Review of The Passion of the Christ (2004) by Cameron J — 05 Jul 2012

Wow, I've heard of being so committed to Jesus that you're willing to brutally die for him, but I've never heard of being so committed to Jesus that you're willing to brutally die "as" him. Wow, I knew Jim Caviezel was a dovout Catholic, but I had no idea that he was this hardcore about it, which I must say, makes him quite the interesting case (Me saying, "interesting" should tell you where I'm going with this). Still, Caviezel's not quite as big of a "person of interest" (See, I told you I was getting there) as Mel Gibson, because crazy people are always more interesting, which of course leaves his dad to make the Dos Equis guy look about as interesting as a Harvard lecture on advanced statistics, because Hutton Gibson is somehow crazier than his son, though I guess that's what happens when you're 93, a WWII vet, a father of eleven and, well, the father of Mel Gibson. Speaking of Hutton Gibson, this film might very well be that Catholic plot backed by the Jews that he was talking about, because there an awful lot of Catholics attached to this film about a Jew so big that they had to invent new religions based on him. I guess this pretty much proves that Mel Gibson doesn't really hate Jews, because I can't think of an anti-Semite who would make this big of a tribute to the king of Jews... unless, of course, he was doing so by showing just how violently he died at the hands of other Jews. Hey, I'm still sticking with my guns that Gibson isn't really prejudice and that we just keep catching him at a moment of that good old fashion I-don't-have-time-to-be-politically-correct type of rage, and that the only reason why he made this film so violent is because, well, he just likes violence, though I think that he probably should have realized that when it's getting to the point of showing off Jesus' tortue and death in all of its brutal non-glory, you should probably step back a bit, because it didn't work in "Saving Private Ryan" and lord (literally) knows that it doesn't work here. Oh well, at least it's still a good movie, yet all of this gratuitous violence remains quite the flaw, though definately not the film's only one.

The film isn't necessarily all that slow, though it is somewhat bloated in structure, with a moderate degree of cuttable story material, when intensified by some tonal repetition, dragging down the pacing of the film and leaving to lose steam until it becomes disengaging and with a few subtle touches of mild dullness; but hey, at least we get some subtlty. I have a good gut feeling that Mel Gibson is a much more sensible man than we give him credit for, though you wouldn't be able to figure that out from, well, the scandals of course, nor would you be able to discern that based on his films, because even before Jesus is beaten to a bloody pulp and violently strung up for the world to see, Gibson drenches the film in a kind of overemphatic atmosphere and even some touches of overstylizing, and with the occasional story structure and storytelling cliche laying icing the cake, we're left served a film that has its clever moments, though is generally limited in restraint. There's just no quite enough subtlty in the final product as a film by its own right, let alone a film about Jesus, which of course makes the sting of the violence that much more intense, and it would be too much if it didn't have unsubtlties, or even Jesus for that matter. Nevermind the fact that this is Jesus we're talking about, this is a good-hearted protagonist being pummeled, whipped with razor-equipped cat o' nine tails, impaled and, yup, even desecrated a teeny bit as a corpse in such graphic and grotesque detail that, in some instances, Gibson either forgets the story substance amidst the relentlessness of the grizzly and gratuitously disturbing imagery or remembers it all too well, to the point of making the film a bit manipulative on occasions, thus leaving the film to betray its story and resonance and, as put best by the consensus, "obsure its messages", while being made into a challenging sit. The final product is a relentlessly brutal film with not a terrible amount of subtlety to it for the film to, as a whole, stand as all that emotionally piercing. However, for every fault made by the film, there is a strength that is not simply great and rather redeeming to the whole of the final product, but transcendent of the flaws. Sure, the missteps stand and really drag the film down, yet when things deliver, they hit home hard enough for you to all but forget the faults and walk away satisfied, or, if nothing else, remembering the style with fondness.

Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is more of the same for him, being average yet still somewhat handsome throughout most of the film, only to occasionally find that sweet spot in lighting and color that really takes your breath away and brings to life both emotional intensity and this environment, which still wouldn't feel as authentic as it does without the help of some outstanding production designs. The film is touted by many as an epic, when really, it's not so much, and the production makes no pretense of being epic in scale, not jumping out at and bearing down on you amidst intimacy, yet that doesn't make the production designs any less impressively detailed and nifty, with a very verisimilar feel that supplements the environmental atmosphere, while John Debney's remarkable score supplements the overall tone. True, Debney's work isn't consistently stellar, and is even less consistently inventive, yet the score celebrates its conventions with confidence and taste to create a mostly piercingly grand symphany that battles out what scarce bits of dullness there are, while amplifying what bits of genuine emotional resonance there are, and make no mistake, there are points where Mel Gibson finally calms his violence-loving butt down to commendable results. With all of my and, well, countless other people's complaints about there not being enough general subtlty in the story or restraint with the violence, there are points in which Gibson does take a subtle, somewhat restrained yet still engrossingly audacious and, yes, even rather poignant approach, even to some of the violence, and on those occasions, the film is golden, with resonance and intensity that may go drowned out by subsequent moments that aren't subtle and are too graphic to the point of obscuring the messages, yet is bound to return and break through the message obscuring with genuine effectiveness. Those moments are well worth waiting for, as they do ring so emotionally effective, and the journey to those points, while still somewhat challenging, is made easier by across-the-board film-carryingly strong performances, with one certain man in particularly really showing us just how much he knows Jesus. As huge of a Catholic as Jim Caviezel is, so much so that it dictates a big part of his career, it was only a matter of time before he recieved the honor of portraying someone this high up on the religious totem pole, and boy howdy, does he pay-off, capturing the sacred nobility and essence of the holyman that was Christ with expected respectful subtlty and graceful authenticity, yet not at the expense of Jesus' humanity, which Caviezel effortlessly captures with crushing emotional intensity and a hypnotically raw presence of authenticity that renders him all but unrecognizable, thus making for an enthralling and utterly transformative performance quite likely worthy of evoking some of the finest portrayals of Jesus on the screen. The film isn't at all one of the most retrained portraits of Jesus; it certainly isn't among the most comforting, though it is well-crafted in so many regards that, through all of the manipulations, overbearing brutality and foreign languages (Sorry folks, you're gonna have to read, because this film is nothing if not unafriad to tell it as it was), you can expect a rewarding experience.

To summarize, the film gets to be a tad disengagingly messy in structure, with lapses in subtlty - spawned from an often rather overwhelming tone, some cliches and even bits of overstylizing - that make worse the overbearingness of the often gratuitously uncompromising and disturbing violence, thus creating momentary substance effectiveness faults that further make the final product much too flawed, though not to the point of being underwhelming, as the film catches your eye with Caleb Deschanel's handsome cinematography and intricate production designs, your ears with John Debney's powerful score and, at points, even your heart with occasions in which the Mel Gibson does, in fact, show a degree of restraint and genuineness that creates piercingly worthwhile emotional resonance, made all the more intense by a strong cast, headed by an emotional, graceful and transformative Jim Caviezel, who delivers perhaps one of the best portrayals of the King of Kings and helps in making "The Passion of the Christ" a generally competently-crafted and ultimately more moving than not dramatisation of the final hours of Christ that rewards the viewers as much as it challenges them.

3/5 - Good.