How Gibson’s brutal film helped reclaim Jesus

We will never know very much about the great historical figures who have shaped the world. Whether we’re talking about Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ or Napoleon Bonaparte, the legend rapidly overtakes the reality and all we know is the Hollywood ‘interpretation’ (for want of a kinder word) that permeates our society courtesy of TV or cinema.

For example, take Jesus. To millions of Christians he is the Son of God. After a couple of theological shifts in the early church he also became God the Son (if you want theology come back later!)

But something on which there is, possibly, complete agreement is that he started out in life as Jesus of Nazareth, the totally anonymous citizen of a small Jewish village in the middle of nowhere.

After about 2000 years of church hype, it was Hollywood’s turn. But the movie industry had a bumpy start when it came to showing deity on screen. When Cecil B DeMille made King of Kings in 1929 he was heavily criticised for merely presenting an actor representing Jesus on screen, even though his Jesus was a wholly likeable and kindly man.

A generation later, things had changed. Jesus wasn’t so much a likeable and kindly man as a gaunt, angst-driven post-modernist with worries about his sanity. In The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), producer Martin Scorsese has a completely naked Jesus imagining himself coming down from the cross, marrying, and fathering children. He is a haunted figure ... ‘All my life I’ve been followed by voices’ he tells a ginger-haired Judas.

It’s hard to believe so much could have changed in just 60 years.

There are many other celluloid Jesuses, each one adding his own bit of confusion to what we think we know about the original Jesus of Nazareth. But whatever your views about the founder of Christianity (and even whether that was his intention) the 2004 movie from Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ, has to make you stop in your tracks and ask yourself: Can anyone believe enough in what they are doing to suffer this?

The Passion of the Christ is a superbly crafted but very, very brutal rendering of Jesus’ last 12 hours. Because of the tight timeframe there is little opportunity, except in flashbacks, for the rest of the gospel story.

Gibson’s Christ doesn’t look like a Hollywood-Jesus. Despite him and the speaking cast being Caucasian, the use of Aramaic and Latin with English subtitles provides a surrogate authenticity that overwhelms the viewer.

Huge controversy surrounded the film’s sadistic violence, but Gibson argued that he is showing Christ’s Passion realistically – another radical departure from the normative Hollywood-Jesus.

Gibson’s film sparked two controversies that still rumble on – 1, that it is anti-semitic; 2, that it is an ultra-conservative Catholic riposte to current trends in theology and religious scholarship.

A humble hubber can’t say yes or no to either, but it is clear that no Hollywood producer can ever treat the crucifixion of Jesus as a superficial banality ever again. It is not the Alamo with a crown of thorns.