PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 2/26/04)

Writing in 1972, the future director-screenwriter Paul Schrader noted: "The conventional religious film uses a style of identification rather than confrontation. The style amplifies the abundant artistic means inherent to motion pictures . . . [t]he abundant means are indeed tempting to a filmmaker, especially if he is bent on proselytizing. With comparative ease, he can make an ardent atheist sympathize with the trials and agonies of Christ. But he has not lifted the viewer to Christ’s level, he has brought Christ down to the viewer’s."

That, pretty much, can serve just fine as a review of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Of course, the controversy surrounding the film and the endless accounts of its financing and creation might compel one to strike the words "with comparative ease." And Schrader did not foresee the abundant means stirring up anti-Semitism, if indeed they do. From my perspective, the film’s anti-Semitism is implicit rather than programmatic, and, in the film’s current form, a little sneaky. That is, it’s a "nice" touch that the only disciple who refers to Jesus as "rabbi" is Judas; and while Caiphas does utter the blood libel from the book of Matthew, Gibson has dropped the subtitle, so only speakers of Aramaic in the audience will catch it. Finally, for this viewer, the most telling thing about this morbid film is that Gibson, while hell-bent on depicting every lash, taunt, punch, and gob (and more) at his Christ, chooses, in a flashback scene, to go all oblique on Christ’s rescue of Mary Magdalene (Monica Bellucci), merely depicting a chastened mob dropping stones and walking away; Christ (James Caviezel) never utters the words "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I'll leave it to others to speculate on the philosophies of those non-film critics championing this picture.

Not to be glib, but one question that may occur to thoughtful believers encountering this film is, Whose Christ is it Anyway? Around the time that the crow alighted on the cross of the second thief and pecked his eye out, I felt as alienated as I ever had in contemplating the life of Christ—beyond morbidity, Gibson’s perspective here seemed a pagan rather than a Christian one. Add to such boogity-boogity "cinematic" thrills the pablum Gibson occasionally deigns to spoon-feeds the viewer—a "humanizing," steeped in Nice-Mommy sentiment anecdote of a stumbling Christ-child being coddled by Mary—and one can only despair. Does one really have to so debase Christ’s story in order to make it relevant to today’s audiences?

—Glenn Kenny