The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

USA
directed by: Mel Gibson
written by: Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald
starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Rosalinda Celentano
seen: 25th March, 2008, comment:  27th August, 2017

I've been thinking for some time what to write about The Passion because I could only come up with negative and agressive opinions and for once I felt I shouldn't invest energy into such thoughts. And when it comes to this, I like to compare said films to other creators who aspire to achieve similar goals and do it better, in my opinion at least. The ultimate film about the ordeal of Jesus Christ made for modern audience (when I skip over The Life Of Brian and Jesus Christ Superstar, for obvious reasons) is Jesus from Montreal: A fool/outcast is, in the middle of emptied vanity, trying to create something real with a meaning, while fighting the feeling that he himself is just a tool/an empty vessel. It's a spiritual film about faith and inspiration. The Passion never gets to such abstract concepts, God forbid it should get to confronting ideas.

Mel Gibson described his chosen theme like this: "This is a movie about love, hope, faith and forgiveness. He [Jesus] died for all mankind, suffered for all of us. It's time to get back to that basic message. The world has gone nuts. We could all use a little more love, faith, hope and forgiveness." I don't understand why he sticks so much to depicting evil, instead of inspiring good. He is literal and superficial and resorts to ideological, visual and musical kitsch. I find Rosalinda Celentano rather spellbinding, but one of the films biggest problems for me is the decision to personify evil/temptation into the character of Satan, walking around Earth and de facto absolving sinners of responsibility for their actions because he is the absolute source of all evil. Gibson simply doesn't understand the colour gray and doesn't want to leave anything to individual thinking evaluation.

The Passion Of The Christ isn't a creation of a spiritualy awakened person, but of a dogmatical fanatic. It concentrates on all the wrong and insignificant details and doesn't realize that this process irretrievably deforms the idea that might have been a model in the beginning.