THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Right now I am already feeling for the church groups that will be rushing to see this film out of duty. For the love of all that is holy (and I mean that quite literally) be forwarned: Rather than being any sort of spiritually uplifting film, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is rather like being forced to endure the worst sort of penance for two hours. This is one of the most brutally violent and graphic films I have ever seen, and sitting through the movie is its own special kind of torture.

Based on the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus Christ, the film opens with Jesus (Jim Caviezel) wrestling with the temptation of Satan in the Garden of Gesthemane while his disciples sleep. Satan is portrayed by an odd, striking, eyebrowless androgyne (Rosalinda Celentano) and commands attention if only for sheer creepiness. Jesus rebuffs evil, only to turn around and find himself faced by soldiers who have been led to him by his betrayer Judas. With a kiss, an artsy slo-mo/fast-mo scuffle, and a sleight-of-hand ear-reattachment, Jesus is captured and led off in chains.

After being tossed from the late-night tribunal of accusatory holy men, into the hands of Roman governor Pontius Pilate (who refuses to judge), to fruitcake King Herod, then back to Pilate (who orders flogging to try to appease the crowd), the fate of Jesus is finally given back to the mob—led by blood thirsty religious leader Caiphas (Mattia Sbragia)—to do as they wish. Jesus is crucified, and, well, we all know how it ends.

The thing is, The Passion, as a story, is presented in a way that assumes knowledge on the part of the audience. For those of us not well-versed on the background of Jesus' life, it is like only being allowed to read chapter 11 of a 12-chapter book. Jesus seems like a nice calm fellow, but nothing hints at why he invokes such religious devotion and venomous hatred. The identity and relationship of Mary, the holy mother (Maia Morgenstern), and Mary Magdalene (Monica Bellucci) to Jesus apparently needs no introduction, as they just follow him weeping and are there to wipe up his pools of blood. Judas and Peter are the only disciples that I was able to identify, and I'm still left wondering who the young man was that stayed with Mary and Magdalene until the end.

Strangely enough, the only character to come across as three-dimensional is Pontius Pilate. Bulgarian actor Hristo Naumov Shopov has an excellent, strong face that could convey a thousand words to his wife with one troubled glance. He's a man caught between a rock and a hard place, and is the only actor in the film who makes an impression, Jim Caviezel's deep amber eyes notwithstanding. The others are faced with black-and-white portrayals, whether it be a weeping mother, a jeering holy man, or a leering convict. Demon-like children, with bad teeth and rolling-back white eyeballs show up to harass and terrorize. Deformed and grotesque characters litter the background of the crowd scenes. There is no time for subtlety when it comes to Gibson establishing the good guys and the bad guys.

But maybe the story is secondary here. Gibson said that he wanted to portray the most "realistic" depiction of Jesus' last hours, and if realism equals graphic torture, well, I suppose he succeeded. Gibson takes a one sentence passage from the Bible—Mark 15:15 "And [so] Pilate, willing to content the people ... delivered Jesus, when he had scourged [him], to be crucified"—and turns it into a relentlessly brutal 15-minute torture scene of Jesus being flogged by a variety of instruments, including (most graphically) the infamous cat-o-nine-tails, before he's finally handed over to the mob. If the point of showing everything wasn't quite driven home (so to speak), you see the nailing of the hands and feet to the cross, and the blood dripping through the holes of the wood. Needless to say, I felt physically ill at the end of the picture.

When I review The Passion of the Christ, I am reviewing it as a film, not as The Greatest Story Ever Told. As an independent work of one director's art, there is little character development, almost no background to flesh out the events, and almost no relief from unbearable and relentless violent imagery. The film is handsome looking (the cinematography apparently inspired by Italian painter Caravaggio), is scored with a passable Last Temptation of Christ-ripoff soundtrack, and the actors do their best with little dialogue and meaningful looks. But when The Passion of the Christ is looked at simply as a movie that tells a story, it has to be conceeded that the passion that went into making it unfortunately does not translate into a good film, or even a spiritual one. Ultimately, The Passion of the Christ is two-hours of brutal gore, and is not a film experience that I would recommend to anyone.