hile I have not seen and have no desire to see this movie, it was in the news often enough during late 2003 and early 2004 that I couldn't resist blogging about it on numerous occasions.

Scroll down this page to see all of my archived entries on the film, from news about it and Mel Gibson during production, to news once the film was released and became such a gigantic success.

March 16, 2003

Mel Gibson has long been a raving Catholic.  If there is such a thing. He's into the whole Latin Mass, wife = baby machine, Jesus' face on a tortilla, etc stuff.  Very hardcore.  He's gotten away with it by keeping a sort of low profile, but that may be changing.  He's financing some unwatchably-long movie about Jesus which will apparently be critical of the Jews for killing Jesus.  And with his parents being interviewed, we now know where he gets his ideas.

The actor's father, Hutton Gibson, told The New York Times he flatly rejected that the terrorist group led by Usama bin Laden had any role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11.

"Anybody can put out a passenger list," the elder Gibson told The Times.

"So what happened? They were crashed by remote control."

He and the actor's mother, Joye Gibson, also told The Times that the Holocaust was a fabrication manufactured to hide an arrangement between Adolf Hitler and "financiers" to move Jews out of Germany to the Middle East to fight Arabs.

"Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," Hutton Gibson told The Times. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now six million?"

Said Joye Gibson: "That weren't even that many Jews in all of Europe."

March 18, 2003

First off is this part of an email from Bryan.  He wrote in about this article, about Mel Gibson's particular style of throw-back Catholicism.

I found the article on Mel Gibson very interesting, and yes I realize I should probably email the person who wrote it, but I fear with the bad grammar and misused words that the email I would receive in return would be horrible. I also feel that you'd be better apt to receive my commentary than said author because you seem to have more of an open mind and (s)he's more apt to want sensationalism.

I won't go into the whole crap about Vatican II being the name of the council of Cardinals that assisted the Pope in drafting those resolutions because I'm sure you already knew that, even if the ABC reporter appeared to have no clue. What really shocked me was the fact that the Catholic church now apparently denies the Jews were instrumental in the death of Christ. It's a large part of the Catholic faith that the Jewish Heirarchs condemned Jesus before Herrod and Pilot. That's fine, I don't blame modern Jews at all. I don't blame the ancient ones either. By condeming him to die they allowed him to be born again and free us from the shackles of sin. They were just doing as God had wished.

Ironically, I'm not that conservative a Catholic. I rarely go to Mass anymore, and while I certainly want more music in Church, a Latin Mass makes no sense to me. How exactly are you supposed to feel ecclesiastical when you have no idea what in God's Name they (the Priests) are saying? I dig any religion, really ,though I tend to be a bit of a pacifist. Destiny of mankind to unite and all that business.

I find his comments interesting, just for the way they are, and the way I am.

First of all, I've always heard from people who have done objective analysis/reading of that portion of the Bible that the whole story is clearly bullshit.  Maybe there was or was not a Jesus Christ, but the Roman emperor at the time was notoriously cruel and blood-thirsty and would never have even considered letting anyone go he could have killed.  As the Jesus myth/history goes (as best I remember) there was Jesus and a couple of thieves about to be crucified, and the Roman in charge let the crowd of Jews decide who was to be crucified and who spared. They allegedly Jesus over the thieves, and thus Jesus was done for.

The interpretation of that I've always heard (again, from people who have objectively analyzed it) is that the whole story is bullshit, and there's no way the crowd would have been given that choice, or the thieves spared, and that it was just added or edited in in later times.  All the stories in the New Testament were written decades or centuries after the events too place, and they are about as historically accurate as George Washington cutting down the cherry tree.  Based on reality, embroidered for to make a better story, etc.

And even if they were factually exact at the time they were recorded, the modern bible is a fraction of the total ancient writings, and has been pared down over the centuries in various translations and updates, where the biases and prejudices and beliefs of the age when the translation was done crept into the document.

Of course this is all heresy to a true believer, who holds that God divinely inspired the original writers, or gave them heavenly dictation, or whatever.  And I suppose did the same to the various monks and others who did later translations.  And we should overlook the numerous errors and inconsistencies and contradictions between various accounts of events and prophecies in the Bible.

That went longer than anticipated.

What I was initially going to say about Bryan's comments was to agree with his one point.  Even if the Jews did condemn Christ to death, they were just doing God's will.  Jesus had to die that way to redeem the sins of man, right?  If he'd been spared then, by the Jews or whoever, and somehow hadn't gotten killed a month or a year later for his ongoing illegal proselytizing, and had lived to be 70 and gotten fat and dropped dead one day while on the crapper, ( like Elvis) wouldn't mankind have been doomed?

Forever left to wander in darkness away from the cleansing blood of the lamb.  And so on?

If you look at it that way, the Jews were heroes.

