Even the villainous Caiphas, the head Jewish rabbi, is a straw man. He is only characterized by his desire to kill Jesus. There is no subtlety, only his desire to kill this man, the hollowest of villains. Mary Magdalene, played by red-hot actress Monica Bellucci, has even less to do. The extent of her interaction with Jesus is to wash his feet in a flashback sequence and sob with mother Mary as they watch Jesus get led to his death. But since the audience has never been exposed to these characters, their mourning comes close to farce. I was reminded of middle ages mourners for hire, who would tear their clothes on cue, whenever a rich man died.
Oddly enough, the only deeply felt character is Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), who comes off as nuanced but ultimately unwilling to risk a rebellion to save one madman. After Pilate meets with Jesus, he discusses the nature of truth with his wife, symbolizing his interest in understanding this mysterious man. This is such an odd gesture because Pilate, one of two heathens positively portrayed in the film is, in the historical record, capriciously violent and, as such, doesn’t really evoke any more feeling than any of the other characters.
The only really effective scene is Jesus’ interaction with Satan, played by Rosalinda Celentano, who creates a scary-ass presence. The audience gets scared and so connects with the scared Jesus, giving us an emotional connection to him for the first and last time, before the violence begins full throttle.
The violence is physically exhausting and, ultimately, numbing. Blood streams off the screen far over the level I’ve ever previously seen in film. At one point, a strip of flesh is actually torn off. The crown of thorns is pressed directly into his forehead. During the crucifixion, the nails are driven through Jesus’ flesh. Each instance of Jesus’ pain is lovingly photographed to make sure the audience doesn’t miss any details. Although that might help accentuate the suffering and thus the holiness of Jesus’ experience, by the end, these shots begin to resemble pornography, complete with a money shot.
As pornography begins to get old after a while without anything in the narrative to connect to, so does this violence. The audience is just numb to any more blood or horror.
During this seemingly endless savagery, the audience is directly implicated twice, once by Jesus and once by Mary Magdalene, as if to ask, “Look at what is being done to this great man. What are you going to do in response?” The problematic response based on the movie itself is that we must revenge ourselves upon the Jews, a feature that makes this film implicitly if not explicitly anti-Semitic.
As many problem as I had with the film, it is easy to see how believers can connect with it. This is the story that they have heard over and over again and now it’s acted on screen. Therefore, Christians have a stake in the fates of the characters and the hour-and-a-half run up to Jesus’ death becomes almost unbearable in its detailed depiction of his glory.
Gibson defends the film by saying that he wanted to be faithful to the texts, but there are two problems with his defense. First, though I don’t presume to be a Biblical scholar, I have read enough commentaries by some who state that there are definite inaccuracies. Mother Mary goes to Roman soldiers for help in one scene, which isn’t right. Although the subtitle is clipped out, Pilate still proclaims to the Jews that “His blood is on your hands,” even though this is only in one gospel and unnecessary to the story. Nowhere does Pilate have that discussion about truth with his wife. As it was against Jewish law to crucify, the Jews would not have taken the initiative in the crucifixion. The difference is that Gibson used some anti-Semitic accounts by a 19th century nun in order to pad out his story.
The other big flaw is that no matter how closely the film accrues to the accounts of the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life, Jesus’ messages are not in this period. It is how the “evil” people of the time react to his messages that he gets into this position, but this period is entirely devoid of his messages, and, as one has to react to what is on-screen, this becomes a film about violence instead of loving God.