Word: braveheart
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Playing William Wallace in his film Braveheart, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1996, Mel Gibson said, "Every man dies; not every man really lives." With his film The Passion of the Christ, Gibson has put himself in the "few men" category. In Braveheart, Wallace also said, "Men don't follow titles; they follow courage." As one of the many people of faith who acknowledge that American filmmakers--regardless of how we feel about the messages they portray--produce the best movies on the planet, I cannot imagine a more courageous insider than Gibson. He is the courage...
...right to take the Bible literally as other films have to be comically blasphemous. Faith and piety are so often mocked in modern pop culture that Gibson could seem a radical just for approaching the Gospels with a straight face. The director, who won a Best Picture Oscar for Braveheart, has put his money ($30 million) where his faith is. In dramatizing the torment of Jesus' last 12 hours, he has made a serious, handsome, excruciating film that radiates total commitment. Few mainstream directors have poured so much of themselves into so uncompromising a production. Whatever the ultimate verdict...
...Braveheart was gaudily violent, in spurts. This one is crimson carnage from the moment Jesus is condemned, half an hour into the 127-min. film. One of his eyes is caked closed from a beating by Jewish goons, but the Romans are the pros. They take their time applying 80 or so wince-worthy lashes to his body, and the camera pays avid attention to the whole draining spectacle. He falls three times, which is fine for Catholic fidelity but wasteful and redundant as movie drama...
...sense of that word." That wouldn't mean much for standard religious bio-pics, which are usually financed by church organizations, shown in remote locations and unknown to the mass moviegoing public. But Gibson is one of the world's top stars, whose last 10 major-studio films (since Braveheart) have grossed a cumulative $1.27 billion at the North American box office and a similar amount abroad. Signs, his last movie as an actor, grossed nearly $400 million worldwide. And though he's not on screen in The Passion (except for a closeup of his hand driving the first nail...
...also, as Hollywood must acknowledge, among the canniest of filmmakers. Braveheart, the last film he helmed, won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. So Gibson might have expected a few nibbles from the major studios for his latest historical epic. Now that The Passion has opened vigorously, and has a chance to become the biggest foreign-language hit in American movie history, the studio sultans might be a tad annoyed with themselves that they turned down a sleeper hit they could have nabbed for peanuts last summer...