A movie review by

Rev. Dr. J. Samuel Subramanian, Ph.D.

Guttenberg Methodist Church 

            Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ depicts the last 12 hours of Jesus’ passion (suffering) in a very dramatic way.  This two hour movie begins with a quotation from the Book of Isaiah.  “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities: upon him was the punishment that made us whole and by his bruises we are healed” (53.5). Although there is no direct quotation from Isaiah 53 found in the passion narrative of the Gospels, some scholars believe that Isaiah underlies the passion story.  The movie ends with the Risen Christ leaving the tomb.

            Several aspects of the film’s treatment of the Gospel narratives and the historical portrayal of Jesus are not, however, without problem.  In the first instance, this film does not follow a single Gospel account of the sequence of events beginning with Jesus’ arrest, leading through his trial and torture, and ending with his crucifixion on the cross.  The film switches from one Gospel account to another without much paying attention to the sequence of events of each Gospel.  The movement between the narratives of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and of John’s Gospel without paying attention to each Gospel writer’s thread of events seems to be confusing to viewers like me, who are well versed in Gospel studies.  Combining all four Gospels’ accounts in the production of The Passion seems to suggest that Mel Gibson not only produced the movie, but also created a conflated account of Jesus’ passion story taken from all four Gospels.

            Additionally, Mel Gibson’s Jesus utters all seven words from the cross.  Not all Matthew and Mark record one last word of Jesus; Luke lists three; and John reports three.  Again, each Gospel writer has chosen only one or more words of Jesus from the cross to explain the theological significance of those words spoken by Jesus. Making Jesus utter all seven words seems like hearing seven sermons on the last seven words of Jesus in the churches on Good Friday.  To put all seven words into the mouth of Jesus is to water down the force of the message of each Gospel writer whose interest is to highlight only one or more, but certainly not all seven words of Jesus.

            Even more problematic is the portrayal of women and children as personification of the devil.  The depiction of a woman who appears often as the tempter of Jesus and of the children as the embodiment of the evil, who chase Judas and eventually stone him, is very degrading and is not in keeping with the role and status Jesus accorded to women and children in his ministry.  Equally problematic is the portrayal of the Jewish authorities in the movie.  From the arrest to the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jewish authorities are consistently presented in the movie as those who are not only the forces behind Jesus’ death, but also those who are the material witnesses of every step of Jesus’ death but also those who are the material witnesses of every step of Jesus’ suffering and death.  Not all four Gospels forcefully agree on the responsibility of the Jewish authorities behind Jesus’ death.   John’s Gospel does not even mention the presence of the Jewish authorities who are standing ridiculing Jesus at crucifixion.  Again, none of the Gospels specifies the appearance of the Jewish authorities who accompany Jesus on his way to Calvary; whereas in the movie the Jewish authorities are portrayed as being seen riding on horses, accompany Jesus all through his way to Calvary.  Although this film does not explicitly promote antisemiticism, the spectacular portrayal of Jewish authorities’ public appearance in every movement of Jesus’ passion and death may lead one to think that way.

            A more serious flaw is the inadequate presentation of the historical Jesus in the movie.  Mel Gibson seems to think that if he makes Jesus speak Aramaic, the movie will become an accurate presentation of the historical Jesus.  Of course, the historical Jesus did speak Aramaic.  The four Gospels were written not in Aramaic; but in Greek.  Although some Gospel writers use Aramaic words, there is no indication that the Gospels were translated into Greek from an Aramaic/Hebrew Gospel.  Just because Jesus speaks Aramaic in the movie, it does not mean that the movie becomes historically close to the historical Jesus.  It is a futile attempt to reconstruct the Aramaic sayings of Jesus independent of the Greek Gospels.  How much does the movie present the Jewishness of Jesus?  Jesus was a Jew; he lived as a Jew; and he died as a Jew.  Mel Gibson’s movie derived from the Gospel accounts does not seem to go beyond the Gospel writers’ presentation of Jesus whose historicity was caught up in the proclamation (kerygma) of the early church.

            Above all, one must question the value of symbolic, paradigmatic interpretation of Jesus’ passion when the application to a concrete social setting remains so vague in the movie.  The passion story devoid of Jesus’ life and ministry especially his teaching on the Kingdom of God does not provide any implications for justice and peace.  Though Mel Gibson tries to fill in the gap of Jesus’ life and teaching through flash backs which are dominated by fiction one can hardly get the idea that Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God based on love and justice.  The fragmentary nature of the movie fails to account for the full gospel message.

            All in all, then, this is a movie that depicts one event among many in the life of Jesus but falls into the trap of establishing a coherent story of Jesus’ passion without sufficiently paying attention to the nuances of each Gospel writer, and then attempting to sustain it through somewhat selective and further incomplete accounts of the life of Jesus.  To know who Jesus is, one needs to search him in the Scriptures.

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