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Braveheart:
A Warrior's Spirit in "The Passion" Reviewed by Graham H.
Moes If superior filmmaking means showing us things we've never seen before, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is masterful. Hollywood depictions of Christ to this point have reflected modern tendencies to pare down the incarnate Deity to a soft, sanitized and stagy presenter of quaint moral lessons. I'm talking about that doe-eyed guy up on the wall at Sunday School. The one depicted knocking at the door, but not loud enough to risk disturbing dinner. A savior gentle, remote and vaguely hippie. It wasn't always so. Early church imagery often depicted him as conqueror, standing astride the world, serpents underfoot and a scepter in his hand - the biblical Christ capable of overturning money-changers tables, facing down rock-throwing hypocrites and terrorizing demons. Gibson has revived this long lost imagery with the intensity born of conviction. The mission is still great love expressed in submission, but Christ here is tough as nails (literally), a warrior, knowing his fearful duty but unwilling to shrink from it. He may be the sacrificial "lamb led to the slaughter," but he's far from sheepish. The result is riveting cinema, despite the fact it's a one-act film two hours in length. "Passion" is a work of high art. It's been called "the Gospel according to Mel," but any embellishment on the source material is purely visual, brilliantly so. Without giving away too much, let's just say Lucifer and his minions make an appearance or two, Gibson's statement on the true significance of the event. (Yes, it was a painful death. Yes, it gave birth to the faith of millions. But viewed as Satan's desperate last stand, the final 12 hours of Christ's life really represented an end game at the crossroads of the universe.) Gibson's choices as auteur in fleshing out this underlying struggle is the film's most powerful — dare we say cool? — element.
Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line, The Count of Monte Cristo) is phenomenal as Christ. He was struck by lightening during the shoot, and the voltage went straight to his performance. Caviezel, who shares Gibson's faith, insisted on daily Mass during the shoot, taking method acting to a whole new level that has translated to Oscar-caliber work. Detractors have downplayed the film for a perceived lack of nuance, but Caviezel's ability to project Christ's love and concern for his tormentors in the midst of agony, is nuance incarnate. The script, too, pulls in motifs found in scripture from Genesis to Revelation to dimensionalize the film. (Christ's handling of the snake is a clear reference to a Messianic prophesy in Genesis.) Composer John Debney's masterpiece of a score deserves mention. It unifies and paces the procession of imagery, alternating between the cacophonous and the triumphant, incorporating a variety of exotic instruments and apocalyptic noises. Debney, one of the most wildly prolific artists in the biz, could earn his first Oscar nod as well. I hesitate even bothering with the "controversy" surrounding the film at this point. The charges of anti-Semitism were a scare tactic before the film opened, and now that the reality is on screen, criticism has shifted to Gibson's "divisive marketing techniques." As the new conspiracy theory goes, Gibson masterminded the controversy himself to ensure box office success. Test screening only with friendly Christian audiences is somehow proof positive of his guilt. But Mel was still in Italy laboring quietly on his little buono per l'anima, non buono per il portafoglio ("good for the soul, not good for the wallet") project when he was attacked, the film condemned publicly before it even existed. Critics were lined up around the block to prejudge the project in hopes of keeping it from a major distributor. They succeeded, so Gibson took it the only place he could. Yet he's the bad guy. The fact of the matter is, the right-leaning Gibson has had enemies in Hollywood for years, particularly with gays and feminists. And in that town, coming out of the closet as a Christian is far more gutsy than admitting you're gay. The day Passion premiered, two major studio heads vowed to The New York Times they'd never work with Gibson again. (They quickly retracted when it became a blockbuster overnight.) Which goes to show — despite all that talk about the sacred freedom of artistic expression, liberals can be at least as repressive and prejudiced as they accuse conservatives of being. Until now, they've just had fewer opportunities to show it. |
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