This is not a film review.
The main charge that seems to be levelled at Gibson isn’t the violence he depicts. We all know that crucifixion was a savage punishment and only relatively few reviewers have found it gratuitous or pornographic. What seems to be worrying commentators
is the film’s hypothetical or actual anti-Semitism. Given that its heroes, Jesus included, are also Jews, that objection might be dead in the water. There is another factor involved, though. Gibson and his family belong to a Catholic sect that quite explicitly rejects the reforms of Vatican II. Foremost among them was a suspension of the Church’s nearly two-century-long hostility to the Jews as turncoats and Christ-killers. Given his beliefs, it would be surprising if he portrayed the Jewish mob in a positive light.
After Braveheart, which sparked off its own lamebrained brand of race hatred in a wave of saltire-faced anti-Englishism, Gibson will be well-used to accusations of historical lapses and solecisms. If he really does suggest that Christ was executed for claiming to be the Messiah, he’s wrong, and doesn’t understand the contemporary significance of the word. Equally, if he overplays the Passion and overlooks the Resurrection, he’s either shaky on his doctrine or else, more likely, he’s let the film-maker win out over the Roman Catholic. Purely theatrical devices like having Satan wander smirking through the crowd (with a maggot crawling from one nostril to the other, so I hear) or an explosive teardrop fall from Heaven at the moment of death are forgivable enough in the context of an "entertainment" film. The underlying question has to be, though, whether The Passion of the Christ is intended as entertainment or as an expression of Gibson’s beliefs. It’s possible to be both, but only if the second isn’t mortgaged to the first.
It sounds gory, and possibly too gory even in the interests of historical veracity and spiritual catharsis. You either accept the ineffable horror of the Crucifixion or you don’t. Seeing it in broadscreen and full living colour won’t lead you a millimetre closer to accepting what - undepictably - follows. Reading about Gibson’s film and those charges of anti-semitism made me think again about another harrowing representation of the Crucifixion. Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece, now in Colmar, France, is a key image in what someone called a "savagely anti-mystical" approach to the Crucifixion, which was not depicted at all in the medieval Western church and only as a moment of triumph in the East. Everyone knows it. Christians see it as the most rugged spiritual exercise; humanists take it as proof that Christianity is founded not just in metaphysics, but sadism as well. Here’s an interesting question, though: who knows what’s depicted on the back panels of the altarpiece and what bearing might that have on the question of Christian anti-semitism?
Our own most celebrated, once notorious, depiction of the Crucifixion is the Dali Christ of St John of the Cross in St Mungo’s Museum. It’s neither savage nor triumphant, but makes you want to ask (like James Thurber): What do you want to be enigmatic for, Salvador? It doesn’t seem to come from any tradition other than what might be called a pious humanism. It might be an appropriately surreal gesture for Dali’s centenary year to take it down for a while, just to let its undoubted impact build again.
Glasgow bought the Dali but banned The Life of Brian. It’s set for re-release after25 years, possibly everywhere except Strathclyde. As a portrayal of religious bigotry and pointless zealotry, the Python film is hard to beat. Made on re-used sets left over by Pier Paolo Pasolini, it played with the absurdist anachronisms of an even earlier film about Jesus.
Leave aside Gibson’s lapses; develop a sense of humour about "Always Look On The Bright Side" sung from Calvary; John Wayne’s "Aw"-struck centurion in The Greatest Story Ever Told has to be the most offensive twist of the facts in a Biblical movie.
The enemy in the Christian story was never the Jewish mob but a Roman procurator who was so off-message he had to be censured by head office for excessive brutality. I don’t know how Gibson has portrayed Pontius Pilate, but if he’s played as a hankie-twisting liberal, I’m going to watch the Pythons instead.
