February 25, 2004 | There’s something creepily masochistic about Mel Gibson’s penchant for playing characters who endure extreme and extended torture. Whatever the movie — Braveheart or Payback , Lethal Weapon or Conspiracy Theory — he appears to take unseemly delight during those borderline-unwatchable moments in which he’s supposedly on the business end of sharp objects, blunt instruments or live wires. Indeed, when I first heard he was directing a film about the final, agony-filled hours in the life of Jesus Christ, I immediately assumed he would cast himself in the lead role.
But no: Gibson is content to remain on the other side of the cameras while Jim Caviezel ( Frequency , The Count of Monte Cristo ) portrays the ultimate sacrificial lamb in The Passion of the Christ , a relentlessly grim and sporadically powerful drama that, for better or worse, is likely to be the most talked-about movie of the year.
It’s unmistakably the work of a true believer who’s truly eager to employ his filmmaking skills to a noble purpose. And yet, despite its many admirable qualities, it is as much a mixed blessing as Gibson’s ambitious performance in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Very much like his portrayal of the Melancholy Dane, Passion is a solid and well-crafted piece of work, easily accessible and occasionally inspired, but also seriously limited in its range and impact.
Part of the problem is the film’s narrow focus. As an artist, Gibson certainly is entitled to make any movie about any subject he chooses. (He’s even entitled to make it with actors who speak Latin and Aramaic dialogue that requires English subtitles.) But by making a movie devoted almost entirely to the last 12 hours of Christ’s life, from his arrest in Gethsemane to his crucifixion at Golgotha, Gibson denies us the opportunity to fully comprehend the monstrous injustice – and, just as important, the historical importance — of the bloodletting we witness. Quite simply, we don’t see enough of the wondrous life to adequately appreciate the dreadful death.
In a different movie with a different agenda, it’s conceivable that Caviezel could give an aptly complex and charismatic performance as Jesus. Except for a few fleeting flashbacks, however, this movie never allows him the chance to do anything but suffer, wince, suffer some more — and then die. (In a coda, the Resurrection is duly noted, but just barely.) The script, drawn from the four gospels, is purposefully designed to provide maximum agony, and minimal ecstasy, for the actor and his audience.
Obviously, Gibson wants to illuminate the unimaginable – wants to underscore what the phrase “suffered and died for our sins” truly signifies – by singeing our eyes with the full-bore horror of what Christ endured at the hands of High Priests and Roman guards. But the literal overkill actually works against the film by turning it into an initially gut-wrenching but ultimately mind-numbing Passion Play (albeit one with impressive production values). Somewhere around the midpoint – specifically, around the time a gleeful Roman guard uses a steel-tipped whip to rip flesh from Christ’s back – you start paying more attention to special effects, and less heed to the pain and suffering, simply because, by that time, the gruesome spectacle has gone on too long to remain mesmerizing.
Many commentators – including quite a few who haven’t actually seen the film – have accused Gibson of perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes in his depiction of the High Priests who capture Christ and clamor for his execution. This strikes me as a bum rap: After all, it’s difficult for any filmmaker to tell this particular story without making some Jews (or, more specifically, certain status-conscious Jewish power brokers of the time) appear villainous. To his credit, Gibson includes a few admirable Jewish characters – in addition to Mary (arrestingly well-played by Maia Morgenstern), the mother of Jesus, and, of course, Jesus himself – to provide some semblance of balance.
Oddly enough, though, the most sympathetic and well-rounded character in the entire movie turns out to be the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, intriguingly played by Hristo Shopov as a burnt-out but politically savvy bureaucrat. He does the wrong thing for what he thinks are the right reasons – preserving the peace and, while he’s at it, his career. But he knows not what he does when he washes his hands of an inconvenient problem on a long Good Friday.
