5 of 17

Write now Article Tools

Page 2 of 8

portion of what Jesus gave up-perhaps too "nuanced" or "French"(actually Greek filtered through Calvinist and Catholic) for many American Christians, at least those of more fundamentalist persuasions. No, in order to commune with their god, they feel they must see him whipped into hamburger.

The shameful perversion of their pride - which is a sin, incidentally, right at the top of the list of the seven deadlies - is typical of the desperate "screw you" approach to being an American these days that increasingly loses its charm and looks more like the initial stages of insanity. Much as Bush said "screw you" to the rest of the world, Gibson and the fundamentalist fans of the movie said "screw you" to the Jews, which ironically translated into mounds of money for Gibson. The careful exclusions from certain previews, the stupid comments tossed into the press-anti-semitism deliberately fanned and flared up and set loose, even just a little, not even to promote a political cause, but just another movie.

I realize this began as the story of Jesus, but somewhere along the line the increasing paranoia of Mel Gibson surrounding the film became bigger than the film itself. Bigger than Jesus, one might say. And really, this is no different than any of Mel's other major films, and even steals many of their tics, which is to say Mad Max (which is to say the Punisher, a film in which Gibson actually might have been well-cast) in one form or another: peaceful man wanting to settle down and quiet the rage within himself is prevented from doing so by extremely bad men who kill a loved one for no other reason than to, well, show how darn villainous they are.

The only difference here is that the protagonist never gets a chance to kick ass on behalf of said dead loved one -i n this case he is the dead loved one, for all of us - the ass-kicking may come outside the theatre, afterward, one might be irresponsible to presume. But still...

Well, maybe the revenge comes with the earthquake that follows his death and the sundering of the veil of the temple. But that would be a little suspiciously subtle.

After seeing Braveheart's conclusion I was certain Gibson would do something like this someday, only I thought he would cast himself in the title role. But Mel has done more, much more, than this. He has taken the story of Jesus and debased it into a spectacle of violence, but not even to lure the audience toward something remotely approaching a moral message, not even a messiah, just the

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• ...
• 8
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Movie reviews: The Passion of the Christ?
We want to hear your view. Write now!