Furthermore, the reason Jews don't take Jesus as the messiah, as prophesied in the Old Testament, is because by the prophecies say the messiah must be this, that, and the other thing.  You can tell I didn't exactly take notes in Sunday School, eh?

Anyway, one of the conditions was that he (the messiah) be a great military leader.  He was to unite the tribes and drive forth the Hittites, or some damn thing.  Anyway, Jesus was not, Jesus did not, therefore he didn't match all the bullet points on the "messiah or not" check list, therefore the Jews didn't accept him as the true messiah.  As far as I can tell they have a point, and since the Bible was written by people who came to worship Jesus long after his death, and the victors write history... Well, you know how it goes.

If Jesus had grown old and done the Elvis flop, would we be talking about any of this now?  Hell, I'm not sure why I'm talking about it as it is.

March 19, 2003

I wish I'd seen this yesterday, before I posted an email about and commented on the whole "Mel Gibson, Super-Catholic!" thing.  Read this article, it's long and very detailed/informative. Covers Mel's ideas, his parents, the entire "return to pre-Vatican II Mass" movement, and more.  Very interesting.

So Mel is really super Catholic, and likes to be in his private church with his own rules, cause he feels special.  Okay, whatever, buying yourself rank in a church is an old favorite of the rich.  It's popular in Hollywood, though generally with Scientologists.  But you wonder if Mel is losing his mind though, when you hear the details of the movie he's making now.

According to press accounts, "The Passion," currently being shot in Italy, purports to be the story of the final 12 hours of Jesus' life. The film is based upon the diaries of St. Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) as collected in the book, "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ." This is Gibson’s first directing effort since he won an Oscar for "Braveheart," In "The Passion," the actors will speak only Aramaic and Latin and there will be no subtitles.

I'm sure both people on earth who speak both Latin and Aramaic will love it! Besides the lack of subtitles making it impossible to understand, the subject matter sounds like fun for the whole family.

...that Gibson "depicts the crucifixion in a most bloody, gruesome manner. Nothing is left to the imagination or to good taste. Gibson conceded, gladly, that it's never been done so vividly before. He's very proud of showing the suffering it all its minute-by-minute horror."

August 9, 2003

We're beginning to see news about Mel Gibson's "Death of Jesus" movie on a more regular basis, as it's finished and is being screened by various groups.  What sort of groups?

In recent weeks, the actor-director has been building support with invitation-only screenings for film industry insiders, conservative commentators, evangelical Christians and sympathetic Jews.

He's really taking on his critics full force, eh?

An article from the Guardian UK has a lot more detail.

On the face of it Mel Gibson's new film, The Passion, appears to be little more than a work of celluloid self-indulgence by a Hollywood veteran. Portraying the final 12 hours of the life of Jesus Christ, it has no distributor, features no stars and the dialogue is in Latin and Aramaic. It is not even certain whether the final product will have subtitles.

Yet the film, co-directed by Gibson, who has spent $25m (£15.6m) of his own money on the project, has already attracted lavish praise from evangelicals and stern criticism from Jewish and Catholic scholars, with one academic warning that it could provoke within the US "one of the great crisis in Christian-Jewish relations".

The star has claimed the "Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic. I hope the film has the power to evangelise". But a panel of three Jewish and six Catholic scholars, who have studied a draft script, say the film is anti-semitic and theologically inaccurate, portraying Jews as bloodthirsty and vengeful and reviving the worst traditions of the passion plays which contributed to deadly attacks against Jews over the centuries.

"When we read the screenplay our sense was this wasn't really something you could fix. All the way through, the Jews are portrayed as bloodthirsty," said Sister Mary C Boys, a professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary. "We're really concerned that this could be one of the great crises in Christian-Jewish relations."

It's interesting that Mel cares enough about this to spend all of the time and money (another article recently said it was over $30m of his own coin thus far), and given the whole history of "indulgences" in Catholicism, you might be tempted to wonder what the hell sins he perpetrated that he's working so hard to buy his way out of.

It also sounds like Mel is mainstreaming it, since early reports (which were perhaps in error) said it was like eight hours long.  It is still entirely in Latin and Aramic, and they are still debating if there will be subtitles or not, which is obviously going to limit the commercial appeal quite a bit.  I'm also wondering how the various people who have seen it thus far understood anything, if it's in two languages no one speaks and doesn't have any subtitles.

Of course if you feel like I do about the whole Jesus myth (general disinterest and a lack of superstition, tinged with a healthy amount of disbelief that any of it actually occurred) then you probably enjoy quotes like this one from the Guardian article.  Some people are saying it's very accurate to the Bible, but um...

