Mel Gibson's Passion and 'The Passion of the Christ'
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14 • Metro Magazine No. 140 BRIAN MCFARLANE In view of the For weeks there seemed to be extraordinary lead-up scarcely a day when the papers weren’t fuelling the publicity surrounding the film by drawing to The Passion of the attention either to the inflamma- tory outbursts of various interest groups or to the secrecy relating Christ, it has been harder to its pre-release screenings. We usually acquire some sort of baggage from the hype attached to major films: it is in the producers’ interests to try to ensure this: but than usual to approach what went on before The Passion actually hit the screens was something else again. this film cold. It isn’t just a matter of anticipation. Plenty of films rouse this: think back to the mina- tory if ungrammatical 1963 ad that warned filmgoers that ‘The Birds is coming’ or to the pram sinisterly silhouetted in the publicity for Rosemary’s Baby (1968), or more recently the whipping up of aficionado madness for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) or Metro Magazine No. 140 • 15 It will be interesting to see what sort of longer�term commercial legs ‘The Passion’ will prove to have. I’d suggest that it is quite difficult to decide exactly what kinds of audience it is expected to attract when the white heat of the controversial preliminaries begins to cool and the film has to stand on its own two feet, to extend the anatomical metaphor. long way here from the cosy pieties of Father Bing Crosby or Sister Ingrid Berg- man in Leo McCarey’s Going My Way The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But with (1944) or The Bells of St Mary’s (1945), The Passion it has been a matter of con- or from the awesome vulgarities of Cecil troversy with too many people of differ- B. deMille’s The Ten Commandments ent religious persuasions (or none) being (1956), or from such CinemaScopic spec- ready to pronounce about it, sight unseen taculars as Quo Vadis? (1951, Mervyn in most cases presumably. LeRoy), The Robe (1954, Henry Koster) and Ben Hur (1959). The last-named A cynic might almost wonder if this had works its way up to the Crucifixion but not been skilfully orchestrated. The film’s it is interesting to note that the figure of release on Ash Wednesday in a number Christ is scarcely visible in its incarna- of countries, including the US and tion by little-known actor Claude Heater, Australia, then becomes the climax to all and in The Robe Christ doesn’t appear the fanfare and anger. The film was not but His voice was heard (actor Cameron Marxist Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel shown to the media until the day before Mitchell’s). There had always been a wari- According to St Matthew (1964), in which its release, and the general build-up of ness about the clear physical imaging the life of Christ (Enrique Irazoqui) is public interest (on the basis, one as- of Christ on the screen, but in the 1960s presented in near-documentary style, and sumes, partly of genuine there were two large-scale versions of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation fascination with the sub- Christ’s passion. First was Nicholas Ray’s of Christ (1988) in which Christ (Wil- ject, partly because of the King of Kings (1961), much derided at the lem Dafoe) is tempted with visions of a controversy) has led to huge time, with Jeffrey Hunter as a normal life. box-office returns in the first Christ with shaven armpits and few days of screening. Is the giving rise to the unfairness of The latter film roused some Ash Wednesday opening a the tag I Was a Teenage Jesus; controversy, though nothing to sign of the seriousness of in later decades, auteurists have compare with the barrage that the enterprise or a gesture been kinder to this film, Ray has ushered Mel Gibson’s film of calculated shrewdness? having become one of their he- into the cinemas. The Pasolini roes. So far, no one has sought and the Scorsese had clear Why should Icon, the production com- to reclaim George Stevens’s lumbering angles of purchase on their material; they pany, not have wanted critics to have ac- The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), were not interested in offering sanitised cess to the film in advance of its general which astutely cast Max Von Sydow—the approaches to the Gospels’ story of release? It is probably true to say that Swedish actor then unknown outside the betrayal and suffering. Nor, I think, is religious films have not in general been art house screenings of his films for Ing- Gibson. The mild scratchless body of sure-fire box-office successes. It will be mar Bergman—as