I just saw “The Passion of the Christ,” and it was a lovely film. I know how it ends, so it wasn’t really suspenseful, but the way that it completely bowls you over is pretty scary. Being raised as a born again Christian and Buddhist, the story of the crucifixion was always somewhat glossed over. We knew all the details, but Mel Gibson’s film brings the whole Jesus experience to new heights. I think that by far this is the most gory cinematic representation of death to date, and I have spent most of my life trying to shut my eyes through horror films.
I like scary movies, but I don’t like to watch them. Does that make sense? The ugliness of the violence is that it is inescapable. The sound comes flooding into the senses, so if you cannot see it, you are still seeing it with your ears. The cast was remarkable, the costuming lavish and brilliant, the scenery super dusty, the script entirely in Aramaic and Latin adding a totally different feel than your usual Easter Passion Play, or old favorites like “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Godspell.” An unflinchingly steady camera – where the thriller element of turning a shot around just before the moment of impact is turned on its head, and you get the whole of it – complete and bloody.
After having witnessed the full Catholicism of Gibson’s retelling, I never want to see it again. This is one DVD that I will not be purchasing, for I do not wish to see the director’s cut, nor omitted scenes, nor any extras. I especially do not wish to see any off-screen antics and bloopers. You know that would just fuck it up.
Catholics are mysterious and exotic to me, never having been to Mass, nor knowing much about it except what I gleaned from Madonna videos. They seem to like to dwell on the suffering, and what Jesus endured physically, which is so unlike what I always was fed from my Sunday school teachers. My education was filled with acoustic guitar toting priests with short sleeved shirts who went on and on about how He loved the little children. In the Good News Protestant 70s, we got the sing-song fables from the Bible, not the bone-crushing, thorny, nails in the hands and feet, splintered wood aspect of the Son of God.
The film includes all the stations of the cross, which are blown up in flashback sequences to the younger, pre-persecution days, where Jesus gives all His advice and tells stories. It is interesting to learn about what different ways God is worshipped, and how even within Christianity, there are many interpretations of what actually happened, and those stories change in detail even within the books of the Bible, depending on who is telling them.
What I really found compelling in the film is that women are depicted as being closer to God, in very good and gentle relationship with Jesus. He is kind of like a rock star, because he has a hot girlfriend, my very favorite Bible character, Mary Magdelene, and lots of groupies wearing black. He is also a mama’s boy. The kind of sweetness that women rarely get treated with in your average Hollywood film is nice to see, even when it is as graphic and tortured as this, with the poor guy always falling down right on the crown of thorns on his head. What is really great is that Jesus doesn’t ever say that anything is wrong, and he is forever forgiving everyone for everything.
After having been in the midst of all this fighting about how same-sex marriage defies the teachings of the Bible, not once did I think that Jesus was being judgmental. Jesus is really all about how we need to love each other, and He says it a bunch of times, not only when He’s doing the sermon on the mount, but just in general. He does get mad at the weird Satan character, who is very beautiful but hairless, a sexy but sexless creature, but only one time, and that is in the very beginning.
I love it when Jesus gets mad in the Bible, when He is all hollering at people to get out of His father’s house, and then when that fruit tree won’t bear fruit. Also there is that time when He yells at the disciples for getting all up in Mary’s business when she is trying to put that ointment on His feet. He likes a pedicure, our Lord. So the message of the Messiah, of God, and of this film..love everyone, forgive everyone because they don’t know what they are doing and keep your feet soft.
I bet that He is ecstatic about Rosie O’Donnell getting married, because He likes her comedy and admires her parenting skills, but mostly because He loves it when we are loving and happy. To think, He went through all that trouble, just so that we could love each other. This is why I am a Christian, and a devout one. God and love cannot be separated, because they are one and the same. The love between my husband and I is what I see as a shining aspect of God, just as the love between the gays and lesbians getting married in San Francisco is God as well. I was stopped at a rally by a man who had been married only two days to his longtime partner. He said, “There really is something about wedded bliss.” He didn’t finish his sentence, and tears came to his eyes, and then to mine, because his message was very clear. They only had glimpsed the very beginnings of married life, and the taste of it was so deliciously sweet, and there can be no wrong here, the way we love can no longer be considered perverse.
Hatred is perverse. Bigotry is perverse. Prejudice is perverse. Those abominations will not be tolerated. Love wins all wars, love is all the ammunition you need to fight your holy war. Learning to love my enemies, which are many, is easy when I realize that when I love them, the war is won.
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