But one problem, pointed out by Paula Fredriksen, a professor of scripture at Boston University and one of the panel that criticised the script, is that the gospels themselves are not consistent. "In Mark, Jesus's last meal is a Passover seder [ceremonial meal]; in John, Jesus is dead before the seder begins. The release of Barabbas is a 'Roman custom' in Mark, a 'Jewish custom' in John. Between the four evangelists, Jesus speaks three different last lines from the cross."

That would be the infallible, eternal, Holy-Word-of-God bible they're talking about there, right? Of course it is.

October 24, 2003

This one almost makes me wish I believed in God, so I could enjoy it even more.  I'll settle for thinking of it as a karma-slap, which is not something I believe in either, but is at least something I want to exist, even if I don't believe in it (karma) personally.

Actor Jim Caviezel has been struck by lightning while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion Of Christ.

The lightning bolt hit Caviezel and the film's assistant director Jan Michelini while they were filming in a remote location a few hours from Rome.

It was the second time Michelini had been hit by lightning during the shoot.

I bet Mel's staying the hell indoors when clouds come out from now on, eh?

Feburary 26, 2004

In the news, Mel "My dad's nuts" Gibson's ultimate vanity project, The Passion of Christ, has at last opened, to very mixed reviews. I'd comment more on it but it's late and I need to get to bed to avoid some sort of relapse.  Plus I haven't seen it, have no interest in seeing it, and being non-Christian, am mildly annoyed by all of the hype about it.  A guy who preached a new version of numerous existing religions got killed for it in horrible fashion, but the same horrible fashion as thousands of other heretics back then. Hundreds of years after his death people who believed in the same religion as him decided to deify him and write up his death as the central event in their religion, and that interpretation of events had persisted to the modern day.

True, it's impressive that any story about anything from nearly 2000 years ago continues to exist at all, much less in a form that such a huge percentage of the world holds as valuable. But since I'm not in that percentage, it's just a well-photographed, big budget snuff film. And that doesn't interest me.

As the RottenTomatoes says, based on over 100 reviews:

CONSENSUS
The graphic details of Jesus' torture make the movie tough to sit through and obscure whatever message it is trying to convey.

I think some of the reviews have made interesting points, and perhaps I'll run down some of those tomorrow, or next week when I can discuss the box office and public reactions to it.

Malaya is annoyed by it since it'll just give fuel to illogical arguments. Christians who want to argue it will say, "See, he died horribly!  That means the Bible must be true!"  Uh huh...

March 2, 2004

In other movie news, while I'm uninterested in Mel Gibson's new Jesusnuff film, I'm obviously pretty alone in that, since it made a fortune over the weekend, and it had cleared $125m through Sunday, in just 5 days.  After the big opening day I figured it would do okay over the weekend, and then drop off quickly, what with everyone who had any interest in it having seen it, and the word about how horrendously violent and cruel it is out.  But I didn't think it would make anywhere near the money it's made, and I'm probably wrong about the legs it'll show also.

Viewing it is like a religious experience, no pun intended, and I won't be surprised if true believers go to see it again and again, even if they don't really enjoy it or like it.  This isn't the best analogy of all time, but Scientologists are/were forced/encouraged to go out and buy additional copies of master kook L. Ron Hubbard's source novel Dianetics, over and over again, just to keep it on the best seller list, sort of as a way to tithe to their church/cult.  I can easily see The Passion following the same path, as churches urge their members to see it several times, and people simply take it upon themselves to see it.  In fact, the extremely bloody and unpleasant nature of it might actually help the box office in a way, since it's like a penance or a scourging of your own mind and sensibilities to sit through the stomach-twisting gore time and again.  A sort of time-consuming, objectively foolish thing, like saying 50 Hail Marys, that makes you feel like you've erased some sins afterwards. Not that I'd know personally.

On the topic of the film and its hyper violence, lots of ultra right wing types, people who generally spent almost as much time decrying violence on TV as they do sex on TV are giving The Passion a free pass.  For example.

Never has the division between the elites and the masses been more evident.  Many good things are happening: the smack-in-the-face that the public awarded Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake; the public revulsion to the anti-marriage campaign; the firing of Howard Stern from many radio outlets; and, most of all, the public’s embrace of ‘The Passion of the Christ.’

So The Passion, which most critics agree is the most violent movie ever made, is just great; fun for the whole family. So say people who condemn every other violent action movie ever, since in those cases, violence is bad. As is some smutty talk on the radio, and anything resembling sex or nudity on TV. True, seeing an R-rated movie is an option and it's not coming into your home, but then again, TVs and radios do have power switches and multiple channels to select a program from, when last I checked.

The whole thing about The Passion that I just don't grasp is why it's so important for devout Christians, Catholics especially, to support or embrace it. I mean yeah, Mel's hardcore right Catholic, and he made it, and it's Jesus and all of that.  But so what?

It's a movie version of partially/largely fictional events in the Bible, showing Jesus dying in a horrible way.  Why is that inspirational or enjoyable to watch?

