To go back to my introductory point, The Passion of the Christ was Mel Gibson’s directorial attempt to produce an authentic realisation of Jesus of Nazareth’s final day on Earth, according to the Gospels from the Aramaic and Latin language that would have been used by the ordinary people of the time to the brutality and bloodlust the Roman Empire has been famous for throughout history. This may seem quite odd to any regular readers who will know that I adore and have praised several “bible” movies including The Prince of Egypt and The Miracle Maker, but upon re-watching Passion, I have found it to be a two-pronged issue with elements of the actual filmmaking and the movie’s overall impact on the world leaving me slightly perturbed.Īuthor’s note: Before we go any further, I understand that one of Mel Gibson’s intentions would have been to make the audience uncomfortable, but let’s just see where this piece takes us.
Over a decade later, Mel Gibson announced that a sequel was in the works – The Resurrection of the Christ – and I cringed, for you see, to summarise in one word how I feel about the former movie it would be: uncomfortable. I remember my parents going on a trip to the cinema to see it as part of our local parish outing, and as an 11-year-old at the time, I just remember feeling like the whole thing was so bizarre – it was also the only 18-rated film my parents allowed me to watch at the time. Almost immediately after its release, stories began to circulate of “Road to Emmaus” type conversions in both audiences and cast-members, and of criminals turning themselves into the police. I specifically remember people’s barely contained awe, shock and excitement in the whispering campaigns in anticipation for the movie, with rumours of the star’s (Caviezel’s) near death-experiences during production. The bloody violence and gore had itself a hefty 18-rating whacked onto the film, with “The Passion” as a whole becoming subject of much heavy criticism.
Thus came about the production of one of the most controversial and hyped-up movies of this century. Starting with a verse from Isiah’s prophecy of “The Suffering Servant”, Mel Gibson made his intentions very clear that his dramatization of Jesus Christ’s last 12 hours on Earth would tear through the “PG” depiction of Christ’s passion which has infiltrated cinema since its beginning. “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, through His wounds we are healed”
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