When Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ opened in United States theaters on Ash Wednesday, 2004, there was a general agreement in the film industry that Gibson’s film would be a major flop. His detractors predicted he would lose the $25 million he personally invested in the film. After two weeks, The Passion of Christ had earned more than $200 million.
 
What happened? To everyone but Gibson's surprise, it soon became apparent that he had tapped into a Zeitgeist in the U.S. known as the Culture War. Conservative newspaper columnist Pat Buchanan led the praise chorus. Buchanan, who was defeated in an attempt to gain the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 1992, and who is a strong traditionalist Catholic, embraced The Passion in his syndicated newspaper column with these supported comments: “Gibson's "Passion" gives us a Lenten masterpiece, a beautiful moving work of art. To cradle Catholics who can recite the lines of each episode before they are uttered, it is faithful to the Gospels, to the Stations of the Cross, to the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.” It was Buchanan who introduced the phrase “culture war” to the political and religious dialogue in the U.S. in a speech he gave at the 1992 Republican National Convention. In his speech he warned, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.”

There are strong indications that many of the ticket buyers that made The Passion such an unexpected success are not regular movie goers. They are rather, conservative foot soldiers on the conservative side in the Culture War. These foot soldiers are evangelical Protestants and traditional Catholics who normally object to any film rated Restricted, no child under 17 permitted without parents. The R rating was well deserved, for its mature and repetitive depiction of violence. The film shows repeated scenes of the suffering of Christ, from his arrest in the Garden, to his flogging by Roman guards, to his death on the cross. Conservative Christians who do not approve of either sex or violence in films, nevertheless, embraced The Passion because it narrates their faith story.

Audiences that filled theaters to overflowing, many of whom came with church groups that reserved entire theaters for the screening, responded to the film in large part because Mel Gibson demonstrated both respect and awe for his subject, the death and (very brief) resurrection of Jesus. The film emerges from the vision of a writer-director who believes in the substitutionary atonement, the payment by death that God demands from his son in order to redeem the world. In Gibson’s vision, the death experienced by Jesus is best understood and received by the faithful when it is described as a violent, suffering end, preceded by repeated beatings and torture, a death that makes sense only to believers, or potential believers. Gibson makes no attempt to explain the context of this brutality. He does not tell the back story, nor argue for a theory of the atonement. He assumes his viewers know the story.

Those viewers with no awareness of the back story would have no idea as to the motivation behind the vicious treatment, nor this man’s clear determination to accept his death on the cross. You have to know the territory to fully appreciate how Gibson has adhered to the literal portrait of Jesus’ final hours, with a narrow focus on the suffering he endured. Gibson’s fans are aware that such a candid and respectful theological treatment of the death of Christ has never before been presented in such grand style in a secular film.

A film is always an encounter of two biographies, that of the filmmaker and that of the viewer. What we observe in a film is shaped in large measure by what we bring to the film. In the instance of The Passion, the belief system of evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics and many conservative-leaning Protestant and Catholic mainline Christians connect with Gibson’s artistic vision. They resonate with the film’s literal acceptance of the Gospels as an accurate rendering of history, and they rejoice over Gibson’s cinematic portrayal of Christ as the saviour of the world.

There are many reasons to dislike major parts of the film, most notably its excessive violence and prolonged torture. In spite of these excesses and Gibson’s own artistic fondness for pain and suffering, it must be noted that he renders his vision with depth and demonstrates what appears to be a genuine and passionate desire to preach his understanding of the Passion narrative. Conservative forces in the Culture War have found their artist and his name is Gibson. And whatever you think of the finished work, there is no doubt but that Gibson is a talented artist. From the opening scenes in the Garden, where Jesus struggles with his doubts and fear of what is to come, to the final brutal pounding of the nails that fix him upon the cross to die, the viewer is brought into Gibson’s intensely personal vision.

Gibson brings to the project a long record of experience as both an actor and more recently as a director. For the film’s cinematic first century look, Gibson employed as his cinematographer, three-time Academy Award nominee Caleb Deschanel, who in addition to nominations for The Right Stuff, The Natural, and Fly Away Home, also photographed Gibson’s film, The Patriot. For the film’s musical score, moody and brooding throughout until its triumphant ending, Gibson chose veteran Hollywood composer John Debney, who has written music for 31 feature films. Deschanel’s cinematography gives the traditional Garden story an artistic freshness, highlighting a sense of impending terror which is inherent in the scriptural story. When the film opens, the misty half light of the approaching dawn reveals a doubting writhing man at prayer, trying to ignore a feminine devilish figure whispering to him that he should give up this folly, for no one man could possibly save the world. James Caviezel in the challenging role of Jesus, effectively conveys a range of doubt and fear, his emotions held together only by the shaky conviction that he is performing God’s will and that God will not desert him.