If someone made a very graphic film about the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, with all of the sex and violence and horror and virtually zero redeeming messages of peace or love or compassion, would they all rave about how incredible it was, and how it reinforced their faith in the Bible? Would all the violence and sex and grisly death scenes get a free pass from the moralists since that's how it was described in the Bible? (Hypothetically, I haven't read it and don't know exactly how that destruction is presented.)

Is it because Mel gave so much lip service to faithful Biblical rendition of events?  Because he's a true believer and unapologetically so?  Because it's gotten criticized for being anti-Semitic and Christians are never happier than when they can feel persecuted?

I don't really know, but the fever to adopt this movie as something special and amazing has been palpable, and it puzzles me. After all, no one is really denying that the Romans whipped and tortured and crucified early Christians. And no one is denying that that's a horribly painful way to die. But why do people want to see it?

Christians did things as bad or worse during the centuries of Inquisition, and with as little or less cause; should people cry out for movies focusing on that; movies that exactly recreate the crushing by stones, burning by irons, starving in cages, etc?  Should people who aren't Christian or who dislike Christians make such a movie, and then rave about how wonderful and life-fulfilling it is to see the incredibly realistic depictions of burning and torture and branding as accused witches are tortured and raped to death by priests in spiffy robes?

Also, I've never really seen that Jesus made a great sacrifice.  I mean even if you accept the Biblical version of events exactly, and Mel's version as well, where was the choice for Jesus? He was breaking the law with heresy, knowingly, and he got caught, and he got punished, and he died in agony. Just like hundreds or thousands of others in his time.  There are various miracles ascribed to him in the Bible, but I don't believe he had superpowers of combat or battle prowess.  He was all about peace and love and turning the other cheek, right?  So once the Romans had him, he was doomed; he couldn't escape, he couldn't fight and win, he couldn't do anything but get beaten and tortured and hung up like a well-secured wall calendar.  Where's the heroism in that? People get killed in nearly as nasty a fashion all the time in various civil wars around the world, in Africa, in the Middle East.  Hell, Haitian policemen got similar stuff within the last two weeks. Are they renowned and worshipped for suffering horribly before they died? Or are we just sorry about things, and damn glad they ain't us?

It's not like Jesus was Superman, with the ability to break free at any moment, or heal his own wounds (and eat M&Ms again!) or something similar.  He was mortal, as weak as any of us, despite his divine origins, and he died like any of us would in his situation. True, he took it like a man and stood up and didn't renounce his beliefs, and won over some of the crowd with his bravery in agony, just like Mel did in Braveheart, but it's not like he chose to die and wanted it to happen so he could be written about afterwards.

In the whole Bible story he rises from the dead a few days later (healed, I guess?) and goes down to Hell to save all of the true souls who had died before he died, and were therefore not properly baptized and therefore could have never entered Heaven (or something like that), but I gather that none of that is in The Passion. And while that's the whole guts of Christianity, believing that Jesus died for your sins and then rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, that part is entirely myth and legend, as far as I know.  I mean all of it is, or isn't, depending on your beliefs, but the crucifixions and tortures and such are historical fact, though whether or not there really was a Jesus is still open to debate.

But it's not like there are thousands of witnesses to the rolling back of the stone and the risen Christ; just stories about various ex-apostles and such who weren't sure they saw him, and anyway, those are just stories, very myth-like and clearly written hundreds of years later.  I don't think any historian would give them much credence, objectively speaking. True believers of course take them on faith, since they were dictated by God or angels or something, but if we're going on historical evidence, the verifiable stuff pretty well ends with Jesus in a crypt.

I'm not sure what my point is here; I'm just rambling. I've just always found it odd that Jesus is revered for dying in agony, like thieves and other criminals did back in those days, and I find it very odd that people find their faith strengthened or reinforced by seeing a super violent movie about capital punishment as practiced 2000 years ago.

It's like Malaya has been annoyed by for weeks.  The circular, illogical reasoning of the devout.

"I believe in the Bible and I believe in Jesus and here's a movie that shows how horribly he died, therefore the Bible stories about him dying must be true."

Some logic. You know, the people turning into werewolves in Underworld were damn bloody and realistic also. Does that mean they're true also? Plus, werewolves are much cooler than a bloody guy on a cross.  Even in a movie as sloppy as Underworld.

No, not my best analogy.

And yes, my attitude towards this is a common one among intellectual Democrats, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why Republicans control every branch of government in the US, despite the fact that their actual policies are supported by a minority of voters. The right wing lives under a perpetual siege mentality, where anything that goes against them is a terrible attack, anyone who opposes any of their ideals (Mel Gibson, for example) is a traitorous enemy, and they must constantly rally to support their own, no matter what. It's a horrible way to live, but it's a great way to cling to power.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.