This past Saturday, however, I couldn't pay any attention to the previews playing before the feature presentation, "The Passion of the Christ." Instead, I found myself thinking about what I expected to experience in the next two hours. As someone who grew up in a Christian home, and who attended a non-denominational Christian church that taught me a good deal about the Bible, I already knew the story of Jesus' suffering as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In some sense, I thought I could lump "The Passion" and "Titanic" together: I knew how they would end; it was just a matter of how well the tale was told.
But my understanding of the Gospels was complicated by my status as someone who is in the process of converting to Judaism. The Gospels no longer held the same importance in my life as they once did, and I was troubled by the charges of anti-Semitism registered against writer, producer and director Mel Gibson and his movie. I wondered, sitting in the theater, if I was capable of watching "The Passion" as I would watch any other film. I also doubted my ability to deal with the film's alleged anti-Semitism as I dealt with, say, the anti-German sentiment in Holocaust accounts, considering that I have German heritage.
My doubts were, unfortunately, well-placed. In "The Passion," Gibson takes us on a fast-forwarded journey in Aramaic and Latin from the Garden of Gethsemane, where Judas Iscariot (Luca Lionello) plants his infamous kiss of betrayal on Jesus' (Jim Caviezel) cheek, through the bloody ordeal of Jesus's suffering, to the emergence of a restored Jesus from the tomb on the morning of his resurrection. That journey could not have been intended for the casual movie-goer, however. I was constantly checking the English subtitles and the order of the scenes against my own knowledge of the Gospels; since Gibson was, in fact, aiming for accuracy, my opinion of the movie depended in part on his adherence to scripture. My attempt to assess the film objectively was severely damaged by the persistent urge to close my eyes, turn my head away-anything I could do to escape the excessively grotesque violence flashing on the screen. The violence of "The Passion," though in some ways less intense than the bloodshed in "The Matrix" or "Kill Bill," is unmistakably more disgusting than anything I have ever witnessed in a theater. The blood and gore did not help me sympathize more fully with Jesus' physical suffering. In fact, the only feelings it induced were the urge to regurgitate my greasy mall food-court "Japanese" lunch and to leave the theater.
But I don't think that was Gibson's aim. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, he said, "[Jesus] was wounded for our transgressions and by his wounds we are healed. That's the point of the film … It's about faith, hope, love and forgiveness." Perhaps that message is most clear in the brief, sporadic flashbacks to Jesus' life as a carpenter, teacher and healer, but each and every one of those awkwardly placed scenes is quickly overshadowed by the bloody mess to which we are forced to return when they end. Even if Gibson was accurate in his depiction of Jesus' suffering, the onscreen violence was unnecessary for two reasons. First, he and his cinematographer had at their disposal a variety of film techniques that could be used to convey the totality of Jesus' experience without actually showing us every nauseating detail. Second, the blood was especially superfluous in this film because most viewers would sympathize with Jesus regardless of the magnitude of his physical suffering-indeed, Gibson ignores character development altogether, caring only to show us a bit of Pontius Pilate's life and a few snippets of Jesus'.
Hence, my second problem with the film. The borderline anti-Semitism I discerned in "The Passion" was not in what Gibson chose to show, but rather in what he didn't. We are given a look into Pontius Pilate's life that provides us with a possible explanation for his potentially reprehensible contribution to Jesus' crucifixion: Caesar is growing more impatient with Pilate's inability to control the Jews, and if the unrest over Jesus escalates, Caesar may be inclined to remove or otherwise seriously reprimand Pilate. That's all fine and plausible, but Gibson does not provide us with a corresponding insight into the possible motives behind the Jewish Sanhedrin's mistrust of Jesus. The members of the Sanhedrin and the Jewish crowd that demand Jesus' death are depicted as a thoughtless, bloodthirsty mob. Certainly, the Roman soldiers are given no pleasant treatment-they are clearly brutal, awful human beings. But who the hell is anti-Roman? Many people, on the other hand, are anti-Semitic, and part of me does worry that the Jews' depiction in this film will reinforce existing anti-Semitism by apologizing for Pontius Pilate and pointing the finger at the Jewish Sanhedrin.
In the end, though, I don't think this movie will mean much to future generations, despite its current hype. It was poorly-made and truly ineffectual in its telling of Jesus' last hours. I cringed instead of crying, and I walked away relieved to be done with the movie, rather than touched by the suffering of a man many worship as the son of God. Whatever your religious beliefs, I would recommend this movie about as highly as I'd recommend drinking beer before liquor.