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Are You Strong Enough to Watch The Passion?
Excerpts from Barbara Nicolosi's article for the March/April Issue of StAR:
... Art or Exploitation?
One of the fears that I have heard circulating about The Passion of the Christ is that the film is nothing more than violence. This is far from the truth. From a cinematic standpoint, this film combines symbolic imagery, composition, and the juxtaposition of images at the highest level of the craft. I have rarely seen a contemporary film that makes a better use of the power of associating two unrelated images to suggest a connection.
The scene of the stripping of Christ on Calvary, for example, is interrupted by a scene of Christ at the Last Supper, unwrapping the bread for the Passover meal. The association of the two rituals is powerful and haunting: the body of a man being readied for death, a loaf of bread being readied for a sacrifice.
Again in a stunning artistic choice, The Passion of the Christ is told largely from the point of view of the Savior. Several times, the film uses a shot that looks unevenly upward at the looming crowd, past strands of bloodied hair. It is a shot meant to capture the tortured view of Jesus as he makes his way to Calvary. Even when the shots are not explicitly from his line of sight, they represent his perspective. Satan peers in and out from amidst the crowd, unseen by anyone. But we know from the first scene in the film, that Jesus is aware of the demon’s presence. Director, Mel Gibson, clearly establishes in the project that throughout his ordeal, Jesus is primarily conscious of two presences: his mother and Satan.
This is more than art stuff. More than just characters in the story, Mary and Satan constitute two visual symbols that reveal the thematic heart of the film. Both of them are in the Savior’s frontal lobe as he goes through his climactic last hours. Flitting in and out of his sight and his consciousness, they represent the two poles of humanity for which the sacrifice is being rendered. For many, this sacrifice will make possible “mankind fully alive.” Exemplified by the Mary character, there will be those who will embrace this Sacrifice, and so will be transformed, and ultimately transfigured by Divine Love.
The Satan character, instead, stands in for the worst humanity can be. She, too, is present in Christ’s consciousness as the personification of the many souls for whom this sacrifice will be of no account. Through the centuries, they will walk on by the Cross “busy about their buying and selling and marrying and giving in marriage,” sinking further and further into their own selfish pursuits and eventually into death. For these, the Passion will be an agonized waste.
Prudence or Fear?
Several devout Christians have noted to me that they will be staying away from The Passion of the Christ because of the violent images. I hear from them things like, “Violent images on screen get stuck in my head” and “screen violence is just too disturbing to me.” I understand this. I have never been able to purge from my mind some of the terrible torture scenes I have been exposed to in films like Romero, The English Patient and The Fixer. And yet, those films amount to powerful indictments of real evils, in the civil war in El Salvador, from the Nazis, and in the Mob. These are evils that caused immeasurable human suffering. If others had to live it, through no fault of their own, isn’t there something just in me having to watch it, especially from the relatively easy life I live, through no particular merit of my own? The truth is, I could have gone merrily on my way, never brooding over, or even aware, of the terrible suffering in the Church in Central America, had not Romero forced me to look.
Being disturbed out of complacency and into a solidarity with others’ suffering is a good thing. It is undeniably an uncomfortable thing. But so are flu-shots, exercising, and making a sacrifice on Friday. Doing these things is part of being a grown-up. Comfort is a luxury that most of us can ill afford in this short life. As an elderly Italian nun once quipped to me when I asked when she would retire from her labors, “In heaven, we will rest.”
The images of violence in The Passion of Christ are very hard to watch. They are truly disturbing on a level in which I have never been disturbed by a movie before. But I needed to see it. The movie “disturbed” me back into a pragmatic seriousness about, to borrow from St. John, “sin, and righteousness and condemnation.” The great novelist Flannery O’Connor defended the harshness of her work by noting wryly, “I have found that violence uniquely opens characters to the truth. The truth is something that we can only be returned at great cost.” She also noted that as the world moved farther and farther from righteousness, more violence would probably be necessary to return it to the truth.
Still, watching the Savior suffer and die may be too much for some disciples. Out of the entire troupe of Our Lord’s apostles, even after three years of front row seats, miracles and sermons, only John was able to stand up and watch the actual events of the Passion. The others fled the sight, and it was undoubtedly a mercy for them to able to shield their eyes.
Perhaps the horror of the Passion would have obscured for Andrew and Thomas and Peter the joy of the resurrection. Perhaps it would have irrevocably shaken their faith. Perhaps it would have led them into anger and hatred that they would not able to overcome. The reasons probably are still applicable to some believers today.
But certainly, those same apostles who did fail to watch with him, lived and died with the certainty that theirs was a falling short. It was a failure of courage, and the consequence of a weak faith that kept them away from the images of Jesus on the Cross. Above all, it was proof of an imperfect love that they would ultimately place their own safety and sensibilities over following Jesus. Watching The Passion of the Christ is not fun. It is hard and very sad. But the fact remains, if Jesus could live it in an act love, then we can certainly watch it as an act of worship...
Barbara Nicolosi is the director and founder of Act One
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