Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ: A Protestant Perspective

Abstract

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is a film. This has two meanings for the essay response that I am writing. First, it is merely a film and not any more. Thus, any analysis of the film requires a general sense of popular culture and how such films impact the popular mind. Second, it is a film of the passion story and is in this way like so many other films and forms of presenting this story. That is, it is a passion play, and Protestant Christians (for that matter all Christians) must think about the film in the context of its being another passion play. There is a history of such plays, and most of us who have thought about passion plays in a post-Shoah world believe that telling the story of the passion must be done in a post-Shoah framework, with full knowledge that the passion is set along side of the stories of Auschwitz and understood in that context. I believe that few who watched the film actually consciously did that, but this is not the failing of the filmmaker but the failing of the churches that so few would actually see the film in the context of a post-Shoah reading. Finally, a focus on the story, that is, how the story is told, is precisely what is central to a Protestant Christian approach, and this is the approach that I will take in offering my reflections in this essay.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is a film. This has two meanings for the essay response that I am writing. First, it is merely a film and not any more. Thus, any analysis of the film requires a general sense of popular culture and how such films impact the popular mind. Second, it is a film of the passion story and is in this way like so many other films and forms of presenting this story. That is, it is a passion play, and Protestant Christians (for that matter all Christians) must think about the film in the context of its being another passion play. There is a history of such plays, and most of us who have thought about passion plays in a post-Shoah world believe that telling the story of the passion must be done in a post-Shoah framework, with full knowledge that the passion is set along side of the stories of Auschwitz and understood in that context. I believe that few who watched the film actually consciously did that, but this is not the failing of the filmmaker but the failing of the churches that so few would actually see the film in the context of a post-Shoah reading. Finally, a focus on the story, that is, how the story is told, is precisely what is central to a Protestant Christian approach, and this is the approach that I will take in offering my reflections in this essay.

The Film

I was disappointed that film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper in their syndicated television show wanted us to see this movie as cinema and then proceeded to praise the movie for its cinematic achievement. They must have been ready to do this as a response to those who wanted to make the movie into theology. While they have a point, I was surprised that both so fully wanted to do theology in order to persuade us to think about the film as cinema. The movie is poor theology and cannot pretend to be a profound theological reflection; I believe they tried too hard to balance the act. My point is, however, to think about the telling of the story of the passion not so much to critique the film but to ask what a Protestant would want to say in telling this story in a post-Shoah world.

My judgment is that there is little or no creativity in this film in the actual telling of the story. The filmmaker, indeed, argues that his intent is to stay true to the text...