Word: gibsonized
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Directed by Mel Gibson...
Director Mel Gibson takes an emphatically different approach to his subject in The Passion of the Christ, representing the teachings of Jesus through a gore-drenched recreation of the final twelve hours before his death. Here, the son of God is a wholly human figure, and Gibson constantly reminds his audience of this with an unceasing depiction of shredded flesh and spattered blood. The effect is alternately piercing and numbing...
Nevertheless, Gibson eventually succeeds in overwhelming his audience with the kind of potent visual poignancy unseen in his previous directorial work. In one remarkable shot, the camera takes an overhead God’s-eye view of the crucifixion site, underpinning the magnitude of the event by exhibiting the individuals’ relative irrelevance. Furthermore, every aspect of the persecution becomes a multi-sensory experience, as each lashing is accompanied by a vivid shower of crimson and unnerving sound effects. At one point, a Roman soldier flagellates Christ with a whip of broken metal tips, the shards embedded and then...
...telling of the story is equally effective, as screenwriters Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald (Wise Blood) find most of their narrative might in the passion plays’ minor characters. Particularly moving is the transformation of Simon of Cyrene, played with bitter conviction in a breakthrough performance by Jarreth Merz, who initially helps carry the cross with great reluctance, but by journey’s end is risking his own life in Christ’s defense. Perhaps the film’s most moving sequence is provided by an anonymous woman who gracefully offers Christ a bowl of water...
...endless proselytizing about faithfulness to the Gospels, Gibson strays from the narrow Biblical path quite often. Pontius Pilate is given a disproportionate amount of screen time as he agonizes over his decision to crucify Jesus, while such a conflicted Pilate cannot be found in any of the Gospels. In a blatantly inaccurate flashback to Jesus’ youth, we see an enthusiastic carpenter apparently constructing mankind’s first high table, as Mary remarks, “This will never catch on.” And despite his many triumphant experiments (the film wouldn’t be nearly...