

Movie review: 'The Passion of the Christ'

2-1/2 stars (out of 4)

"The Passion of the Christ"  Mel Gibson's serious, often brutally powerful film on the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus  is a passionate but gruesomely physical picture. But it's a subject that needs more spirituality and transcendence, at least to move us in the way director-writer-producer Gibson so obviously wants.


Despite the usual historical embellishments and a conservative Catholic vision of biblical events with which many will disagree, director-writer Gibson, clearly doesn't intend to arouse or play to any anti-Jewish bigotry here  though how his film is used by others may be beyond his calculation.

But, though Gibson's view of the Gospels may be a questionable vision, it is a vision, not a commercial compromise. Focusing on the period between Jesus' (Jim Caviezel) arrest by high priest Caiaphas' soldiers in Gethsemane and his death on the cross  with the final triumphant Easter resurrection as a brief, luminous coda  this movie retells the New Testament tale with a new lacerating physical realism and a dedication that shows in almost every frame.





Intense performances


The confusion is understandable. As Gibson surrounds his passive, seraphically handsome Jesus with so many tormentors and fiends  from the abject traitor Judas (Luca Lionello) to the bullying priests to an actual white-faced Satan (Rosalinda Celentano) flitting among the crowd like a demonic mime  the director turns his "Passion" into a spectacle of horror. This dark night of the soul becomes something closer to a biblical night of the living dead.

No movie version of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection  a story filmed many times in many ways by directors as various as Cecil B. DeMille (1927's "The King of Kings"), Pier Paolo Pasolini (1966's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew") and Scorsese (1988's "Temptation")  has ever immersed us in such a cinematic torture chamber, spilled so much believable blood or focused with such savage insistence on Christ's wounds and manhandling. When the crown of thorns stabs Jesus' forehead or the nails crunch into his palms, I felt less epiphany than empathetic pain.


Gibson is a talented, ambitious filmmaker who takes real chances, playing "Hamlet" or directing "The Man Without a Face"  and though he didn't really deserve the Oscar he won for directing "Braveheart," it's good to see him taking even riskier shots here. "Passion" certainly avoids the picture-postcard religiosity of the standard Hollywood Bible epic, and it's not at all boring. But though Gibson's vision  so tactile and violent  may be a world away from the sometimes saccharine treatments of DeMille or Franco Zeffirelli ("Jesus of Nazareth"), it's also distant from the transcendence that might have made this either a great film or moving religious testimony.

Balance is missing



We see instead an excruciating rendering of Jesus' suffering, with all Christ's philosophy, miracles and history compressed into relatively brief snippet-flashbacks shooting through his mind like fever-dreams as he suffers. When "Passion" shows us something we remember from the Gospels  the last supper, Jesus' past life, sermons or "cast the first stone" speech  the supper is already over, the stones already cast, the sermon over and life already on the wing.

That is why the movie often seems to be preaching to the choir and also why the most deeply committed believers, who have reflected on this story over and over, will probably experience Gibson's devout, horrific film in a much different, more positive way than others. Knowing the part of the story this film leaves out, they'll be better able to fill in the blanks, to supply the spirit and grace the movie mostly lacks. They're fortunate. More spirit and grace and less blood and guts may be what "Passion" needs  and perhaps what the world watching it needs more.

"The Passion of the Christ"
Directed by Mel Gibson; written by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson; photographed by Caleb Deschanel; production design by Francesco Frigeri; music by John Debney; produced by Bruce Davey, Mel Gibson, Stephen McEveety, Enzo Sisti. Icon Productions; opens Wednesday Feb. 25. MPAA rating: R (graphic violence).
James Caviezel....Jesus, the Christ
Maia Morgenstern....Mary
Monica Bellucci....Mary Magdalene
Hristo Jivkov....John of Zebedee
Hristo Shopov....Pontius Pilate (as Hristo Naumov Shopov)
Rosalinda Celentano....Satan
Francesco Cabras....Gesmas
Claudia Gerini....Pilatus Wife
Ted Rusoff....2nd Elder
Francesco Gabriele....3rd Elder
Angelo Di Loreta....The 5th Elder The Accuser
Romuald Andrzej Klos....The Roman (flagellants' boss)
Sergio Rubini....Dismas

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