25th February, 2004

DAVID ADAMS

The Passion of the Christ

Rating: MA15+

A powerful and beautifully shot film, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is an uncompromising and stirring retelling of the final hours leading up to the death of Jesus Christ.

In the tradition of Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, this is a gruelling movie and well deserves its MA rating. Yet it’s a movie which captures the very essence of what Christ faced in his final hours on earth and paints a realistic picture of first century Jerusalem.

Portraying the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus Christ, The Passion is a movie which is conscious that the events it portrays echo not only throughout history but throughout eternity. Yet, just as do the Gospels themselves, it’s also a movie which has a very human element.

Jim Caviezel (Frequency, The Count of Monte Cristo) manages to paint a convincing portrait of Christ and he is well supported by a talented cast: from Maia Morgenstern as Jesus’ mother Mary and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene through to Francesco de Vito as Peter, Hristo Jivkov as John and Luca Lionello as Judas.

Jesus (Jim Caviezel). Picture: Philippe Antonello.

The movie accurately shows the weakness, indecision and the arrogance of man - captured at least partly in the characters of Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), King Herod (Luca de Dominicis) and the High Priest Caiphas (Mattia Sbragia) and puts the fact of Christ’s death firmly on the shoulders of all mankind. This film is not in the least anti-Semitic.

The events of the last 12 hours are cleverly contextualised through a series of flashbacks - here we see Jesus as a carpenter joking with his mother Mary, Jesus teaching at the Sermon on the Mount and the disciples breaking bread with Him at the Last Supper.

Gibson has embellished some parts of the Gospel story - Satan, for example, appears several times in the film and there are some scenes which are taken from Catholic tradition rather than the Bible - yet none of the additions are particularly jarring or detract from the flow of the story.

Shot largely in the southern Italian city of Matera and at an enormous set on the outskirts of Rome, the film creates a delicate interplay between light and darkness and the lighting (which Gibson wanted to reflect the images of Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio), along with the evocative musical score, serves to underline the fact that the events being played out will ripple across time.

It’s beautiful to hear the words spoken in the languages of the time - Aramaic and Latin - and though they are a useful reference (particularly when the movie’s script diverges slightly from the Gospels or during the flashback scenes), to many people, the subtitles will probably be largely unnecessary with the images alone making the words obvious.

Simon of Cyrene (Jarreth Merz) helps Jesus (Jim Caviezel) carry his cross. Picture: Philippe Antonello.

The Passion is a violent film - particularly in scenes where Jesus is scourged and when he is placed upon the cross - but the violence is not gratuitous. On the contrary, it is well contextualised and aptly illustrates the barbarity of mankind. (Those watching would do well to realise that there were still reports of crucifixions occurring in places such as Sudan in very recent history).

Oscar winner Gibson has created a haunting and deeply thought-provoking movie that fully deserves its place among the greatest artistic depictions of Jesus Christ in film, literature, and art.

Given the raw nature of the movie, it certainly won’t appeal to all and probably won’t be used in the same way The Jesus Film of the late Seventies has been. There will be people who will not want to see this film and it’s not one for children nor a movie that television will be able to drag out for a noon showing every Good Friday.

Given the limitations of film in fully depicting how Christ took on the sin of the world for mankind, yet Gibson does a remarkable job in pulling back the curtain to show what we who stood in the crowd of onlookers might have seen. A triumph!