‘The Passion of the Christ’ Reveals Mel Gibson
As Chief Media Polemicist of the Early 21^st Century

By Michael Bradley

I cannot recall ever wishing for a sequel to a movie, whether I enjoyed the original or not, and certainly I never caught myself hoping that a given movie or TV show would result in ‘knock-off’ competitive versions. But Mel Gibson has made me feel differently.

It would be good if the success of Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ prompted some studios to do their own version of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. And it would be wonderful if one were produced with a true love of history first, and a respect for religion second. Sadly, in Mr. Gibson’s case, the reverse is true.

There is much attention to period detail and atmosphere, of course, in this movie, but unfortunately after that its power is in its polemics.

Mel Gibson’s vision of Christ and his last hours is not one of the persecution and death of a man of such vast moral depth – as would befit the true Son of God – that time itself is now measured from before and after the apparent date of his death. No, not at all. Nor does Mr. Gibson’s view apparently encompass the benevolence of Jesus, and his love of all mankind that in its biblical illustrations is the very mortar that binds all the great religions of Christianity together, and offers a bridge to the other great religions.

Mr. Gibson’s view is much more narrow and has much more to do with blame and perhaps revenge than it has to do with the far greater concepts of forgiveness and love that Christianity teaches are the stepping-stones to holiness, and which it further teaches pave the pathway to eternal bliss.

What ‘The Passion of the Christ’ delivers to modern movie audiences, already jaded by countless violent dramas and an admixture of horror films, is a personalized brutality that tops what has gone before, even in adventure and action films.

Gibson in Mad Max, James Caan in Rollerball, Bruce Willis in Diehard, et al, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator series all sustained immense violence to themselves while in the persona of their respective heroes, and while much of it was unbelievable, it was also easy to tolerate as the excess expected in an action movie. We all know when we watch such movies that no man could sustain the kind of violence these film heroes endure, with the exception of The Terminator, who after all is supposed to be a machine, but we enjoy the show.

‘The Passion of the Christ’ is of course quite different. It isn’t supposed to be an action movie. Yet the brutality inflicted upon the figure of Jesus could not be sustained by any man, and Christ after all is supposed to be a man living and dying for all mankind. What Mr. Gibson depicts is a superman, and while Jesus is recognized by the Christian world as the Son of God, it is understood that Jesus Christ was fully mortal. 

In Mr. Gibson’s movie, Jesus would never have gotten to the point of carrying the cross, because he would have been killed during the flagellation at the public pillory.

All of this moviemaking excess would be understandable, perhaps even acceptable, if Mel Gibson declared it to be just his view of Christ’s last day. But he hasn’t been anywhere near that humble. No, he has set himself forward as a cinematic historian, declaring that his movie is an accurate portrayal of one of the most important world events. And he has the temerity to assert that he is able to determine and follow the intrinsic truth among the disparate gospels, all of which were written after the event – many long after – and all by different authors with different views and subject to the prejudices of their time period, which of course colored the prism through which they viewed the historical data, such as it was, since most was based on aged oral history.

Mr. Gibson has declared that his vision is pure. And the best that can be said is that it appears he is sincere in his belief in himself. Yet to have the temerity to declare that a story told millions of times, over two millennia, is now told definitively by one man can only reflect the magnitude of the ego involved.

But even if the intentions were benign, the result is not.

‘The Passion of the Christ’ plays upon and fully exploits the Christian traditions, and therefore people who are devout in their belief are often greatly moved. And why shouldn’t they be? Here is Jesus Christ, the figure they have revered all their lives, to whom they have prayed in their darkest and most personal moments, being first traitorously given over to Jewish enemies in the Temple, then being judged by them and finally turned over to the Romans for the completion of the process through the vilest humiliation and torture, leading to death in the most depraved manner imaginable.

Even given an understanding that what is known of the actual events is vague, relating to what skimpy records do exist two millennium later, there are clearly many historical inaccuracies in Mr. Gibson’s movie.

Mr. Gibson’s Pontius Pilate is a thoughtful, soul-searching administrator who is reluctant to execute the Jewish Jesus until forced to do so by the demands of the Jewish High Priest Caiaphas and his subordinates; but Pilate was not a kind and passive man. He was one of the most vicious administrators Rome had in its foreign service, and was more than once rebuked by Rome for his unnecessary violence.

Pilate’s goal was the suppression of any resistance to Roman rule, period.

Further, in the vernacular of the time, using appellations such as ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of Man’ were relatively common among itinerant religious figures or would-be prophets, so it is highly unlikely that Jesus would have been condemned for using such terms, nor would they likely be considered blasphemy, as is suggested in Mr. Gibson's text.

But raising a following among the Jews that could cause political upheaval would indeed be cause for suppression by the authorities, and in this Caiaphas, et al, would have been working with the Romans to maintain the status quo; in other words, Caiaphas and the Temple leaders were not the powerful force demanding the death of Jesus, but were sycophants to the Romans, bowing to the realities of their political lives even if it meant occasionally sacrificing an emerging rebel leader from their own tribes.

Mel Gibson has distorted these known and widely accepted facts. And he has done so at one of the most volatile time periods in modern world history. He has created a movie that invigorates the most emotional aspects of Christianity, while giving new life to the tarnished belief that the Jews caused the death of Jesus. And he has done so using an approximation of the original ancient languages, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Further, while there are English subtitles used in much of the movie, they are not by any means used in all of the dialogue. This means of course that in certain parts of the world, especially the Middle East, there is much more dialogue that is likely to be understood than what is perceived by Western audiences. And what that language may declare has not been illustrated or explained! 

It is naïve in the extreme to believe that this movie, with its clearly apparent flaws, will not serve to inflame passions among the Middle Eastern audiences. Mr. Gibson’s timing could not be worse, or, viewing it cynically, perhaps it could not be more perfect.

The overdrawn and surrealistic violence of ‘The Passion of the Christ’ is further embellished by garish touches, such as his mother Mary and others, cloaked as though in early Nun’s habits, sopping up the pools of blood at the pillory after Jesus, having been scourged beyond anything mortally sustainable, is dragged away. Afterwards, there is the picture of Mary kissing his feet as he is upon the cross, her face then smeared with blood.

And then there is the devil as woman. Satan appears to Jesus, but not just during the Christ’s self-doubt and anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, and certainly not as a male figure normally accepted in religious texts. In Mr. Gibson’s view, Satan is female; although some claim the figure is androgynous, or possibly male, that seems to be a stretch toward apologia and rationalization. If this figure appeared in any other movie, no one would doubt that it is a female visage.

This smoothly evil temptress is shown again and again, throughout the rest of the movie, which has not the barest resemblance to the biblical stories. At one point, she is shown carrying what at first appears to be a child, but then in another scene this ‘child’ appears to be a dwarf of evil mien, or perhaps it is meant to be an illustration of a demon.

In all events, this juxtaposition accomplishes the opposite of what Mr. Gibson desires; it shows everyone who is not swept up in emotion that this is a work of artistic fiction, and that its story line is filled with not-so-subtle vitriol that has much more to do with the point-of-view politics of its creator than anything involving history.

Despite Mr. Gibson’s many and varied disclaimers, he is clearly manipulating a viewpoint of his own; therefore he is in fact the very definition of a polemicist. Perhaps Mr. Gibson feels he should occupy the empty chair at the traditional Passover Seder.