The Gospel Truth?

Mel on earth: Gibson's Jesus (James Caviezel)

The Passion of the Christ purports to tell the truth. But whose truth?

by Cindy Fuchs

When Jesus (James Caviezel) first appears before Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov) in The Passion of the Christ, they engage in a bit of conversation concerning the nature of truth. Jesus has already been slapped, punched and chained by high priest Caiphas (Mattia Sbragia) and his minions, as well as jeered by a crowd of agitated Jews. But now the renowned Roman procurator -- who sent thousands of Jews to crucifixion -- is looking for a reason to let the Galilean go.

And so he questions the prisoner, out of the mob's earshot, as to why his "own people have delivered" him up to be killed. "Are you a king?" asks Pilate. In a roundabout way, Jesus eventually admits that he has been born to "give testimony to the truth" (this is spoken in Aramaic, subtitled in English, so some interpretive filter is in place). Pilate, apparently thoughtful in addition to brutal and cruel, wonders aloud, "What is truth?" The film cuts outside, where Pilate returns with his charge, announcing that he finds "no cause" in the man for punishment.

The crowd wants blood, the Pharisees want dominion, and Pilate, it appears, just wants to keep his job. Stuck between non-options (an uprising by the Jews or an uprising by Jesus' followers, despite the fact that he commands the local Roman military that might quash either), he asks his wife Claudia Procles (Claudia Gerini) what she thinks about truth: Can she recognize it when she hears it? Not unlike the Son of Man, she answers her fretful husband in allusive circles: "If you will not hear the truth," she says, "no one can tell you."

This problem of truth -- how it might be defined, known or told -- underlies most all of Mel Gibson's film. Tracing Jesus' last 12 hours on earth, the film raises multiple questions regarding truth, faith and history. How to gauge the truth of the Gospels (Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald reportedly based their screenplay on not only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but the writings of nuns Mary of Agreda and Anne Catherine Emmerich)? How does interpretation or desire affect history, legend, and religious belief? And how can viewers process imagery so suffused with violence and suffering?

The violence takes various forms -- flagellation, scourging, crucifixion -- all horrific and bloody, wrenching, masochistic and sadistic. While it surely has a place within the trajectory of Gibson's career choices (the Lethal Weapons, Braveheart), it also achieves a kind of awful poetry, partly through cinematographer Caleb Deschanel's stunning evocations (inspired by Caravaggio and Michelangelo) and partly through moments of overwrought slow motion, allowing careful inspection of details -- fluids oozing, skin ripping and swelling, tears falling. Such horrors make up the bulk of the film's 126 minutes. The plot is pain.

While some evangelical sorts are considering the film a teaching and converting "tool," to be used for years to come, others contend it will lead to less sanguine off-screen effects, igniting anger and prejudice, desires for vengeance against those deemed "responsible" for such relentless, monstrous cruelty. Here the Jewish crowd calls for crucifixion and the Roman soldiers are unspeakably mean, laughing while they whip -- there seems enough mindless malice to go around. Violence makes its own kind of truth, even as representations of violence reframe presumptions of truth. Questions as to what comprises "truth" have accompanied the lengthy run-up to The Passion's Ash Wednesday release, igniting cable-news controversy and invaluable press coverage.

For nearly a year, stories have circulated that the movie is anti-Semitic or will instigate anti-Semitism like olden-days Passion plays, that it reflects Gibson's traditionalist Catholicism (even his father Hutton's Holocaust-denying bent), that it will "upset" Jewish viewers. When, last January, Bill O'Reilly asked Gibson to address this last question, the filmmaker said, "It may. It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth." Even the leak that the Pope saw and liked Gibson's movie is premised on this idea that it tells a truth: "It is as it was."

But whose truth is it? The movie appears, for the most part, to adopt Jesus' point of view, by definition re-imagined by storytellers and interpreters over thousands of years, including Gibson, whether or not the "Spirit" is working through him, as he claimed. Occasional flashbacks attributed to Jesus show him with disciples and his mother, Mary (Maia Morgenstern), in which he asserts his knowledge of his fate. Other flashbacks take the perspectives of Mary and Mary Magdalene (Monica Bellucci), suggesting that they share the same sorts of memories, involving revelation, inspiration and dread. None appears to have imagined the full extent of the crucifixion's awfulness, and this is one of Gibson's stated goals, to make clear the agony Jesus (must have) endured, to give his audience an "experience" that approximates the Passion. That the film uses such familiar means to this end -- slow motion, reaction shots, huge score, lingering images of viciousness and distress -- suggests a strange dearth of imagination. The Passion of the Christ is less troubling for what it portrays than for how conventionally it portrays it.

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Directed by Mel Gibson A Newmarket Films release Now playing at area theaters

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