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Passion about "The Passion..." - Part 2

I have been trying hard not to write about this movie until I achieved a little distance in time from it. As I said before, Preachy and I have been avoiding seeing it even though we knew we would have to because of the upcoming discussion group <sigh>.

To be honest, I could actually have opted out of this, pleading need for study time. My Massage Boards will only be about 36 hours away the evening the group meets, so I could sort of "not" be there (meaning I could shut myself into the office while the blood flows in another part of the house). Since I will have to clean up anyway, I can already see myself bagging the studying and getting into the blood-letting instead.

Before I say anything specific about the movie I want to put us all in mind of the local context which Preachy and I live in. Religion here on the mountaintop is taken pretty seriously. There are a plethora of literalist, quasi- and fully fundamentalist, pseudo- christian sects hidden around every corner of this place. Fundamentalism of the fanatic variety here seems to be the operative mode. Not to mention Republican. In fact, the entire progressive complement of our county attended this movie just last night (Preachy and me and a couple of our friends). One of the local Baptist offshoots even set up booths in the theatre to help "explain" this movie to the rest of us heathen as we staggered out, shell-shocked, from the darkness.

The "information tables" really offended me, though this has nothing particular to do with the movie. Knowing how things work around here, I’m sure that the local Baptist guy walked into the theatre and just kinda struck an oral deal with the theatre manager to put up and man those tables. However, I believe this to be illegal. If memory serves, in allowing one church (or other organization) to effectively "advertise" in the theatre, the management now has an obligation to market this opportunity to ALL the other churches/organizations in the area. So even as I walk in, already dreading this celluloid experience, I am additionally aggravated by the fundamentalist tripe I see pasted all over the place with no balancing information or discussion.

But I digress... sorta.

To begin: My objections to and about this movie are so far ranging and deep that I have been spending some of my time trying to... well... categorize them. I haven’t been very successful. In reading the several reviews (none of them favorable) prior to attending, I have to say that none of them gave me any of the information I might actually have wanted to have. So this has become my focal point, practically, biblically, theologically and from the point of view of things in and about the movie which affected me... or didn’t.

The Movie as a Movie: Putting the religion and bible stuff aside, the movie is quite plainly just a bad movie. Badly made, contrived, badly acted and spoken (which was probably what allowed me to understand most of the spoken Latin in the film). The actors are at least as full of themselves as the producer/director and it shows in every preening movement and stentoriously uttered phrase. As the movie opened, I thought one of the "good" things about the movie was the subtitles, but I quickly dropped that idea when I realized that not one person I was watching could have acted their way our of a paper bag (with the possible exception of the Satan character). The subtitles were just a plot to trick us - to help cover the bad acting and make you think you were watching something "important".

The Movie as a Biblical Statement: Nothing new here. As expected, the film was a mostly accurate mishmash of the four gospels with a few flourishes thrown in. I thought for a second they were going to do something interesting with Mary Magdelen... but... oh well. I think, in his self-important way, Gibson thought he was being original when he decided to smush everything together. With the kinds of movies he normally makes, this may pass as deep thought for him. He could have done a cutting edge, truly biblically controversial film, but he didn’t have the balls to look farther than what was right in front of him. His own bloodlust fuels the film, not thought... and certainly not any faith I am familiar with.

The Movie as Theology as I Understand It: This is kind of a variation on the above theme, but it was very clear to me that, theologically speaking, this was a strictly conservative Roman Catholic retelling of this particular story. guilitguiltguiltbleedbleedbleed suffersuffersufferbullshitbullshitbullshit. Like all Catholics (and we all know that Jesus was really a Catholic), Jesus has to feel guilty because he actually likes his life as a human. Too bad. Then, he has to bleed to atone for liking his life and suffer because he still can’t make up his damn mind! It’s all a load of horse-hockey as far as I’m concerned. In fact, I’d love to see someone make a movie about that all-too-short snippet of film at the end of almost 2 hours of guilt and blood and put-on suffering - you know the part of the story that is the actual POINT? Like, you know... the transcendence of resurrection! Talk about a "feel-good flick"!

Other Things That Struck Me About The Movie: This is where I get to say that I think in some ways we have all been made victims of the hype surrounding the film. Here’s why: I am not Jewish and so I may be way off base here, but in the accounts that Gibson used for his film, the Jews actually wanted Jesus dead. (They were politically motivated, it had nothing to do with Jesus being Catholic... honest!) This is not, in my opinion, anti-semitic, although there has been plenty of hype about how "anti-semitic" the movie is. I may not like it, Jewish people may not like it, but it’s the story. Other, non-canonical accounts, present a somewhat different picture. I believe it is healthy to keep in mind that most of the canonical gospels were written as Galilee still lay under the Roman yoke. I’m not sure I’d want to be pissing off the Caesars by blaming them for the death of an essentially obscure fanatic. Draw your own conclusions. For the sources used, though, I don’t see the anti-semitism thing too much. It ain’t pretty, and for me it makes no nevermind, but there it is.

