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Details like these may not satisfy some of the film's critics, who have said, with some justification, that it tends to divide the Jewish people into those who follow Christ and those who have him killed, with only the briefest of nods to those who might be neutral. And while the Roman soldiers may be unrelenting brutes, Gibson does cast a positive light on the Roman authorities, who chastise both the Jews and their own soldiers for their bloodlust. Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shopov), whose brutality and religious insensitivity are mentioned not only by secular historians but also in Luke's gospel, is virtually let off the hook. He comes off as an innocent pawn who tries to do the right thing until the mob forces his hand.

The real villain in Gibson's film, however, is no mere human. Satan (Rosalinda Celentano) is depicted here as a bald, pale, androgynous figure who lurks in the crowds and taunts Jesus at every turn—and it is in his bold, haunting, and audacious depiction of Satan that Gibson's vision turns truly surreal.

In Gethsemane, Satan prods Jesus to doubt his Father and sends a snake slithering his way, which Jesus quickly crushes underfoot. Later, Satan mocks Jesus' mother in a bizarre parody of Marian iconography that could have come from David Lynch; Satan is also absolutely ruthless with Judas (Luca Lionello), who is driven to suicide by seemingly demonic beasts and children. And—who knows?—Satan may even be behind the crow that pecks out the eyes of the crucified thief who mocks Jesus.

But Gibson's creativity is not limited to graphic depictions of evil; he also makes brilliant use of flashbacks to draw us into the mind of Christ. Most movies about Jesus have protected his divinity by treating him objectively, as someone to be observed and talked about, but not as someone with whom we can identify. More recent productions like Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ and the CBS miniseries Jesus have tried to humanize Jesus by treating him more subjectively—we see his dreams, we hear his thoughts in voiceover, and we get inside his head the same way we do with many other movie characters.

Where those films failed, partly because they demystified Jesus so thoroughly that he seemed to lose his divine authority, Gibson succeeds, by shooting much of the film from Jesus' own point of view and by using flashbacks to create the impression that we are being drawn into the flow of Jesus' own memories. When Jesus sees a man with carpentry tools, he thinks of his days as a carpenter; when he sees the street filled with people shouting at him, he thinks of his Triumphal Entry a few days before; when he sees Golgotha, he thinks of the sermon he gave on another mountain in which he told his followers to love their enemies.

By giving us the feeling of experiencing Jesus' thoughts, and by making us privy to the prayers Jesus offers up as he submits to the will of his Father, The Passion draws us toward Christ's full humanity like no film before.

For all that is praiseworthy in this film, it is still somewhat unsatisfying. Indeed, the flashback structure itself is part of the problem. In Scripture and in much of Christian tradition, the death of Christ is placed within the context of his life and Resurrection, but Gibson's film reverses that by placing small bits of Jesus' life within the overwhelming context of his death. As full of faith as The Passion is, it never gets beyond its raw and prolonged depiction of human and demonic cruelty; after vividly depicting the suffering and grief and despair of Jesus' followers for two hours, the film forgets all about them, while reducing the Resurrection to a couple of special effects tacked on to the end.

Watching The Passion is like experiencing a woman's labor pains—but never witnessing the joy that makes the pain worth it all.

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Related Elsewhere:

'Dude, That Was Graphic'	Printer view
Mel Gibson talks about The Passion of The Christ.

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