The Passion of the Christ: A Review

EDIT, 2/28/2004: Added helpful links.

Warning: “spoilers” included. Not of the ending, of course but of some of the more interpretive scenes not found in or embellished from the Scriptures.

There was only one scene in The Passion of the Christ which moved me to tears. It happened along the Via Dolorosa, as Jesus is buckling under the weight of the Cross. He has been savagely beaten by the Romans and can barely breathe under the weight of that which will later kill him. Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, and John are following him from behind the gauntlet of taunting soldiers and mobs, but they cannot reach him through the thick of the crowd. After a moment, Jesus can bear it no longer: he collapses onto the ground, the Cross falling atop his broken body. Mary sees this, and with horror and pity, she remembers her son as a toddler, running along a field and stumbling. Just as she remembers running to catch him falling, she pushes her way through the crowd so that she can once again catch her falling son, to be at his side and to heal his wounds, which were so much greater at this time . . . “I’m here!” she cries. “I’m here, my son.”

Jesus looks sadly at her, his arms trembling under the weight of the Cross, and replies: “See, Mother? I make all things new.”

That I, an evangelical Protestant, shed tears over a supremely Catholic, Marian moment such as this gives a clue to where the artistic strength of this film lies. This film excels at the Marian angle–we almost seem to see this film through her eyes, the horror and sorrow mediated through her unique grief. Even the portrayal of Satan, for instance, is an androgynous parody of Mary; they are both dressed in black shawls, and at one point Satan is seen carrying an ugly, stony baby, in a grotesque mockery of the Madonna-and-Child. It reminds me that this is, in the end, a Catholic movie made by a Vatican II-rejecting believer; it’s not an evangelical tool for church growth, no matter how enthusiastic my faith community was about it. The film is not a retelling of a Gospel; it is simply The Passion, and the Passion makes no sense apart from the rest of the Scriptures.

Also, while the movie does not contradict the Scriptures, it often embellishes or adds imaginative details to the story. That moving scene I just described is not actually in any Gospel account. Mary is not depicted on the road to Golgotha anywhere; Jesus’ reply is from the book of Revelation. This points to what is both the greatest strength and weakness of this film: many of the artistic flourishes, while technically extra-biblical, are filled with deep resonance not only from other parts of the Bible, but the centuries of Christian tradition and liturgy. But not all of this tradition, particularly the late-medieval ones, sits easily with me. The most objectionable things in this film are just as grounded in certain parts of Catholic tradition as the most powerful parts.  This is why I understand, but ultimately reject, the accusations that this movie is nothing more than pornography, or a sacred snuff film.  Titillation was never the intent of the gruesome late-medieval Catholic meditation on the Passion that this film is clearly a part of. It is, in my theological judgment, misguided, unbalanced, and overly morbid, but it is part of a legacy in Western art that has given inspiration to many gifted artists throughout the centuries.

So yes: this movie is too violent. The dwelling upon the scourging of Christ in particular–to a degree not even approached by the Scriptures–is a serious fault in a movie that contains so many other artistic accomplishments. It really does look, to the untrained eye, like a reveling in the suffering and blood of Christ. That may not have been Mel Gibson’s intent, but the medium of film makes it so, and it’s something that isn’t washed away even by the Eucharistic references that are seen later in the film. “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,” an old Pietist hymn went, and it’s so strange and horrible to our modern eyes to see this expressed in such literal, graphic terms. Or at least it ought to be. I wonder how much this is just merely movie violence. Because the degree that this is just movie violence is the degree that the real Passion in real history is cheapened.

I wish Mel would have thought this through before trying to be as “realistic” as possible. The goal of real Christian art is not unvarnished realism, but representation of the divine truths. An Orthodox icon can do that job and look “unrealistic”; “realism” cannot be a sole rationale for the bloody mess that we see on this film. There is something very literal minded about this violence, where it’s only violence and not redemptive suffering. It failed to draw me closer to God, at least; it disturbed me not that Jesus went through this for my sake, but that Gibson would see his Savior in such a way: a raw, stumbling mess lacerated in almost every area of his body. It is this element that led many critics to denounce this film as excessive and pornographic, and on that level I am sympathetic to their arguments. It was an artistically, and theologically, unnecessary choice.  The point of the Passion wasn’t the physical suffering or the gore; it was that Jesus had to suffer at all, because he didn’t deserve one bit of it.  Moreover, he became sin for us, and was separated from his Father.  That was by far the worst suffering he endured, and is something no film could ever visualize.

The way that this movie focuses just on The Passion, too, makes it unsuitable on its own for non-believers. Aside from some well-placed, but all too brief, flashbacks, we don’t get a very clear sense of why Jesus had to suffer such things. I was moved by the film precisely because I was able to fill in the gaps. So a few snippets from the Sermon on the Mount resonated deeply because those excerpts triggered the memory of the entire Sermon; the elevation of the bread during the Last Supper reminded me of the elevation of the Host at every Communion. Those who are unfamiliar with Scripture or tradition will miss these things that are clearly aimed at the faithful, and will only see gore. So the evangelical enthusiasm for this film as an evangelistic vehicle is sorely misguided. The most I can see an outsider feeling for Jesus is a kind of horrified pity–but not devotion or worship. God may yet work through a heart anyways, but I think it will be despite what we see in this movie, not because of it.

TOMORROW or SUNDAY: the virtues of symbolism, art tradition, and Mary