'Passion' challenges believers on nature of faith

Well, it makes a change. Hollywood is complaining about graphic violence, while some Christians are saying that it is a necessary part of an artistic endeavour.

Hollywood is querying the use of religion to sell cinema tickets, while Irish parishes are block-booking cinema showings. These paradoxes are just for starters.

Then there is the fact that Protestant evangelicals who would normally regard Catholic fervour with the deepest suspicion are among the most vociferous supporters of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. This is extraordinary, given that while the film is partly based on the Gospels, it reflects far more the traditional Catholic iconography of Stations of the Cross, and the visions of a 19th century nun named Anne Catherine Emmerich, who allegedly was a stigmatic and lived on Holy Communion and water for 10 years.

Not to mention the fact that Mary, the mother of Jesus, plays a vital role in Gibson's version of the Passion, which one would have thought would have given at least some evangelicals pause for thought. Oh, and remember the charge of anti-Semitism? Maia Morgenstern, the actor who gives a luminous and unforgettable performance as Mary, is a Romanian Jew.

Is the film violent? Yes. It is unrelentingly, shockingly, brutally violent. Is the level of violence justified? Personally, I feel more restraint would have made this a better film. There are some gratuitous embellishments, such as the thief who cursed Jesus having his eye plucked out by a raven.

Aside from that, the depiction of the torture of Jesus owes more to Hollywood norms than to religious norms. We have come to expect graphic realisation of torture and death in films, and Gibson is complying with those conventions, even if for religious ends. The Gospels do not indulge in such gory detail. In fairness, that is partly because no early Christian would have needed a detailed description of what was involved in crucifixion, because the Romans crucified thousands of people.

On the other hand, contemporary Christians rarely reflect on the realities of crucifixion. So does that justify the unrelenting depiction of torture? I do not think so. The film, at certain points, shows that more subtle approaches can be just as effective.

Before I went to see the film, I worried about the violence. I did not expect that the moment when I would feel an uncontrollable urge to cry was during a flashback to Mary running to pick up and comfort Jesus when he tumbled over as a child.

There are a few flashbacks in the film which depict Jesus before the Passion, and they are all too brief. They left me wishing that Mel Gibson had spent more time developing this aspect of Jesus.

Jim Caviezel is, for me, by far the most convincing cinematic Jesus ever. His strength, humour and tenderness make it easier to understand how people would have abandoned everything to follow an itinerant preacher. There are some criticisms of the film which are unjustified. I do not believe it is anti-Semitic, unless any portrait of a person who is a Jew acting in a less than laudable manner is now to be considered anti-Semitic. Funny, isn't it, that many of those who are now shouting loudest about anti-Semitism appear to have no problem with the portrayal of Catholic nuns and priests as synonyms for sadism and cruelty in film after film?

In The Passion, some of the most sympathetic characters, such as Simon of Cyrene, are Jewish, and are treated with contempt by the Romans because of it. If you want to know where Gibson places the blame for the death of Jesus, I believe the answer is supplied by the scene where Jesus is taken down from the cross and laid in the arms of his heartbroken mother. Although it echoes Michelangelo's Pieta, Mary gazes not at her beautiful, battered, lifeless boy, but straight to camera. The implication is that all humanity shares in the culpability for his death.

This, of course, has irritated some critics, who see it as a throwback to a guilt-ridden Catholic theology which we did well to leave in the past. It is true that the film favours the suffering Christ at the expense of the resurrected Christ. The resurrection scene is fleeting. We see Jesus alone in the tomb and nothing of the impact it had on the disciples and Mary.

However, no matter how essential the resurrection is to the Christian story, it is inescapable that the Gospels say explicitly that Jesus went freely to his death in order to atone for the sins of humanity. If that causes some Christians to squirm, that may be no bad thing. The cross was a "stumbling block to the Jews, and a folly to the Gentiles". It should be no less so, today.

Given the criticisms I have made of the film, it may seem yet another paradox that I believe it is well worth seeing for adults, although definitely not for children. Aside from the graphic violence, the creepy and malevolent presence of the Satanic figure played by a woman, Rosalinda Celantano, but voiced by a man, would be enough to give any child nightmares.

Why am I recommending people go and see it? Although it is definitely the Gospel according to Mel Gibson, with all the artistic licence that implies, it will cause many to read the Gospels, if only to check out what Gibson embellished, invented or underplayed. More importantly, the film pierces the kind of over-familiarity which we have with the Christian story, and forces a re-evaluation of the extraordinary claims of Jesus.

Just as at the time of Jesus, some will find his teaching preposterous and walk away. Others will not, and if they are intellectually honest, they will have to reflect on just how much they allow the Christian story to impact on their behaviour. It pains me to quote the most over-quoted man on the planet, but in this instance, Bono had it right. He said: "If God does not exist, it is serious. If he does exist, it is even more serious."

Gibson's greatest contribution, in this highly-flawed but valuable film, is to confront us with the question as to just exactly who this Nazarene was or is.