In addition, I found the hype about the violence somewhat over-stated although that is the primary reason I did not wish to see the movie. In fact, it was veryveryvery violent and I did do a fair amount of lap-looking, hand-squeezing and finger-tapping. But... having brought a book to keep me company if I chose to walk out, I didn’t and what really got me was the gore. The movie is somewhere beyond gory. Fortunately there were no elderly or children under about 18 at the movie, and I cannot stress to you (or anyone else) enough that this is under NO circumstances a film to which children under 16 or people over 65 should go. Were she still alive, I wouldn’t even let my mother go! The unremitting, continuous and all-consuming nature of the violence and incessantly graphic depictions of gore serve only to weaken the story Gibson is trying to tell and to pander to the American taste for violence in all its forms. This factor, more than any other I have or will talk about in this post, brought me to feel the same kind of shame about being a "christian" as I feel about being an American. I am embarrassed that the only way we will talk about a great man and a great prophet (no matter what else you may believe about him) is to slice him and dice him on the screen so that we talk about the violence of the depiction and not the message he may have been trying to deliver. There is no need for it and it’s wrong.

Next up: I was interested to see Pilate being portrayed in such a sympathetic way. In fact, it seemed to me that he was the only person in the film with a speaking part who "got", even a little bit, what Jesus was saying... once the Pilate character understood that Jesus’ "kingdom" was no threat to Rome, that was it. One of the only convincingly emotional moments in the entire piece. Which brings me to all the various set pieces. Stupid. The one with pathetic little Veronica and her shawl was particularly calculating in my opinion, not to mention the "pieta`" scene that went on farfarfar too long as the dead body was lowered from the cross, Mary’s eyes fixed in the middle distance made her look more like she was about to have a grand mal seizure than a grieving mother. Mary mopping the blood in the courtyard after the scourging with cloths given to her by Claudia (who?), the wife of Pilate? I'm not clear on this at all... Following Catholic tradition, the film names the two thieves crucified with Jesus. There is, as far as I know, no biblical, anthropological or archaeological record of any of these peoples’ names. These are traditions, nothing more, but most of the theatre-goers probably didn’t know that.

As a closet archaeologist I was offended that Gibson did not show more accurately many of the details of life, and especially death, in Roman Galilee. By the way, people were rarely scourged on the fronts of their bodies in those days or in any other time for the simple reason that they expired all too quickly if one of those quills hit a major artery or organ. Scourging works because the bulk of the ribcage along the back protects the internal organs. Same with the back of the legs. It’s all too easy for someone to bleed out if the tipped whip opens one of the big veins or arteries on the back of the leg. Stupid, gratuitous, inaccurate. People condemned to crucifixion almost never carried a fully completed cross to their deaths. The damn things were just too heavy. Biblically correct, maybe - but stupidly inaccurate. The bones in your hands are far to delicate and small to be able to support the weight of an individual for as long as it takes (sometimes days) for them to die of crucifixion. All too soon, the tendons and bones in the hands give way and the victim slumps, alive, off the cross to hang by the nails embedded in his feet or ankles. Here, at least, Gibson gives a slight nod to reality when he depicts Jesus' arms as being supported on the cross by ropes tied around his forearms. In Roman times, crucifixion nails were typically driven into the juncture of the radius and ulna below the wrist. These bones, and the structure of the wrist and its ligaments and tendons, provided adequate support - even when death was hastened by breaking the legs or knees to increase the constriction of the airways. Trust me, I understand clearly how violent the times were - I just don’t need to see it.

Best Character/Best Part of the Movie: Hands down, Satan stole (!) the show. Introduced as a fantastical character right at the start, this may be Gibson’s only enlightened moment/theme in the entire production. Again, this depiction is right out of Catholic dogma, but it is done with appropriate sinister-ness and creates the only sense in the movie that the Jesus character is anything more than going through the motions. There is a moment as Jesus is carrying the cross out of Jerusalem where his eyes meet Satan’s and I did get a sense that he was really in some kind of struggle, not with Satan, not with his father the god, but with himself - and that he really was terrified about the possible outcome - and like any human being, just plain scared to die. However, in the moments after Jesus’ death, as the extent of God’s Joke on Satan is revealed, there is a moment depicting Satan’s reaction. In that moment, the character of Satan as Gibson depicts him looks like nothing more than some unmasked transvestite-disco-queen. Spoiled the whole thing... <sigh> When I saw this, I laughed out loud at the image my mind handed me - and then slid way down in my chair. I didn’t want to get mobbed.

We and our friends may very possibly have been the only people in that theatre who had educations much beyond high school years, or who had much in the way of capacity for critical thinking, given the religious tenor of the area in which we live. Maybe it takes seminary and a Jesuit education to do that for a person, I don’t know. During the film, I saw several women getting Kleenex or hankies out of there purses and dabbing daintily at their eyes and noses. People were praying. As we left the theatre, several couples embraced over extra-large beer-bellies, renewing their commitment to an all-American god and marriage between consenting heterosexuals only. In the end, I left feeling a little scared, a little disappointed and alot disgusted. Ultimately, lots of education or a little, I feel that every person in that theatre the other night had been duped - and Mel-boy is the joker who’s laughing all the way to the bank.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... it ain’t gonna happen.