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By Ashley Ryan
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I tired to view "The
Passion of the Christ" with an open mind, to not
let myself be tainted by all the controversy surrounding
it, and
I succeeded – for about the first 20 minutes.
But it was clear to me early on that Mel Gibson's agenda
and
theology was too much a part of the film to be ignored,
and so it is to his theology that I would like to address
my review.
While he succeeded in portraying Christ’s
suffering in a very powerful way, he failed, in my
opinion, to portray the reason for the suffering- Christ’s
love. |
I saw a lot of suffering in the film, a great deal of blood
and gore, but very little of Christ’s love and compassion.
I saw the Crucifixion in painful (if historically inaccurate)
detail, but the resurrection was hardly touched, except for
the last minute of the film. And as Christians it is the
resurrection that is the center of our faith, not the crucifixion.
Mel Gibson's rejection of the theology of Vatican II showed
through in his treatment of the Passion, and his emphasis
on sin rather than love. The theology undergirding the Passion
was the Atonement Theory, which developed in the Church in
the Middle Ages, and which pictured God as a judge who had
judged us all guilty and who sent his son to take the punishment
for us. The image of God that this way of thinking promotes
is not the God of love that Jesus called "Abba".
Focusing
exclusively on the crucifixion and not on Jesus message gives
a warped picture of Jesus, and of God. Jesus preached and
lived a radical message of love, forgiveness and healing.
He broke
down barriers between people, treating all people as children
of God, as people of worth and dignity. He taught that God
was not a fearful judge but a loving Father.
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It was because of his fidelity
to this message that the authorities sought to kill
him. He chose to remain true to his message, in spite
of the consequences, and in spite of the knowledge
that it could lead to his death.
He was not the passive
victim that the movie portrays, but a man whose love and
convictions led him to make the ultimate sacrifice for
what he believed in. |
It was love of humanity
that led him to his death, and to reduce that love to a "payback" for
our sins demeans God. I subscribe to the
theology of the Franciscans who believe that Jesus would
still have come and lived among us even if we hadn't sinned.
He came to teach us how to live, to love and
to draw us into a deeper relationship with God, to proclaim
a message.
His
death was a result of that message, but not more important
than the message itself.
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Conclusively, it is the resurrection
that vindicated his message. It is the resurrection
that is the focal point of Christian theology, not
the crucifixion. To emphasize the cross over the empty
tomb is contrary to the teaching of the Apostles and
early church.
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Finally, a note on
some of the historical inaccuracies. The worst inaccuracy
was the portrayal of Mary Magdalene as the woman caught in
adultery. The woman caught in adultery is never named. It
was NOT Mary Magdalene.
The portrayal of Pilate as a nice
guy who doesn't want to crucify Jesus but bows to pressure
from the mob is totally
contrary to what we know of the historical Pilate. Pilate
was in fact a ruthless administrator who would not have
hesitated to crucify someone who was causing trouble during
the tense
week of Passover.
The gospels portrayal of Pilate is because
the early Christians who wrote the gospels wanted to show
that they were good
citizens of the empire. I don't think the movie was anti-Semitic,
but it did play up the part of Ciaphas and the temple authorities
and downplay the role of Pilate. While the temple authorities
did have a large part in Jesus death, Pilate had the ultimate
power to execute. And we know that historically, Pilate
was not one to bow to pressure from his subjects. So Pilate
had
more of a role than the movie portrays.
Also, the crucifixion
was not historically accurate. In a Roman crucifixion,
the condemned would carry the crossbeam,
not the whole cross, and would have been nailed through
the wrists not the hands. To portray the crucifixion that
way
simply because it is what people expect just perpetuates
a false view of what it would have been like.
Now having
said that, I do give Mel Gibson points for making the movie
in the original Aramaic, which lent the movie an
air of reality that was very powerful. I also give him points
for not sanitizing the crucifixion, which would have indeed
been very bloody and brutal, especially the scourging. We
do tend to sanitize it, and seeing the scourging in all its
grizzly detail brings it home in a way that makes it more
real for those of us who have heard the story so often we
don’t get the full impact.
I did feel however, that
the film crossed the line and went beyond showing the gritty
reality and became almost manipulative.
After the first hour of seeing Jesus beaten again and again
it seemed to me that it was intended not to show the reality
but to play on my emotions, and that bothered me. I don't
like being manipulated. I didn't feel that Gibson gave the
audience credit – that he felt he had to pound us over
the head with it, as a way of pushing his theology.
So, while
I will give the movie credit in some areas, overall I didn't
like it.
Overall grade: D
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