"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
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