'The Passion', a take on Christ's last hours by ultra-conservative Catholic Mel Gibson, has opened old wounds, writes Ian Kilroy from the US.
These days, actor-director Mel Gibson is more interested in the Sacred Heart than he is in Braveheart. It may be difficult to picture Mad Max on his knees reciting the rosary, or the Lethal Weapon seeking absolution for all those bad guys he's iced, but this is the real Mel Gibson: a devout traditionalist Catholic whose latest turn in the director's chair is stirring up more controversy than the Second Vatican Council.
Those of you who religiously follow Hollywood gossip will already know Gibson is working on a film depicting the last 12 hours of Christ's life. What may not be as widely known in Ireland is the amount of controversy that Gibson's The Passion has provoked in the US - and this despite the fact the film has yet to secure a distribution deal and isn't due for release until next year. Not since Martin Scorsece's The Last Temptation of Christ has the Messiah figured so divisively in the movies.
But the difference this time is that an ultra-conservative is directing. This time it's the left, not the right, that is crying scandal.
It all started with an innocent article in the New York Times magazine last March. Gibson's 82-year-old father, Hutton Gibson, spoke of his belief that the Holocaust wasn't really all that serious and that the Second Vatican Council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews". The piece, apart from profiling the actor's apparently deranged dad, also detailed how son Mel was building a traditionalist Catholic church in the hills near Los Angeles. At a cost to Gibson of nearly $3 million, the church will host the Tridentine Mass; under its roof women will have to wear headscarves; and all Second Vatican Council reforms will be frowned upon by Gibson's fellow-worshippers.
That New York Times article then moved on to suggest Gibson's film will lay the blame for the death of Christ with "the Jewish authorities who presided over his trial and delivered him to the Romans". That suggestion, and Gibson's own comments on television that his film may offend some Jews, has put Gibson on a collision course with the powers that be in Jewish America.
One of the first to sit up and take notice was the Jewish civil rights organisation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The concerned head of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, helped set up an ad hoc group of nine experts in Christian-Jewish relations to look at Gibson's project. Afraid that the film would revive the old accusation of Christ-killing against the Jews - a charge set aside by the church in the Second Vatican Council - Foxman set about trying to get a copy of Gibson's script. He was denied one, but mysteriously managed to get hold of a copy without the permission of Icon Productions, the company behind The Passion. Foxman's group of Catholic and Jewish scholars read and damned the script. When one of the ad hoc group told the Los Angeles Times that Gibson's film could incite anti-Semitism, the group's private misgivings became an all-out public row.
Soon the New York Times was back in the centre of things, with an article by journalist Frank Rich. Based on the ADL's reaction to the early draft of the script,Rich predicted the film could have a "real tinderbox effect". He also suggested Gibson was going out of his way "to bait Jews" and "sow religious conflict".
What further infuriated Rich was Gibson was screening early cuts of his film to select audiences of conservative preachers, ultra-Christian groups and members of the Catholic clergy - while leaving left-leaning film critics in the dark - further infuriated Rich. As conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV rowed in behind Gibson, The Passion became another site of conflict for the US's vocal public commentators on hoth sides of the left-right divide. Few films that have yet to be released have attracted so much public controversy.
Gibson has fuelled that controversy. He went on the offensive last month in an interview with the New Yorker. Reacting to Rich's article, he attacked the journalist in these terms: "I want to kill him," he said. "I want his intestines on a stick, I want to kill his dog."
Rich countered by restating his accusations against Gibson's film in the pages of the New York Times, claiming the film "is destined to be inaccurate". Rich had earlier predicted The Passion would be a flop.
Indeed, you'd wonder how a film in the dead languages of Latin and Aramaic could pack them in from sea to shining sea. US film-goers are hardly known for their tolerance of either challenging material or subtitles. Maybe that's what scared financiers away, leaving Gibson to finance the $25 million production.
The lack of a star-studded cast would not have helped attract finance either. James Caviezel (as Jesus) is not a name with household recognition, although Caviezel will be remembered by some for his roles in The Count of Monte Cristo and was excellent in The Thin Red Line. Gibson's desire to cast actors without the association of previous roles is intended to increase the plausibility of the life on the screen.
He wants to steer clear of the errors of earlier cinematic representations of the gospels, in which, for example, the soldier at the foot of Christ's cross turns out to be none other than John Wayne.
This commitment to realism is expected to be evident in the film's brutal representation of the crucifixion. According to those who have seen early cuts - sworn to secrecy though they were - we can expect a harrowing, bloody, almost war-movie-like depiction of Christ's final hours. The relentless scenes of brutality are apparently informed by Gibson's study of accounts of Roman crucifixion. But it is his reliance on another primary source that is of most concern to his critics - the four Gospels of the New Testament.
In the Gospel according to St Matthew, a single quote is seen as central to the argument that the Jews are to blame for Christ's death: "His blood be on us, and on our children." The quote, which appears only in the one gospel, is used by anti-Semites to suggest there is a collective guilt on the part of the Jews for Christ's death, a collective guilt inherited by today's Jews. By all accounts, it is the use of this quote in Gibson's original script that critics found most inflammatory. Whether it makes the final cut is another matter.
But Gibson's critics, such as Rich and the ADL, have already decided - before the film has had its final edit, and before many of them have seen it - that it is anti-Semitic.
True, Gibson may hold outmoded religious convictions. True, The Passion in script form may have been offensive to some. True, Gibson's father holds some wacky opinions. But is it fair to form a judgment that Gibson's film is anti-Semitic before anyone has seen the completed film?
The controversy over The Passion has more to do with the dirty war between liberals and conservatives in the US than it has it do with cinema. Each camp adopts an automatic position on issues without much analysis - and this film it seems, is the perfect vehicle for a wider argument.
The Passion is expected to be released at Easter, 2004