faith guru
Rick Hendrix with no press junkets. Yet
The Passion of the Christ was heavily promoted by many
church groups, both within their organizations and to the general
public, often giving away free tickets.
Theatrical release
Domestic release
The movie
opened in the United
States
on February 25, 2004 (Ash
Wednesday, the beginning of Lent).
It earned $83,848,082 in its opening weekend, ranking it 4th
overall in domestic opening weekend earnings for 2004. It went on
to earn $370,782,930 overall in the United States, ranking it 12th
in all-time domestic earnings.
International release
Government censorship
The movie
was banned in Saudi
Arabia
, Kuwait
and Bahrain
. In Malaysia
, government censors initially banned it completely,
but after Christian leaders protested, the restriction was lifted,
but only for Christian audiences, allowing them to view the film in
specially-designated theatres. In Israel
the film was
not banned. However, it never received theatrical
distribution because no Israeli distributor sought to market the
movie.
International box office
Despite the various controversies and refusals of certain
governments to allow the film to be viewed in wide release,
The
Passion of the Christ earned $611,899,420 worldwide, ranking
it #41 for all-time worldwide grosses, and #2 for an R rated movie,
behind
The Matrix
Reloaded (a film it eclipsed by some $80 million
domestically). The movie was also a large success in certain
countries with large Muslim populations, such as in Egypt, where it
ranked 20th overall in its box office numbers for 2004.
Theatrical re-release
An edited version titled
The Passion Recut was released on
March 11, 2005, with five minutes of the most explicit violence
deleted to broaden the audience for the film. Gibson explained his
reasoning for the new version of the film:
After the initial run in movie theaters, I received
numerous letters from people all across the country.
Many told me they wanted to share the experience with
loved ones but were concerned that the harsher images of the film
would be too intense for them to bear.
In light of this I decided to re-edit The Passion of
the Christ.
Despite the attempt to tone down the content, the
Motion Picture Association
of America deemed the film too violent to rate
PG-13, so Gibson released it as unrated. The
re-release did not end up being a commercial success, only showing
for three weeks before its poor box office results caused it to be
pulled from theaters.
Home video
On August 31, 2004, the film was released on
DVD,
VHS, and later
D-VHS in North America. As with the original
theatrical release, the film's release on home video formats proved
to be very popular. Early reports indicated that over 2.4 million
copies of the film were sold by the middle of the day. The film was
available on DVD with
English and
Spanish subtitles, and on
VHS tape with
English subtitles. On February 17, 2009, the film was released on
Blu-ray in North America as a two-disc
Definitive Edition set.
Although the original DVD release of
The Passion of The
Christ sold well, it contained no extra materials other than
soundtrack language selections. The no-frills edition provoked
speculation about when a
special
edition would be released.
On January 30, 2007, a two-disc Definitive
Edition of The Passion of The Christ was released in the
American markets, and March 26
elsewhere. It contains several
documentaries,
soundtrack commentaries,
deleted scenes,
outtakes, the
2005 re-edited version, and the original
2004 theatrical version.
Critical reviews
The film received generally mixed reviews from critics. Critics
have praised the performance of Jim Caviezel as Jesus. The review
aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes reported
that 50 percent of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on
260 reviews total; with the consensus that "the graphic details of
Jesus'
torture make the movie tough to sit
through and obscure whatever message it is trying to convey."
Metacritic reported the film had an
average score of 47 out of 100, based on 43 reviews.
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of
four stars.
New York Press
film critic Armond
White praised Gibson's work, comparing him to Dreyer, for transforming Art into
spirituality. However,
Slate reviewer
David Edelstein called it "a
two-hour-and-six-minute
snuff movie,"
while
Jami Bernard of the
New York Daily News called it "the
most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda
films of World War II."
The June 2006 issue of
Entertainment Weekly named
The
Passion of the Christ the most controversial film of all time,
followed by
Stanley Kubrick's film
A Clockwork
Orange.
Controversies surrounding the film
Questions of historical accuracy
Despite criticisms that Gibson deliberately and severely departed
from the historical and Biblical accounts of Christ's crucifixion,
historians tend to defend Gibson. Biblical scholar
Mark Goodacre protested that he could not find
one documented example of Gibson explicitly claiming the film to be
historically accurate. In fact, Gibson had been quoted as saying,
"I think that my first duty is to be as faithful as possible in
telling the story so that it doesn't contradict the Scriptures.
