I saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion on Friday night, so by way of a review, I figured I’d respond to some of AKMA’s observations, since he HASN’T seen the film. Bear with me:

Gibson has set himself a very peculiar challenge. Making a movie about the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life seems as counter intuitive as making a movie of just the fifth act of Hamlet, or of Abraham Lincoln’s trip to the theater; it’s all the degradation and misery without any of the contextual cues that might render the events comprehensible. It’s no wonder people feel deeply moved by this presentation — one would hope we’d feel sympathetic to an inoffensive civilian being dragged off the street, beaten to a bloody pulp, and executed in a uniquely agonizing way

Now, the matter of context remains an interpretive choice — by opting out of a portrayal of Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry, by ignoring the closely-reasoned controversies with his theological rivals, Gibson chooses to represent Jesus as unaccountably persecuted; he contrasts obscene suffering with utter innocence. But that’s neither the gospels’ narrative version of Jesus’ life and significance nor even the passion narrative that, even in Mark, constitutes a heightened, concentrated narrative exposition of how Jesus ends up on the cross. Gibson chooses to film only the grimmest moments from a narrative that ranges from shared joys to confusion and dismay to transcendent ecstasy to brutal, dehumanizing torture. He has the artistic freedom and theological rationale for so choosing — but that’s a choice, not a simple restaging of historical events.

One of my biggest gripes with this film has been how Gibson and others have suggested that for this film to be taken seriously it must be “historically accurate”. Huh? Since when has art been required to be historically accurate for it to be taken seriously? As an artist, Gibson made choices — conscious and unconscious — about what to include, what to exclude, what to emphasize, and what to ignore. Those choices tell us more about HIM than they do about Jesus. I think we all need to understand that. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to re-tell this story with complete historical accuracy because none of us where there, and the source material we have isn’t comprehensive enough for us to reconstruct fine enough details to achieve an acceptable level of historical accurary. Therefore, we get Jesus through the lens of Gibson. That’s fine with me.

Also, Gibson does choose to include MANY moments that are neither grim nor brutal. Once AKMA sees the film, he may wish to amend this statement.

Third, why Latin? I know, everyone’s on him about this, but it’s worth underscoring. Virtually all of the communication among Romans and Israelites would have taken place in Greek, and who knows how much Galileans and Judeans used Greek in conversations among themselves?

I agree, but again, I don’t think Gibson should make the claim that this movie IS comprehensively historically accurate. It’s not and it can’t be. That being said, the use of Latin over Greek does speak to Gibson’s traditionalist Catholic leanings. As long as we recognize that, I don’t think it affects the film’s credibility.

Fourth — and here I switch from questioning Gibson to defending him slightly — if you’re going to make a movie from so short a segment of story, so under-narrated a textual artifact, then you’ll have to flesh out the film version with material that’s not in the text. So when people observe that Gibson has imported motifs, scenes, and characters from non-biblical sources, I say, “Well, of course he has.” It would take only a few minutes to film the last few hours of Jesus’ life as the gospels narrate them — he has to fill up the screen time with something.

But fifth, if he’s going to add material to his source narrative, why does he select the amplifications that he does? He can’t simply claim to be re-telling the gospels; he rejected that opportunity at the outset. He’s composing a macabre theological alternative to the gospels, grounded in a pastiche of ancient, medieval, and nineteenth-century theologies and visions. In Gibsonian theology, the two-word statement “they flogged him” (two words in Greek) becomes the centerpiece, so I am told, of his cinematic Christology.

Again, I don’t recall hearing Gibson ever claim that this is a simply re-telling of the Gospels. If he did say it, then he misunderstands his role an artist and filmmaker. If his goal was to re-tell the Gospels in a historically accurate fashion, then he would be a documentarian or journalist and not a narrative filmmaker.

As a theologian, I can see why AKMA raises these objections. But as a film scholar, I think there are more important questions to be answered. One of which, AKMA touches upon when he asks why Gibson selects the amplifications that he does. I think this is one of the threshold questions that we ought to ask of all filmmakers who make Jesus films, from Sidney Olcott to Cecile B. DeMille to Gibson. I think exploring the similarities and differences would shed some much needed light on and provide some perspective for this film. Gibson isn’t the first nor is he the last director to make a film about Jesus. His motivations and inspirations are best revealed looking at his text rather than in his interviews.