March 15, 2004

Jesus Saves

Apparently, Mel's movie has revived what had been a dismal year for the movie industry.

Lesson for producers: when choosing a project based on a book, make sure it is a good book. Better yet, make it the good book.

UPDATE: Got this in my ArcaMax email today (3/25/04) and agree with the conclusions. Sorry to post it whole, but I can't find a link for it. It is attributed to National Review, no reason to doubt - but can't find it on their website perhaps it will be there later:

The Passion Of The Reviewers

By: Anonymous; Source: National Review

Originally Published:20040322.

MEL GIBSON'S Passion of the Christ has, as they say, inspired moviegoers and critics alike. It has inspired opposite passions in each case. It has done phenomenally well at the box office under circumstances including a late-February release, subtitles, and what in ordinary Hollywood terms would be considered a major downer of a plot. The critics have, for the most part, torn into it with the fury of the Roman guards.

The movie is certainly not to all tastes, including all Christian tastes. As Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, has warned, any cinematic depiction of the Passion will fail to capture its full meaning. Some of its aspects will be emphasized too much, others insufficiently. So Gibson's dramatic and even theological choices are open to serious question, and some of the reviewers have provided searching criticism.

Some critics have, however, seemed to regard themselves as gladiators in a culture war. Movie criticism has been an excuse for criticism of styles of Christianity or, indeed, Christianity itself.

We will not here repeat all the reasons for denying that the movie is anti-Semitic. It is notable that the only people who have found it to be anti-Semitic are people who are themselves immune to the disease. Maureen Dowd does not profess to find herself hating Jews after the movie. It is always the guy in the next seat over. No person has entered the movie neutrally disposed and come out saying that he now hates the Jews. The critics assume that other people, especially evangelicals in the hinterland, will be moved to anti-Semitism. And given that another motif of the critics has been that evangelicals are so stupid that they cannot recognize that the movie violates their own theology, we suppose the critics' view of them has a certain coherence. What the critics are panning here is American society.

The gleefulness with which critics have flayed the movie's alleged anti-Semitism rather undermines the critique. If we really believed that millions of Americans were thrilled by a movie that was genuinely, at its core, anti-Semitic, we would be alarmed. The trouble with the reviewers who claim that this movie will lead to anti-Semitic violence is not that they are hysterical; it is that they are not hysterical enough for their concerns to be taken in good faith.

Gibson is said to have exculpated Pontius Pilate, and thus inculpated the Jewish leaders, by portraying him as doubtful and indecisive. To our minds, this criticism says more about the modern liberal celebration of doubt than it does about Gibson. A man who knows or strongly suspects that what he is doing is wrong is surely more culpable than a man who is certain that he is right. Nor can a man exculpate himself by shifting the blame for his own sin to others.

We are told that Gibson has erred in paying too much attention to the Passion, and not enough to the public ministry of Jesus; hence the movie lacks its proper context. David Denby in The New Yorker. "[Gibson] largely ignores Jesus' heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism and personal radiance. . . . [T]he movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip."

For most Christians, however, Jesus Christ is not primarily a teacher of ethics. He is not the bearer of a message, but the message Himself. His crucifixion is the axis of history. Everything else in His life (and everyone else's) prefigured it; everything else in His life is illuminated by it. The Crucifixion is the context to end all contexts. If you do not understand that, you have not understood this movie.

There is, finally, the criticism that the movie is too violent. Most of Gibson's foes managed to withhold this criticism from Saving Private Ryan and Kill Bill. Now it is true that the Lord's suffering was spiritual as well as physical, and that its character was bound up with its being voluntarily undergone. The movie can reasonably be criticized for overdoing the physical dimension of the suffering. But let us also remember Flannery O'Connor's stricture: "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures." This is an era in which many people are powerfully drawn to the notion that the Lord can be reduced to a set of teachings and that we are pure spirits who just happen to be attached to bodies. For Christians, however, the fact that he became flesh is absolutely central. Perhaps a more gifted filmmaker could have depicted His spiritual suffering in a way that made viewers reflect on their own almost unbearable guilt for it. But the critics are saying that the film's unbearableness is what makes it suspect, when it in fact shows Gibson's success.

The reviewers do not, in general, object when movies make viewers uncomfortable. Indeed they applaud it. Nor, it need hardly be added, do they object when art takes liberties with Scripture. Compare the treatment of The Last Temptation of Christ or The Da Vinci Code with the niggling fact-checking employed against Gibson's Passion. They have attributed all manner of malign intent to Gibson. Whatever his sins, and whatever ours, the main intent is as clear as it has been missed by the reviewers. It is that this be a season of repentance.

(C) 2004 National Review. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved

Posted by Vox at March 15, 2004 01:57 AM | movies
Comments

jesus saves, but george nelson withdraws!

Posted by: broken at March 20, 2004 02:56 AM