Gibson made a wise move when he chose to make the film in Aramaic, the language of Jesus’ day, adding Latin for the Romans. Caviezel is little known to filmgoers in the U.S., so his first appearance in the garden does not bring an awkward shock of recognition. (One of Caviezel’s earlier films was as part of an ensemble of soldiers in Terrance Mallick’s 1998 film version of James Jones’ World War II war novel, The Thin Red Line.) With Caviezel speaking Aramaic, familiar biblical phrases assure a documentary authenticity for the text, especially in those somber moments when he confronts his tormentors or comforts his mother and his disciplines. Jesus’ earlier life is briefly seen in flashbacks, including one scene from the Sermon on the Mount. In another truly humanizing scene, (not to be found in any of the gospels) Jesus engages in a playful tea break with his mother, a break that shows Jesus, as a young carpenter, displaying a wacky sense of humor, not unlike Gibson shows as an actor in his comedies. Aramaic certainly adds to the sacredness of the text, giving the impression that these lines are spoken by first century Palestinians, not 21st century actors. I still wince at the memory of the jarring sound of John Wayne, as a Roman guard in The Greatest Story Ever Told, muttering in his slow American drawl: “Truly this man was the son of God”. Familiar line, terrible delivery. The original Aramaic is far superior.

Except for the brief flashbacks, the film focuses on the Passion, which Gibson introduces with a prophetic passage from Isaiah 53:5: "He was wounded for our transgressions, [and] by his wounds we are healed." Through the centuries this declarative sentence has been sung and celebrated, preached and taught, but Gibson wants more. Because he wants us to experience what our sins demand from God’s son Gibson gives us repeated scenes of beatings of the wounded man by sadistic Roman soldiers who clearly relish their assignment.

In two separate moments, the camera stays on Jesus’ face, staring at his blood soaked head and face, one eye swollen shut by thuggish blows. These moments evoke an awareness of the brutality offered in the work of 16th century German artist Matthias Grünewald whose work Isenheim Altarpiece, is a notable medieval rendering of Christ’s final hours.

For most viewers these scenes in Gibson’s film continue well beyond the point of endurance or artistic purpose (And they are certainly inappropriate viewing for anyone under 14). Gibson, however, is the artist behind this film and this is the vision he chose to share. He drew his script from the gospel accounts but the medieval-style focus on suffering appears to have been drawn, in part, from medieval art and from the mystic visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century nun whose visions transported her back to the first century where she claims to have witnessed Jesus’ actual suffering.

One of my colleagues has described the film as adopting the style of the horror genre, telling the story through the rendering of moments of dread and impending doom in the midst of chaos, until in a final horror film resolution, the evil one is defeated. Critic Andrew Suliman sees the film as adopting the style of pornography, by which he means “the reduction of all human thought and feeling and person hood to mere flesh”. And it is certainly true that for long stretches sadistic Roman soldiers, reeling from drink, are locked in an obscene embrace of brutality with their helpless prisoner.

In spite of these excesses, the film has found an unlikely ticket-buying, enthusiastic band of followers, including what is essentially a part of the support base supporting Republican president George W. Bush, now running for reelection against a liberal opponent, Democratic Senator John Kerry. These viewers, many of whom rarely go to movies, have embraced The Passion as a coalition ally in the Culture War because they see this film as an example of what creative art ought to produce in a God-fearing culture.

The Culture War is being fought on a battlefield that pits conservative Christians against a secular liberal society that favors promiscuous sexual conduct, homosexual marriages and abortion “on demand”. The latest attack on this liberal side of American culture came from President Bush’s endorsement of a Constitutional amendment that would legally confine marriage to a male-female relationship. And it is worth noting that George Bush’s strongest support for his war on Iraq comes from the conservative side of the Culture War struggle. Gibson chose to release his film on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, which culminates in the Passion. He knew that he would reach an audience that wants very much to live in a world that is clearly understood as a battleground between the forces of good against the forces of evil. Of course, it is also true that viewers with different biographies will have less affinity with Gibson’s worldview and will not respond to the film with the fervor of Gibson’s conservative fan base.

The personal life story--the biography--of viewers affects how the film connects with its potential audience. And one major concern in the reception of the film stems from what many critics have charged is the danger of an implied, if not overt, anti-Semitism. Whether or not the film is viewed as anti-Semitic is a response that will be determined by one’s biography. The viewer will see what he or she expects to see in the film. For Jewish viewers, that community which has known the Holocaust and centuries of persecution, the Passion will most likely evoke strong negative reactions, similar to the reaction Jews of Europe have had for many years to productions of the Passion Play. Many non-Jews will also react negatively to the film out of a fear that the picture will set back interfaith relations. They will wish Gibson had been more concerned with avoiding the charge of anti-semitism.

With judicious editing, Gibson could have reduced some of these fears. He insists there is no anti-semitism in his picture, arguing that he is only reporting what the gospels (especially John) had to say about the conflict between the Jews of the first century and what the Gospels reported about the desire of the Jewish temple leaders for Jesus to be put to death. But he certainly could have eliminated scenes that are not reported in the Gospels, such as those showing Jewish guards beating Jesus or allowing him to hang upside down by his chains on his way to his trial. Clearly gratuitous is the scene of Mary appealing to the Romans to save her son from the Jews.

Aside from a troubling societal fallout from the film, The Passion is best understood for what it is, an artistic rendering of a traditionalist Catholic film maker. It is a film that offers the personal vision of an artist who is a “braveheart” and a “patriot”, to recall two of Gibson’s previous films which also had Christlike figures in settings of excessive danger and physical suffering.

(Mr. Wall is president of Interfilm, North America, an adjunct professor of religion and culture at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California, and Senior Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois)