Unadulterated Christ

It’s like going to Holy Mass and being moved to tears.

That’s probably the closest analogy one could make about The Passion of the Christ.

In this age that relies increasingly on the audiovisual experience, this film by Mel Gibson scores impressively for Jesus. In truth, the film has itself become a modern-day missionary to touch the heart and mind of the often busy urbanite. For the first time, believers and non-believers can get a pretty accurate close-up look of what the Messiah really endured for the inequities of man — this delivered in the confines of an air-conditioned theater, in the dark, and away from other distractions.

We are familiar with the "sanitized" version of Christ with the clean-looking face aglow and the almost impossibly feminine silky white skin. Even the wounds we are familiar with, come to think of it, look benign: the spear mark on the side and the clean punctures of nails.

The Passion paints a disturbing picture of a savaged Jesus: the countless lacerations on the skin, the puffy eyes, and the blood that drips from all over his body. The violence that we know mankind committed on our Savior is here on full display — naked, raw, unassailably true. The suffering He endured jumps out of theology books and the Bible to become a tangible, visceral image that will (and should) inspire us into being believers. There should be no doubt now about the immensity of His sacrifice. And consider Gibson’s assertion that the reality of the agony of Jesus was much worse: "According to the psalmists, you couldn’t even recognize Him as being human. That’s how bad it was," he said in a magazine interview.

It is a daunting task, then, to review such a movie that strikes so close to what we hold so dear. So suffice it to say that The Passion succeeds immensely in its almost obsessive commitment to hew closely to what might have really happened. It’s actually easier to lose oneself in the film probably because its characters speak in Aramaic and "street" Latin.

The Passion was shot in two beautiful locations in Italy: the Cinecitta Studios in the outskirts of Rome, and Matera in Southern Italy where the crucifixion scene was staged. Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus (Mel Gibson wanted an actor with the initials "JC"), had to endure a myriad of daily sufferings himself such as makeup sessions lasting seven to 10 hours and numbing cold when the crew was filming the scene with him exposed on the cross. Caviezel even dislocated his shoulder while shooting the "scourging" scene. Plus, he had to undergo an actual lash of the whip so that makeup artists could realistically duplicate the succeeding cuts. The months of physical and spiritual preparation for Caviezel clearly paid off via an impressive performance.

The strategically cued flashbacks of key events in Jesus’ life also serve to heighten the tragedy that befell Him. Jesus Christ, who wanted to help so many, was put to death exactly because of those miracles. One of the more intense juxtapositions is when Jesus remembered the warm welcome He received at Palm Sunday as He was walking through a hostile crowd that jeered, cursed and spat at Him — raging for his death.

Despite all the flak the film has gotten from very vocal critics such as some Jewish sectors, no one could stop the juggernaut. The Passion of the Christ has raked in more than $300 million in box-office receipts, and is proving to be a consistently strong draw in the Philippines as well — as expected.

One of the dissenting voices in some Jewish quarters’ rejection of The Passion belongs to writer Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who made three predictions almost two months ago: that The Passion will make a lot of money for Mel Gibson and his Icon cinema outfit; it will become famous and prove to be the most "serious and substantive Biblical movie ever made"; and the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent.

It is becoming apparent that no truer words have been written — except, maybe, for the script of The Passion. As the Holy Father himself is reported to have said after watching the movie: "It is as it was."