Passion ploy Mel Gibson’s Christ is the lord of the stings BY PETER KEOUGH
	The Passion of the Christ Directed by Mel Gibson. Written by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson. With James Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern, Claudia Gerini, Rosalinda Celentano, Luca Leonello, Mattia Sbragia, and Hristo Shopov. A Newmarket Films release. In Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew with English subtitles (136 minutes). At the Boston Common, the Fenway, the Harvard Square, and the Circle/Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

Many have accused God of being a sadist. Could he be a masochist as well? Mel Gibson seems to think that God is, and that masochism is a desirable trait in his followers. Certainly it’s a requirement for anyone who chooses to sit through The Passion of the Christ.

About two-thirds of the film consists of Jesus (James Caviezel) having the shit beaten out of him, as it fleshes out an event the Gospels managed to sum up in a verse or two. The pounding starts even before they get him out of the Garden of Gethsemane. Until things get splatter-film bloody and Christ starts looking like a Jackson Pollock painting with exposed ribs, The Passion seems inspired less by the Holy Trinity than by Gibson’s other favorite trio, the Three Stooges.

To what purpose? Gibson might say, and probably has said, that he hopes our watching our savior suffer so for our sins will make us feel really, really guilty. As a lapsed Irish Catholic, I can see that working up to a point. For me, that point was reached well before the Roman soldiers switch from beating Jesus with rods to cat-o’-nine-tails and start to pare him into a human gyro roll. Then I started feeling disgusted and angry.

Some might feel angry at the Jews. Despite Gibson’s reassurances to the contrary, the charges of anti-Semitism against the film are well-founded. (Not to mention the way Gibson’s epicene Satan and his prancing Herod reaffirm his attitudes about homosexuality.) Who killed Jesus? Anyone taking The Passion as evidence would blame the Pharisees in particular and the Jews in general. A couple of the priests do denounce Christ’s trial as a "travesty." But the first shot of High Priest Caiphas (Mattia Sbragia) holding out a bag of coins to Judas says it all; it looks like an image from Jud Süß. The culprits’ political or religious motives are never explored. They are simply Evil.

The Romans, on the other hand, want nothing to do with killing Jesus. Mary (Maia Morgenstern) begs a Roman soldier to intervene when the Pharisees’ soldiers arrest him. Pilate’s wife (Claudia Gerini) pleads with her husband (Hristo Shopov) to spare Jesus because of a dream (as reported in Matthew). Intimidated by the possibility that Caiphas might instigate a revolt (a ludicrous notion), Pilate offers the Jewish mob the choice between Barabbas (here a doltish thug, not the rebel leader he’s depicted as in Luke and Mark) and Jesus. And though my Aramaic may be a little rusty, I’m pretty sure that one of the many unsubtitled lines in that scene is the verse from Matthew "May his blood be on us and on our children!"

If this were a revenge film, the obvious scapegoat would be the Jews. And Gibson does indulge the audience in the satisfaction of some payback. Judas (Luca Leonello) suffers retribution that would make Dante proud, and one of the thieves crucified with Jesus gets his eye plucked out by a giant raven when he bad-mouths the Lord. As for Caiphas and company, the fireworks at the end suggest they aren’t going to get away scot free either.

For the most part, though, I think this glut of punishment will inspire not penitence or anger but revulsion and boredom. Except, of course, for the chosen few who are turned on by it all. Much of the film’s imagery and detail derives from the visions of the 19th-century visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich. In her book The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in addition to its insinuations of Jewish blood guilt, she sounds at times like a sanctimonious de Sade.

In the context of Gibson’s other film work, such messianic masochism fits right in. Each Lethal Weapon film has the requisite scene of Mel being tortured. Braveheart was a warm-up for Golgotha, with Mel being hanged, drawn, and quartered. And though he may have been too old to play Jesus in The Passion, that doesn’t stop him from playing Jesus on the talk-show circuit, indulging his persecution complex with paranoid zeal.

In a word, The Passion is pornographic. Its purpose is to arouse unwholesome passions and thoughts with its images of abused flesh and its fetishism about blood and the tools of torture. At times the film does achieve a degree of imagination, clarity, and compassion. In the scene in which the Sanhedrin’s soldiers seize Jesus and Peter cuts off one soldier’s ear, Jesus replaces it, and the healed man is in awe.

So was I. But to my recollection, that’s the only time Jesus heals anyone in the film. Except for himself. When the stone rolls back at the end, he looks as refreshed as if he’d just stepped out of the shower, ready to re-enter the world and bring . . . what? Beaten nearly to death by Gibson, this is a Christ that not many believers will recognize and fewer still will follow.