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Three days
after I click the “send” button to email this column for print, Mel
Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” will light up 4,000 movie
screens across the nation. That’s a happy day if only because
moviegoers can finally see the movie themselves, or at least hear
about it from people who actually have.
For a film
Hollywood honchos once predicted would be dead on arrival, the buzz
about “The Passion” has been deafening. Unfortunately there was
only so much to say about a movie very few saw before its release;
it is less fortunate that technicality didn’t stop anyone.
And frankly,
it got ridiculous. A piece by Associated Press writer Peter Enav
printed less than a week before the film’s release was headlined
“Scholars: Crucifixion Portrayal Inaccurate.” So where did Gibson
go wrong? Was Jesus not really crucified? Did he die of natural
causes? Did they kill the wrong guy? Was it a hunting accident?
Nope. It
turns out the cross might have been T-shaped rather than the
commonly depicted T with an upper extension. Heck, we can’t even be
sure he was nailed through the hands and feet. It might have been
the wrists and legs, or maybe just the legs with his hands simply
tied to the crossbeam.
John Crossan,
an emeritus professor of religious studies at DePaul University in
Chicago, is quoted in the AP story as saying “There was no standard
procedure in any of this. The only common feature in the different
types of crucifixion is intense sadism.”
Since the
Romans didn’t work from a manual and there were no network news
crews to cover the story, the article implies Gibson’s
interpretation must be inaccurate. If it occurred to Enav that the
“intense sadism” is the point of the Biblical description rather
than the shape of the cross or the nail count, he didn’t mention it.
Did you ever
wonder what “Gone with
the Wind” producer David O. Selznick’s father thought about
slavery? Me either, but today’s press has endlessly reported the
senile ramblings of Mel Gibson’s 85 year old dad on Jewish
conspiracies and denial of the Holocaust.
Gibson has publicly refuted
his father’s incoherent beliefs, which wasn’t enough for ABC’s Diane
Sawyer. During an interview for “Primetime Thursday,” Sawyer tried
to goad the director into condemning the old man himself but Gibson
wasn’t biting.
“He’s my father. Gotta leave
it alone Diane,” Gibson told her. She did, but not before flashing
him her trademark pout.
The New York Times’ David
Gibson (no relation to the director) fretted that Jesus
probably did not look much like Jim Caviezel, the actor who plays
him in the movie. That is almost certainly true; Gibson’s article
notes the average man of Jesus’ era stood 5 feet 3 inches tall and
weighed in at a scrawny 110 pounds. Maybe Peewee Herman wasn’t
available, but in truth the Bible doesn’t say much about Jesus’
appearance because it doesn’t matter.
Nor do the judgments of the collection of religion
students, professors, and other wannabe theologians rounded up by
the Dallas Morning News in a quest for its own Holy Grail: a new
angle on “The Passion.” The piece was laden with quotes that
basically boiled down to “The crucifixion story can’t be true
because it’s not the way I’d do things if I were God.”
Now, at last, it’s show time. The silliness won’t stop
because the movie is out, though we can at least judge for
ourselves. I plan to see “The Passion of the Christ” as soon as the
crowds die down, but my guess is that no matter how well it turned
out the book is still better than the movie.
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