In short order, he is visited by a genuinely creepy vision of Satan, who tries to persuade Jesus as to the futility of his mission. The moment Jesus is first seen, he is already anguished, praying to his Father under a full moon in the garden of Gethsemane that he might be spared the trials he knows soon await him. One comes away as much with a technical knowledge of how to crucify someone as with an understanding of how this itinerant preacher came to earn the rabid scorn and defilement that he receives here. But while the result is one of unremitting intensity, and a story that moves along surprisingly quickly given its heaviness, “The Passion” is also a film of little dramatic modulation keeping the heat at high flame throughout makes the experience predominantly visceral rather than meditative. Gibson clearly wants to put the audience through the wringer right alongside Jesus. The barbaric treatment meted out to Jesus on his last day is unrelenting and universal, to an extent that sooner rather than later feels like artistic overkill. Third, if you liked Gibson’s torturous execution scene in “Braveheart,” you’ll love “The Passion of the Christ.”Īlthough numerous factors distinguish this film from previous screen portraits of Jesus Christ - the striking use of Aramaic and “street” Latin, its concentration on the final 12 hours of the subject’s life, its vigorous style and complete abandonment of Sunday School niceties - what dominates is the blood and gore, the astounding viciousness of nearly all the Romans and Jews, and the extent of agony. But to say that this makes the film itself anti-Semitic seems off-base and incorrect. Second, the Jewish temple leaders, led by high priest Caiphas (as the name is atypically spelled here), are unmistakably the architects of Jesus’ doom, as they are in the gospels, and are accordingly portrayed in an unflattering light.
First, you have to tip your hat to Gibson for putting his money where his heart and soul and mouth are, for putting self-expression before the bottom line to an extent that few major Hollywood figures ever have the way Gibson undertook this long-gestating project represents a very pure definition of independent cinema.
Pic’s notoriety might soon be mitigated for mainstream audiences by word of mouth centered on the prolonged suffering and very vivid gore at the same time, many true believers, especially Roman Catholics, will be deeply moved, spelling a long theatrical life in a significantly reduced number of theaters once the high tide of the opening recedes, and plenty of potential internationally and in ancillary markets.Ī few primary thoughts come immediately to the fore.
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