This series is dedicated to matching memorable movies with the signature day each year upon which I could watch them forever. This next movie is so good and yet so jarring that I always swallow hard when preparing myself to watch it. It's Good Friday, so I can do none other than:
The Passion of the Christ (2004, Icon/Newmarket Films, Mel Gibson)
The opening of the Passion is rich with dark beauty and menace. The music has a dark sensuality to it, and the performances are raw and theatrical.
Jim Caviezel's Christ is the modern template, and productions like
The Chosen have definitely benefitted from his portrayal. It simultaneously goes to places no other actor has gone to before and sets itself apart by not inviting imitation. The whole movie plays out that way. Simultaneously setting itself apart and provoking reactions that no other film might dare to emulate. It's indicative of the life Jesus lived—wholly unique and unimpeachable by human standards.
The scene with Satan and Jesus as he asks for the cup to pass from him continues the duality of raw beauty and pure pain. It is an emotional crucifixion. The spirit must be right for the body to obey. The imagery is strong and stark and the words are sparse but unsullied. It's unsettling in its crystallized finality.
The Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin used in the film lends it such an authenticity and the filmic way in which its shot is enough to tell the story without subtitles. Truly an achievement.
It's truly heart-wrenching, too, to watch Jesus' betrayal and treatment. The "passion" here is His suffering. It's undeniable and very honestly depicted. Jesus' tumble while chained over the bridge as Judas watches on in horror is just-under-over-the-top, which sets the table for what is to come.
Judas' betrayal of Jesus is all of ours to own. We each betray God in our own ways. And the penalty for that is death. But Jesus saves us from ourselves, if we follow him to the end. Judas followed Jesus only most of the way, sadly. Being a follower simply isn't enough, if it's only with our bodies. We must die to our old selves to follow him in spirit. The film deftly evokes all of this.
The scene with Jesus and Mary at the tall, rich man's table is such a needed relief. The movie is heavy throughout, and rightfully so, but we need those little warm touches and kind remembrances to survive the ordeal. We are, too, what we remember in life.
The spoken words of Aramaic during Jesus' interrogation in Caiaphas' court has such power to it. The words they speak and the manner they deliver them in have a spellbinding power. I can't watch that scene without trembling and verging on tears. Why does this scene affect me so? Why does this story affect anyone so dramatically in this day and age? These are questions one must honestly consider.
I remember a religious studies student standing up in class in the Spring of 2004 after the movie came out. The professor—in a class on the teachings of Jesus—had elicited comments from the students as to their reactions to the film. The student who stood—a young woman—claimed she thought the film had many silly contradictions and didn't make any sense. Some others in the class laughed at this. I even recall the professor smirking at those comments. I don't think I had ever felt so much disconnect and pity for my fellow man than at that time. It's not a shock to me that the film was received so by some at that time. That was the height of the "new atheism" movement in America. A movement which has spawned nothing to remember it by, and given us no answers, no solace. A movement that will have lasted less time on earth in its heyday than Jesus spent bodily while here. That's telling.
Pilate's first encounter with Jesus in the film doesn't feel like a movie. This is when filmmaking is at its zenith: when you forget you're watching moving pictures on a screen and you're transported.
"If you cannot hear the truth, no one will tell you." This is a line in the film and a thing of absolute truth. Interesting that it comes from Pilate's wife, Claudia, who is as forgettable a named character that there is. And yet there she is, saying those words to her man in a moment of uncertainty for him. Jesus is, was, and always will be to the Son of God, God incarnate, and no amount of him claiming literally that he is God would have changed anything for the better. Evidence aside, every person must decide for themself.
The scene in Herod's court reminds me a lot of the Jabba's palace scenes in Return of the Jedi.
They chose an insurrectionist over the truth two-thousand years ago. We did it again in 2024.
The flagellation scene is repellent and wrong. It had to be. It's awful. But it also kinda purifies you by experiencing it. I've rarely felt more clarity and urgency than what these scenes spur out of my soul. We should feel uncomfortable and poised to move when we watch this. Let it purify you, I say.
Jesus' amazingly strong proclamations in the midst of such agony makes me heave and makes tears to flow every time. It's not emotional manipulation. It's pure emotional outpouring.
Simon of Cyrene's outburst during the scene when Jesus falls carrying the cross should be the reaction of all of us. Fantastic direction, staging, and performances by all here.
The scene revealing Golgotha ("The Place of the Skull") is sufficiently epic and stirring.
Caviezel's face during the Sermon on the Mount scene is full of grace.
And again, in the midst of awfulness, we're given the Last Supper scene to help sustain us. The poetry and parallelism is not lost on me.
The crucifixion itself is wonderfully presented. All the beats and moments you can imagine reading the passages from the Bible are here to see.
By the time the credits roll, you've been marked by this picture. Despite the fact that one might argue this movie is the height of fictional storytelling, I believe in the historicity of this tale and all that implies. Amen.
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