The Passion of the Christ
Just returned from a viewing of the Mel Gibson film, “The Passion of the Christ”. My initial reactions - a gripping movie that puts across the suffering and death of Christ in a most painful manner.
The message of the movie was simple: Christ suffered, died and was raised from the dead - the kerygma proclaimed by the Church from the beginning. Despite the artist license and focus on the violence, it was the same message reinterpreted in today’s modern context. Christ’s suffering was real and painful - even as an observer, one flinches at the torture.
The film starts with the agony in the Garden, goes through the trial, scourging and crucifixion at the cross. The final scene shows the empty tomb and a risen Christ. The conversation is in Aramaic and in Latin. The use of ancient languages lend a strong feel of historicity, although it is clear that the film does not aim to be completely authentic. The sequence of events approximates the Biblical sequence, except that there are flashbacks to certain events during Jesus’s earlier life. There are also extra-biblical scenes inserted but not many.
The Passion was a touching movie. There were several scenes where one cannot feeling pity - I myself cried when Jesus meets his mother when he falls the second time under the weight of the cross. Yet, the suffering is depicted as a necessary part of Jesus’s ministry - a choice he made to carry the sins of the world.
The one thing I didn’t enjoy was the violence and cruelty. I felt that the Gospels writers did not dwell on Jesus’s suffering at length for a reason. But to temper my disapproval, I’m not sure if the film would have made such an impact if these scenes were diluted. Perhaps the director intended the audience to experience the pain by proxy.
This movie has garnered so much criticism and reviews in the media - an unlikely media event in this secular age. Much has been made of whether it was indeed anti-Semitic, or if it were as historically accurate as it was made out to be. If anything, the controversy over it has raised public awareness so much that it broke box-office records for a movie with a religious theme.