Christ film 'riddled with errors'. Scholars say Mel Gibson's film about the last 12 hours of Jesus' life contains several historical mistakes. [BBC News | Entertainment | World Edition]
I'd like to explain why I will not see Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. For starters, I'd like to cite people like the ones quoted in the BBC item above:
Kathleen Lewandowski, who saw it in Chicago, said: "I was gasping for breath."
Fellow Chicago viewer Joan Moder said: "Everybody should see it. It gives life meaning."
No, it doesn't give life meaning. It's just a film, and the stories it is based on are just stories, some of them containing historical facts. It's precisely the kind of mania exemplified by the two American viewers cited in the BBC story that worries me, bothers me, and angers me. And it's most of the reason I won't be seeing Mad Max's movie about Jesus.
It's not what this movie is about that matters. What matters here is how it is going to be received by some people. I know that distinction sounds trite; but I don't think it is. A text or a film is not the sum of its parts; one must consider what the reader brings to the text as well. The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn and The Merchant of Venice, for example, carry entirely different meanings for audiences in the northern United States, the southern United States, or Nazi Germany. The Merchant of Venice was the most popular play of Nazi Germany; yet there have been only 3 productions in the last 30 years in New York City, which obviously has a large Jewish population.
Even if The Passion of the Christ is a very good film, as Ebert and Roeper say, Gibson has been so active ratcheting up the fundamentalist fervor with intimations of anti-semitism and manipulations of the Vatican's PR people that the aesthetic quality of the film is a secondary consideration. By analogy, imagine that the KKK produced a great film about tolerance. You wouldn't be able to look past the fact that the film was produced by the KKK (nor should you) to see its aesthetic merits.
Gibson has managed to turn familiar material into an event film. This would not have happened without the combination of two things: first, the large population of religious fundamentalists residing in the United States; and second, the atmosphere of fear and paranoia and a sense that Christianity is somehow threatened following 9/11. According to a recent poll, 60% of Americans believe the story of Noah's Ark is literally true; 61% believe the creation story in the Bible is literally true; 64% believe the story of Moses parting the Red Sea is literally true. With this abundance of religious zealotry, is it any wonder that post-9/11 paranoia can be spread throughout the United States on just the suggestion of a threat from the Muslim world? The so-called "added threat of terror" is bogus, but a nation of zealots can be convinced of anything if they will believe in the factual nature of the stories above.
Enter Mel Gibson and his literal interpretation of the Bible. Not even that. He also used a 19th-century mystic as a source.
Using the four Gospels as well as texts from a controversial 19th-century mystic and saint, Anne Catherine Emmerich, Gibson has fashioned a story in which Jewish high priests lead a riotous mob to Pontius Pilate's door. The regional Roman ruler makes an effort to spare Jesus, but the crowd won't let him. The rest is heated history.
Critics say the Gospels contradict each other about Christ's final hours; that Emmerich emphasized the Jews' blood guilt; and that Pilate was never that nice.
Claiming to make a historical film based on New Testament scriptures alone is like claiming to make a historically accurate film about WWII based on the movie Pearl Harbor. The first gospel wasn't even written until decades after the events it purports to tell. The gospels are ripe with contradictions and inaccuracies. To follow Mel Gibson for historical accuracy ignores centuries of biblical scholarship and common sense. His use of non-English languages gives the veneer of historical accuracy, and that is surely the most insidious element of this film.
No, this film is not about history. It is about "passion," about a willingness to believe in something simply because it overwhelms you, not because it is true, or because it makes sense. Like the best fascist propaganda, this is a film built on visceral entertainment, bloodletting and pathos. (I don't have to see it to know this much -- just read the reviews.)
A.O. Scott of the NY Times says: "The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it."
Chuck Schwartz: "Two hours of gruesome, sadistic, stomach-turning and hard core graphically violent torture detached from any background information is not something to expose kids to, regardless of religion."
Newsday: "Mel Gibson shows once again that he's skilled at depicting violence. But you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of 'tolerance, love and forgiveness' that the producer-director-co-writer insists he's trying to communicate."
Slate: "This is a two-hour-and- six-minute snuff movie -- The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre -- that thinks it's an act of faith."
The New Yorker: "The movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agony."
And so on. I am sure fundamentalists will bathe in the blood and pathos of this spectacle, emerge from it feeling like they have encountered something genuine because they have encountered something that moved them. That's how fascist propaganda works, on the basest principles. It is unthinking and brutal. Strength is purity. Desire is weakness. Deny the body. Fight the infidels. Circle the wagons. Jesus is coming home.
The ex-marine Anthony Swofford wrote a book called Jarhead. In it, he talks about how marines watched porno and war films to prepare for combat. Even anti-war films such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket gave them a kick, a necessary urge to kill before entering combat. The Passion of the Christ is porno for fundamentalists. Its details don't matter. It could be historically inaccurate, anti-semitic, whatever: The point is the visceral thrill fundamentalists will get watching the bloodletting of Jesus, because religion is a visceral thing for them. Religion is not something you think about, for the fundamentalist; it's something you feel. And on that count, Gibson's film will no doubt deliver the goods. And that's what upsets me, what concerns me.
This film is not a gamble for Gibson. As USA Today notes, "Keep a few numbers in mind: In the USA, there are roughly 220 million adherents to a range of Christian faiths. There are 2 billion Christians worldwide, roughly one-third of the planet. That's a lot of movie tickets." (Although, Gibson's medieval brand of Catholicism couldn't be practiced by more than, like, 10 people, could it? The many sects of Christianity that will use this film as a recruitment tool don't seem to mind that their dogma is very different from Mel Gibson's.)
This film is not a gamble for Mel Gibson: This film is a gamble for the rest of us, for the people who try to find an ethical path in life without following too many charlatans, without appealing to too many unseen truths, without basing too many of our decisions on criteria that we feel but don't understand.
[Note: In the interest of fair play, and since I am not going to watch the film, I have asked a friend of mine who is a very religious person to write a review of this film. I don't know if he'll agree; but if he does, then his review will be posted on this blog. -- General Stuff]
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