Returning from seeing The Passion Of The Christ with Matt and Fraser last Sunday I attempted to shape some words to describe the experience. They’re still hidden away somewhere on my hard drive, but I think I’ll choose to leave them there. I needed some time to temper my take on the film with conversation and to allow the visceral memories to subside somewhat. It wasn’t until two days later that I first put a response on any sort of record when I commented on Hugo Schwyzer’s blog, as he contrasted his reaction to the film with the reviews in the British press.
A number of people have been taken aback by the forcefulness of my reaction against the film. For that matter, so was I. I’d tried very hard to free my mind of much of the reading about the film done over the past year or more, and for the fortnight before seeing the film read very few reviews. I scrupulously avoided those in the British press. I battled my own inclinations as the first half of the film bombarded me with manipulative camera work, but eventually I had to concede to myself. I didn’t like the film. In fact, the word most present in my mind was ‘vile’.
It’s not entirely the violence. Certainly that was overdone, largely gratuitous and stretched at the realms of credulity. I don’t buy into the idea that it represents historical accuracy, and I don’t think that means I underestimate the suffering of Christ. A friend named Tom Wills referred to the film–on an email list–as ‘impressionist’, and I think that the best way to understand the violence and the imagery. Where it seems to me to differ from the best examples of impressionism is that there was little space for the viewer to form their own impression, their own interpretation, of what it portrayed.
As the second half of the film unfolded I found myself wondering what it was precisely about Gibson’s use of artistic license to which I objected. Certainly it didn’t chime with me in the way that, say, Frederick Buechner’s does, but I don’t think that’s the sole reason I prefer that author’s “Son of Laughter” to this. Both put flesh on skeletal source material, both attempt to portray something of the human in their chief characters which can often be missed when reading parts of those sources. Buechner stands out both because he portrays the limitations of that humanity, and because he makes no claim to precise historical accuracy or the absolute truth of his portrayal. The story stands as it is, take it or leave it.
And so I’m left seeing the film as an exercise in fundamentalism. Gibson has moved from trying to express his interpretation, or offering one understanding, to promoting something which claims that that one understanding is the understanding. It wasn’t just the violence that was hard to stomach.