Now, so long as it didn't do that, I felt that I had a pretty wide
berth for artistic interpretation, and to fill in some of the
spaces with logic, with imagination, with various other
readings."
Promotional screenings
Gibson was criticized for holding private screenings for prominent,
politically and socially conservative Christian and Jewish
religious leaders yet seemingly refusing to include those who had
already criticized the film, such as
Abraham Foxman.
Disputed papal endorsement
In early December 2003,
Passion of the Christ co-producer
Stephen McEveety provided the film
to Archbishop
Stanislaw Dziwisz,
the pope's secretary. Dziwisz returned the film to McEveety and
said he had watched it with
John Paul
II. On December 16,
Daily
Variety reported that the pope had seen the film, and on
Dec. 17,
Wall Street
Journal columnist
Peggy Noonan
reported that
John Paul II had said:
"It is as it was," sourcing McEveety, who said he heard it from
Dziwisz.
National
Catholic Reporter journalist
John Allen published a similar account on
the same day, quoting an unnamed senior Vatican official. The
following day,
Reuters and the
Associated Press each independently
confirmed the story, citing Vatican sources. On December 24, an
anonymous Vatican official told
Catholic News Service, "There was no
declaration, no judgment from the pope." On January 9, John Allen
defended his earlier reporting, saying that his official source was
adamant about the veracity of the original story. In a January 18
column,
Frank Rich interviewed the
Italian translator who quoted Dziwisz as saying that the pope
called the film "incredible" and said "it is as it was." Rich
attacked the marketing of the film and suggested the Dziwisz
wielded too much influence over the pope. The next day Dziwisz told
CNS, "The Holy Father told no one his opinion of this film." This
denial resulted in a round of commentators who accused the film
producers of fabricating a papal quote to market their movie.
However, the
Icon Productions
spokesman stood by the story, and a source close to the situation
said McEveety had asked for and received Vatican officials'
permission to repeat the "It is as it was" statement before
speaking to Noonan. Journalist
Rod Dreher
reported that McEveety had received an email from papal spokesman
Dr.
Joaquin Navarro-Valls on
December 28, backing the Noonan account and ending: "I would try to
make the words 'It is as it was' the leit motive [sic] in any
discusion [sic] on the film. Repeat the words again and again and
again."
Peggy Noonan had also received email confirmation of the quote from
Navarro-Valls before writing her December 17 column. Complicating
the situation, Navarro-Valls told Dreher that the email sent to
McEveety was not genuine, suggesting it was fabricated. However
Noonan verified that all of the Navarro-Valls emails came from the
same Vatican IP address. The
Los
Angeles Times reported that they had previously confirmed
the accuracy of the quote from Navarro-Valls when the story first
broke. On CNN,
John Allen
reported Vatican sources who claim to have heard Dziwisz on other
occasions affirm the accuracy of the quotation.
On January 22, Navarro-Valls released the following official
statement:
"The film is a cinematographic transposition of the
historical event of the Passion of Jesus Christ according to the
accounts of the Gospel.
It is a common practice of the Holy Father not to
express public opinions on artistic works, opinions that are always
open to different evaluations of aesthetic character."
Afterward, Gibson expressed ambivalence about the
endorsement.
Allegations of anti-Semitism
Before the film was even released, there were allegations of
anti-Semitic content in the movie.
20th Century Fox told New York
Assemblyman Dov Hikind
they had passed on distributing the film in response to a protest
outside the News Corp. building.
Hikind warned other movie companies that "they should not
distribute this film. This is unhealthy for
Jews
all over the world."
A joint committee of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and
Inter-religious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops and the Department of Inter-religious Affairs of the
Anti-Defamation League
obtained a version of the script before it was released in
theaters. They released a statement, calling it
one of the most troublesome texts, relative to
anti-Semitic potential, that any of us had seen in twenty-five
years.
It must be emphasized that the main storyline presented
Jesus as having been relentlessly pursued by an evil cabal of Jews,
headed by the high priest Caiaphas, who
finally blackmailed a weak-kneed Pilate into putting Jesus to
death.
This is precisely the storyline that fueled centuries
of anti-Semitism within Christian societies.
This is also a storyline rejected by the Roman Catholic Church at Vatican II in its document Nostra Aetate, and by nearly all mainline
Protestant churches in parallel documents
.
