FILM REVIEW

"The Passion of the Christ"
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Entertainment
Art

By JON SINGER

Jesus Christ is the most divisive figure ever. Millions love him. Millions hate him.

In "Mere Christianity," C.S. Lewis says everyone must make a choice about Jesus. Lewis says Jesus was a liar, lunatic or Lord as he claimed.

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher," Lewis writes." You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

But a growing trend in America today is to take that option, lumping Jesus in with other religious leaders like Muhammad and Confucius.

Doing this is also a safe road. If you love or dismiss Jesus, you will be ridiculed by millions. But if you find a middle ground, you avoid such heated debate.

Because of this schism, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" has drawn countless scathing or loving reviews.

To genuinely review the film, however, I'm going to toss those personal feelings aside and tell you what I saw for a little more than two hours.

I saw beautiful images and cinematography. "The Passion" is closer to a "Braveheart" or "Lord of the Rings" epic film than to a feel-good Jesus movie that we've all flipped through on television. There are no happy faces, no one gets healed (OK, one in the heat of battle). There are only grim faces covered with dirt, blood, grief, regret and curiosity.

Sometimes scenes over the top, though. A symbolic crow, pecks out the eye of the non-believing criminal on a cross next to Jesus. Jesus didn't have to fall down 10 times on the path to Calvary. And what was with Satan's grown-up-looking baby?

But I definitely saw an accurate portrayal of Christ's Crucifixion. Unlike some critics, I understand a film can't just show words on a blank screen. It's a picture, and the director has to paint the visuals. How the director does that will be ridiculed by one critic or another, and that's fair. I loved how Gibson did it. But critics and viewers are free to follow the movie cliché, "The book was better."

One thing is for sure: "The Passion of the Christ" is entrancing. My screening was for media only, yet there was edge-of-your-seat intensity for every minute of the movie. There were solemn faces. This is not a movie you ask your viewing mate "So how did you like it?" as you exit. It's just silence.

Another strong feeling I got was that I needed to know the rest of the story, even though I've read it before. I don't think it's possible to leave "The Passion" and not wonder how Jesus got into that situation, and what happens after.

Gibson's focusing on Jesus' last 12 hours was in itself a creative idea. It contained no preaching. It did not once tell people how to be saved, or even what Jesus' death meant. It just showed Jesus' words and his disciples' words and actions. Symbolism served as Gibson's only commentary.

This focus, though, makes the movie suffer from a lack of buildup. In the first 10 minutes, Jesus is betrayed, so the audience doesn't have that hero to root for yet. We only know from hearsay and flashbacks that Jesus is an innocent man who doesn't deserve to die.

The result is that the movie feels more brutal than it is, because we see a man we don't know very well being tortured and killed. So rather than a hero going through a trial, it seems like some random guy being beaten for no reason.

Realistically, though, most American viewers, at least, know the back story and that Jesus was indeed a blameless and good man. And from that perspective, you know Jesus is going through the pain for the good of man and he will soon rise again. So the tribulations he faces are more bearable, redeeming and it give us hope.

In "The Passion of the Christ," hope is most evident in the opening shot: Isaiah 53:5. "But he was pierced for our transgressions," the verse reads. "He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."

Indeed, as is shown throughout "The Passion," Jesus purposely gave up his life for all men.

No matter what you think of Jesus, that fact cannot be denied.