Output.ii

The Passion of The Christ.

If The Shack wasn't quite passe enough for you, this should hit the spot. I shan't keep you long, i imagine most of you have seen it, or like me, have deliberately chosen not to see it.

It was Holy Week so on Good Friday we had a showing of this film. I'd originally chosen not to see the film because i had a good handle on what Roman flagellation and crucifixion meant. When i was younger i was at a youth event where one of the speakers went through the whole thing in a manner Mel Gibson would approve of. I therefore didn't have much interest in seeing the film. My head was initially turned though just a few months back when i met someone without any profession of Christian faith who said they'd seen it five or six times and "were always stunned to see what he'd gone through and thought it was worthy of spending some time thinking about". So opportunity arose, £3 copy, Good Friday it was.

On the whole i was right. It did what it said on the tin and in a manner largely devoid of insight. The one moment i will credit it with was where Simon of Cyrene assists in the carrying of the cross. He initially protests, but then agrees on the condition it's acknowledged that he is an innocent man carrying the cross for the condemned man. By the end of their time together he doesn't want to leave Jesus and it's become clear to him somehow that his initial description of the situation is in fact a reversal of the truth.

I'm most critical of how it fails to function according to cinematically affecting methods though. Mel Gibson knows cinema and has directed some reasonably good stuff, but for some reason he opted to ignore the potential offered to him by the medium. It seems that he deliberately chose to show every stroke of the whip and every fall so the audience 'endures it with him' - or something. Only two minor points missed there then. First, it would be impossible for the audience to endure it with him - that's the point, particularly if you go with a substitutionary take on the Crucifixion and atonement! Secondly, if that's what he wanted to do, why ignore the 'less is more' fact of film. Think on what Tarantino achieved with the ear slicing that never was - he had people being sick and walking out. Even the Gorno genre; the likes of Saw and Hostel, know better than to show everything, or at least have a better take on timing and the balance of tension and release.

I was puzzled by the anti-Semitic claims made about the film. Yes, the Jewish leaders are pantomimically sneery but there is a point that i've best heard made by a stand up comic (i believe it's Dylan Moran but i could be quite mistaken). He said everyone's getting all heated about blaming the Jews for killing Jesus" and his response is "Well... it wasn't the Mexicans!" The point being, if God will be incarnate to the point of death, it can only ever happen in one context or other and there will be specifics of those regarded as responsible. All this is beside the point though, because my reading of the film was that the Jews weren't blamed. One of the main purposes of the film was that we're all to blame. It goes to lengths to show all the people who didn't stop it: Jewish leaders, Roman authorities, soldiers, crowds, disciples - everyone. "Why doesn't someone stop this?" is the line from an anonymous source that's left ringing at the end of the trial. If anything, it's about power: the more powerful someone is, the less likely they are to have stopped it. As a white, male, Western, able-bodied, working, educated person, the charge of the guilt of the powerful is not one i can even pretend to shirk.

Anyway, really glad i got all these thoughts out there in time. No one could accuse me of being topical!