.
.
.
Unless this basic storyline has been altered
by Mr. Gibson, a fringe Catholic who is building his own church in
the Los
Angeles area and who apparently accepts neither the
teachings of Vatican II nor modern biblical scholarship, The
Passion of the Christ retains a real potential for undermining
the repudiation of classical Christian anti-Semitism by the
churches in the last forty years.
The ADL itself also released a statement about the yet to be
released movie:
For filmmakers to do justice to the biblical accounts
of the passion, they must complement their artistic vision with
sound scholarship, which includes knowledge of how the passion
accounts have been used historically to disparage and attack Jews
and Judaism.
Absent such scholarly and theological understanding,
productions such as The Passion could likely falsify
history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the
South African-born head of the
Toward Tradition organisation, criticized
this statement, and said of Foxman, the head of the ADL, "what he
is saying is that the only way to escape the wrath of Foxman is to
repudiate your faith."
In
The Nation, reviewer
Katha Pollitt said, "Gibson has violated just
about every precept of the (United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops) conference's own 1988 "Criteria" for the portrayal of Jews
in dramatizations of the Passion (no bloodthirsty Jews, no rabble,
no use of Scripture that reinforces negative stereotypes of Jews,
etc.) ... The priests have big noses and gnarly faces, lumpish
bodies, yellow teeth;
Herod Antipas
and his court are a bizarre collection of oily-haired,
epicene perverts. The "good Jews" look like Italian
movie stars (Italian sex symbol
Monica
Bellucci is
Mary Magdalene);
Mary, who would have been around 50 and appeared 70, could pass for
a ripe 35."
Jesuit priest Fr.
William Fulco, S.J., of Loyola
Marymount University
— and the film's Aramaic dialogue translator — specifically
disagreed with that assessment, and disagreed with concerns that
the film accused the Jewish community of Deicide.
One specific scene in the movie perceived as an example of
anti-Semitism was in the dialogue of Caiaphas, when he states "His
blood [is] on us and on our children!", a quote historically
interpreted by some as a curse taken upon by the Jewish people.
Certain Jewish groups asked this be removed from the film. However,
only the subtitles were removed; the original dialogue remains in
Aramaic soundtrack.
When asked about this scene, Gibson said, "I wanted it in. My
brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. But, man, if
I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house.
They'd come to kill me." In another interview when asked about the
scene, he said, "It's one little passage, and I believe it, but I
don't and never have believed it refers to Jews, and implicates
them in any sort of curse. It's directed at all of us, all men who
were there, and all that came after. His blood is on us, and that's
what Jesus wanted. But I finally had to admit that one of the
reasons I felt strongly about keeping it, aside from the fact it's
true, is that I didn't want to let someone else dictate what could
or couldn't be said."
In the
New Republic, Leon
Wieseltier said: "In its representation of its Jewish characters,
The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an
anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing,
or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of
anti-Semitism, in art and in film. What is so shocking about
Gibson's Jews is how unreconstructed they are in their
stereotypical appearances and actions. These are not merely
anti-Semitic images; these are classically anti-Semitic
images."
Asked by
Bill
O'Reilly if his movie would "upset Jews," Gibson responded,
"It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth. I
want to be as truthful as possible." In a
Globe and Mail newspaper interview, he
added, "If anyone has distorted Gospel passages to rationalize
cruelty towards Jews or anyone, it's in defiance of repeated Papal
condemnation. The
Papacy has condemned
racism in any form... Jesus died for the sins
of all times, and I'll be the first on the line for
culpability".
Conservative columnist
Cal Thomas also
tried to dispel the allegations of anti-Semitism, saying "To those
in the Jewish community who worry that the film, which is scheduled
for release next Easter season, might contain anti-Semitic
elements, or encourage people to persecute Jews, fear not. The film
does not indict Jews for the death of Jesus." Two
Orthodox Jews, Rabbi Daniel Lapin and
conservative talk-show host and author
Michael Medved also vocally rejected claims
that the film is anti-Semitic. They have noted the film's many
sympathetic portrayals of Jews:
Simon of
Cyrene (who helps Jesus carry the cross),
Mary Magdalene, the
Virgin Mary,
St. Peter,
St. John and Veronica (who wipes
Jesus' face and offers him water).
