"The Passion of the Christ" reverses the emphasis of the New Testament: the miracles, teachings and acts of love take a back stage to Christ's suffering. What is quickly mentioned as one detail among many--that Christ suffered before he died--becomes the one detail that no one can possibly miss.

It is agonizing. For us. The beatings turn graphic early and we cringe and wince our way, slowly - too slowly - through every excuse that seems to delay his suffering even further to the end we know is coming. We feel only too human in the presence of such suffering--how could he possibly endure it? Other times, we feel dead to it: its burden is too much for us to keep bearing. But then some new level of horrific pain is inflicted and, once again, we bite our lip until we can't anymore. If Jesus can't be freed--and we know he can't--we almost wish that it could just be over with so that we don't have to carry the burden of his pain anymore.

Juxtaposed with this excruciating physical pain are quick flash-backs: to the last supper, the sermon on the mount, etc. During one of these, we see Jesus having finished making a table, joking with the Virgin Mary about the table's height, appearing disconcertingly laid back for our serious image of him. This causes us for a brief instance to think of Jesus as an actual man with mannerisms like the rest of us and wonder if perhaps we too might have some resonance with his experience. He's not just a painting or a sculpture. He was a man and I'm a man. I've suffered. And... But the movie won't let us dabble in these thoughts too long. The flash-back to the Last Supper resembles Leonardo's painting and the Sermon on the Mount is an actor reciting Jesus' lines on the top of a hill; they function more like Bible quotes than dramatic scenes.

But that's the point of this inverted tale: the words and acts of love here serve to help us understand his pain, rather than the pain helping us to understand how to love. Intellectually, we can make the jump that this final act is the greatest act of love; that there is no greater act of love than to sacrifice your life. But physically, we feel more beaten down by the pain than inspired by it.

One scene where this reversal actually works is when we see Jesus being beaten at the same time that Peter is denying him. We sense that Jesus is taking on this pain just for Peter, even though knowing at the same time Peter will not do the same for him. At this instance we feel both the love and tragedy of his beatings. We feel the force of his later words - that love loses its significance when you only love someone who loves you in return. Jesus will love Peter no matter what he does.

The other scene that allows us to really enter the story is when Jesus heals the ear of the man who has come to kill him. It's not Jesus who we empathize with this time; he just stands there and looks holy. But the man who has been healed. He can't move. He stays there, stuck on his knees, as if frozen, long after everyone has left, wanting to say something or do something, but finding no words or act adequate. What Jesus has done is incomprehensible to him and his only response is a sort of dumbstruck awe.

We feel the same in the audience. If Jesus has endured all this for us, how can we possibly respond? As everyone gets up and walks out of the theatre after its over, you have a sense that to do anything, to say anything would be a sort of blasphemy incapable of the proper respect that is due. To take the Jesus cards being handed out at the exit seems superficial and besides the point; to forget the movie and talk about something else seems like a violence akin to the violence Pontius Pilot did by turning his back to it.

Those hoping to understand Christ better through the movie will be disappointed. We are forced to rely on the understanding of Jesus we had coming into the movie; few choices are made about who he was and thus little is added to the endless depictions we've seen in paintings. We get a lot of expressionless speeches and individual moments agonizing, but little in the way of actual interaction and characterization. Surely, Jesus had some mannerisms, a particular way of relating to people and speaking to them that was unique?

What we do get, however, is a rather traumatic representation of what he suffered. We get the ultimate act of suffering, for two long hours. It is so painstaking that we almost cease to feel it. Because we know it is Jesus, we keep forcing ourselves to stay awake to the pain as much as we can. But nevertheless, our human inability to hold pain that isn't our own for that long means that the movie can't completely succeed at its own objective. We are frozen with pain rather than moved by it.

Oliver Morrison, 31.03.04