Christ, thereby launch- the crucified Christ which one sees in so interesting to see what sort of longer- ing his prolific international career. More much art, on the page or canvas or in term commercial legs The Passion will arresting than either of these were Italian stained glass, is not the kind of presence prove to have. I’d suggest that it is quite any of these three wants to dramatise. difficult to decide exactly what kinds of audience it is expected to attract when Gibson himself is a key element in our the white heat of the controversial pre- preliminary knowledge about The Passion liminaries begins to cool and the film has and his film persona, honed over several to stand on its own two feet, to extend decades, seems to me to hover over the the anatomical metaphor. Think of some of the earlier representa- tions of religion in the cinema. We’re a 16 • Metro Magazine No. 140 It will be interesting to see what sort of longer�term commercial legs ‘The Passion’ will prove to have. I’d suggest that it is quite difficult to decide exactly what kinds of audience it is expected to attract when the white heat of the controversial preliminaries begins to cool and the film has to stand on its own two feet, to extend the anatomical metaphor. Metro Magazine No. 140 • 17 image of Christ his film presents. Surely who may or may not have said, ‘It is as it the flares and the soldiers, in the filming he would have played Christ himself if was’—since denied) had not been invited of the sequence that leads to Christ’s he were not now, at forty-eight, too old. to comment on it, before and/or after it confrontation with Judas, and to the (Among the others, Hunter, thirty-four, had been screened? repairing of the Roman soldier’s severed Von Sydow, thirty-six and Dafoe, thirty- ear. The prevailing hue shifts to brown as three, at the time of their films’ release, And what is the film itself like? Is it pos- the scene moves to a courtyard with talk were much nearer the historical age of sible to adopt the usual stance of critical of trouble brewing; there are claims of the crucified Christ.) In the kinds of hero objectivity before the fact and consider blasphemy among the gathering crowd; figure Gibson has played there has very The Passion of the Christ purely as an and Peter’s denial of Christ is picked out often been an element of the martyr; aesthetic artefact: that is, how far do briefly, though it cannot be said that the he has never been the uncomplicated both the hype and the subject itself pre- disciples are seriously differentiated. protagonist who settles things with fists clude such a stance? It would be much or guns without a powerful sense of inner easier if the film were either an unequivo- Much of the talk about The Passion has warring. One needs only to recall Frank in cal masterpiece or a risible dog. It is focused on its violence and it is impos- Gallipoli (1981), Guy in The Year of Living neither. It is much easier to be memora- sible to skirt the issue in any discussion Dangerously (1982), Martin Riggs, the ble than to be judicious, to be relentlessly of the film. Violence is now so prevalent haunted Viet vet detective, still mourning ‘witty’ like some of the writing about it, in contemporary cinema that it becomes his wife, in Lethal Weapon (1987), (direct- than to assess what Gibson seems to be more than ever important to ask what ing himself as) William Wallace, Scottish attempting and how far he succeeds. It is function it is serving. In general I have folk hero in Braveheart (1995), let alone a far from negligible achievement though a low tolerance for the more explicit Hamlet (1991) and the most obvious case I have to admit it is not one to which I images of violence, whether it is the of all: the ‘Mad Max’ figure, bereft of wife wish to subject myself again. prolonged rape sequence of Irréversible and child in the first of the series (1979). or for the mindless mayhem of, say, Once He may now be too old to play the role Gibson uses the Gospels, especially Upon a Time in Mexico, both screening that might have been for him the apothe- ‘St John’, as his source, along with The in Melbourne as I write. The former film, osis of this strain of wounded protago- Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus alarming as it is, can argue serious pur- nist, but he is certainly a powerful enough Christ, by the eighteenth-century nun, pose; it is clear that the viewer is meant media figure to get the film made, to get Anne Emmerich, whose vision Gibson to react with horror to the attack; and the it made as he wants it, and to ensure that claims ‘completely meshes with the long take in which it is enacted forces the result is a major media event.