Moreover, Senior Vatican officer Darío Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos,
who has seen the film, addressed the matter so:
Anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, distorts the
truth in order to put a whole race of people in a bad
light.
This film does nothing of the sort.
It draws out from the historical objectivity of the
Gospel narratives sentiments of forgiveness, mercy, and
reconciliation.
It captures the subtleties and the horror of sin, as
well as the gentle power of love and forgiveness, without making or
insinuating blanket condemnations against one group.
This film expressed the exact opposite, that learning
from the example of Christ, there should never be any more violence
against any other human being.
Criticism of excessive violence
Certain critics were troubled by the film's explicitly-detailed
violence, and especially cautioned parents to avoid taking their
children to the cinema. Although only one sentence in three of the
Gospels mentions
Jesus's
flogging, and it is unmentioned in the fourth,
The Passion
of the Christ devotes ten minutes to the portrayal of the
flogging. Film critic
Roger Ebert, who
rated the movie four-out-of-four stars, said in his review:
The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that
at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned
specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and
death of Jesus.
This is the most violent film I have ever
seen.
However, many do think that the film accurately represents Jesus'
flogging and crucifiction as Biblical. The movie can be compared
with many Biblical quotes including:
Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has
encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over
me.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him his appearance was
so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond
human likeness—I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to
those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking
and spitting.
Ebert also mentioned that the R-rated film merits the
MPAA NC-17 rating in a "Movie Answer Man" response,
adding that no level-minded parent should ever allow children to
see it.
A.O. Scott, in
The New York Times,
said,
The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused
on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise
less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting
the spirit than in uplifting it."
David Edelstein,
Slate's film critic, dubbed the film
"a two-hour-and-six-minute
snuff movie —
The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre — that thinks it's an act of
faith", and further criticised Gibson for focusing on the brutality
of Jesus' execution, instead of his religious teachings.
During
Diane Sawyer's interview of him,
Gibson said:
I wanted it to be shocking; and I wanted it to be
extreme ...
So that they see the enormity — the enormity of that
sacrifice; to see that someone could endure that and still come
back with love and forgiveness, even through extreme pain and
suffering and ridicule.
The actual crucifixion was more violent than what was
shown on the film, but I thought no one would get anything out of
it.
Response from Evangelicals
The
Passion of the Christ received support and endorsement from most
nationally known evangelical leaders and representatives of
fundamentalist church organizations: Billy
Graham, James Dobson, Mission
America Coalition, Salvation Army,
Promise Keepers, National Association of
Evangelicals, Campus
Crusade for Christ, Focus on the Family
, Pat Robertson,
Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary
, Trinity
Broadcasting Network, Rick Warren,
Southern Baptist
Convention, Jerry Falwell,
Max Lucado, Young
Life, Tim LaHaye, Chuck Colson, Lee
Strobel, Northern Baptist
Theological Seminary, Mothers of Pre-Schoolers
(MOPS).
Some
Fundamentalist
Protestant Christians criticised small
sections of the film for their Catholic and
ecumenical overtones, especially the addition of
noncanonical scenes of Jesus with his mother (which they say
encourages
Mariolatry).
Awards
Won
Nominated
Cast
Music
Three
CDs were released with
Mel Gibson's co-operation: (i) the
film soundtrack of
John Debney's original orchestral score
conducted by
Nick Ingman; (ii)
The Passion of the
Christ: Songs, by producers
Mark Joseph and Tim Cook, with
original compositions by various artists, and (iii)
The Passion
of the Christ: Songs Inspired By. The first two albums each
received a
2005 Dove award, and
the soundtrack received an
Academy
Award nomination of
Best Music
Score.
A preliminary score was composed and recorded by
Lisa Gerrard and
Patrick Cassidy, but was
incomplete at film's release.
Jack Lenz
was the primary musical researcher and one of the composers;
several clips of his compositions have been posted online.
See also
References
- White, Armond (2008-03-18). "Steve McQueen's Hunger", New York Press.
Retrieved on 2009-04-16.
- Mark Goodacre, “The Power of The Passion: Reacting and
Over-reacting to Gibson's Artistic Vision” in “Jesus and Mel
Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The Film, the Gospels and the
Claims of History,” ed. Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb,
2004
- [1] - "The Movie Answer Man", Chicago
Sun-Times, March 7, 2004
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