Chronic Murmuring

The Passion: First Thoughts

I finally saw The Passion this afternoon. I saw it under ideal settings. I was all alone, on an afternoon matinee, in a dark theater in a super deluxe multiplex. I can't review it; any attempt at a review will sound incredibly stupid. I cannot hold my attention long enough to actually construct reviews. I may just jot down thoughts occasionally instead. The rest of this post is just rambling, so don't expect anything except for that if you care to read it.

As far as whether I liked or not, I liked it a lot. I realized, once the credits were finished rolling, that I must be the audience that Mel Gibson had in mind. I'm not sure what that means, precisely, either. I am undoubtedly what you would call "religious," but I feel like every day I am some kind of "lapsed religious" person. I am also a moviegoer, first and foremost. And, I have felt for a long time unable to penetrate the Jesus as he is contained in the pages of the New Testament. This movie was powerful to me on a number of levels. One level that particuarly affected me was the relationship between Mary and Jesus. I sniffled a lot throughout the movie, but one scene caused me to fall into deep weeping. It was the scene where Mary has asked John the disciple to get her closer to Jesus (who is carrying his cross through the streets). John maneuvers her into an alley, or what looks like an alley, and you can tell that Jesus is getting closer because of the crowd people moving at the edge of the alley, on the street. But Mary's frozen. For whatever reason, she can't bring herself to walk to him. Then she sees him at the mouth of the alley. He falls down in pain and Gibson flashes back to a memory of Jesus as a little boy falling outside his home. Mary sees him and runs to him in her memory, telling him that she is there with him, which prompts her to do the same in the present. She rushes to his side and tells him that she is there. But his response was really hit me hard. He tells her, "look mother. I make all things new." When he said that, I cried and cried.

I could see this movie again and again. I was mesmerized. For one, it wasn't nearly as violent as I was led to believe from reading Ebert's review. But Barlow had mentioned that he felt Ebert was exaggerating, and/or he simply had never bothered to think about the death of Christ in any concrete way. There were only two parts that I couldn't bear to look. One was where the cat o' nine tails slapped onto Jesus's back, and the guard paused for a second or two before ripping it away. I figured that that was a sign from the director that I was about see a couple of inches of flesh torn off his back, which I couldn't bear to see. The other time was when the guards hammered the pike into Jesus's leg when he was on the cross.

Another scene that I found poignant was Simon being forced to carry Jesus's cross. Simon begins completely unwilling to carry the cross. But over the journey to Mt. Golgotha, he undergoes a visible change. He defends Jesus against the people persecuting him and threatens to stop carrying it if they don't stop hitting him. He begins to speak in affectionate, fatherly tones to Jesus along the way, tell him "almost done" and "almost there." Jesus would fall repeatedly on his way to the mountain, and when he would stand up and lean against Simon, all I could think was how wonderful it was to be Simon at that moment. I actually wanted to be Simon at that moment, to be honest. Jesus leaning against him like that, their arms locked around the cross as they carried it. Simon was helping Jesus carry the cross, not understanding that Jesus was carrying the cross for him. And that was interesting and powerful. But for me, what was more powerful was just seeing Jesus and him together, touching one another, leaning on one another.

The movie seemed full of moments like the ones I'm trying to describe, almost as though Gibson is holding out moments from those last few hours for us to simply see and experience. I suppose this fits, even, the extensive criticisms I've read of the movie. It's abstracted from a contextual story which in many ways possibly threatens to confuse the story it's trying to tell. I only know that that is not at all a problem for me, being so familiar with the story. Watching Gibson hover over certain details was a powerful experience. It was like Chinese poetry, which I also love, which often seems to me to do this very thing - to hover over certain mundane details, forcing me to witness them. A wind blowing, curtains rippling, water falling from a leaf, chests rising as we breathe - I can become easily hypnotized by these sorts of things, and that happened a lot today.

I think it's partly because of that I don't feel it to be fair to make Gibson bear the full responsibility to tell every part of the gospel. That's a criticism I've also heard a lot. Because he focused more on the passion than anything else, it failed to convey properly some larger story. But to me, that's so dull. Let someone else make that movie. Gibson wanted this one, and I found it powerful. I don't usually like religious-themed art - at least not 20th century commercialized Christian art. I don't own a single "Christian" album, nor have I ever in my lifetime. I like my Christianity old, antique-like. I like liturgy, smells and bells. I like councils and dust. I like the sound of the faithful chanting in dead languages. I like silent monks. Yet, I'm right beside no telling how many evangelical protestants who don't share any of those interests of mine, in loving this movie and finding it powerfully affective. And besides, I like what I read recently on another blog - I liked seeing this because Mel made it for his people. It's communal storytelling. He said, "I have something I've made which I want you to see," and I want to have fellowship with him by seeing it. And I'm grateful he made it. I plan to see it, strangely, as many more times as I can bear it. It'll probably be the second DVD of my very small DVD section. I'll place it right beside my DVD copy of Boogie Nights - another favorite Christian story of mine.