The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Although controversy surrounded the 1977 television broadcast of Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries Jesus of Nazareth and even more clamor erupted over Martin Scorsese's 1988 movie The Last Temptation of Christ, they were tempests in a teapot compared to the pre-release raging debates over Mel Gibson's film.

It wants to be the last word on the subject without offering up a theological exploration (as did Martin Scorsese with his dynamic and far superior The Last Temptation of Christ) or a solid dramatic construct.

(Ironically, this is the same kind of negative wave that results when Christian groups attack a movie for being anti-Christian - like Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ or the Pythons' The Life of Brian.)

What you won’t find in The Passion of the Christ is the formal purity of a film like Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest or the documentary-style lyricism of Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (or, for that matter, last fall’s superb The Gospel of John), but rather the color-saturated wide-screen cinematography, “impact” editing and amped-up digital soundtrack that are the calling cards of the high-end Hollywood studio picture.

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? is proof positive, along with Michael Tolkin's The Rapture and Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

This movie is no more anti-Jewish than Jesus Of Nazareth, or King Of Kings, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Which is to say that, in its presentation of everything from Jesusâ?? interrogation by the Sanhedrin (and later by Pilate) through to the crucifixion itself, the film (adapted by Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald from the four Gospels and, controversially, from the published visions of a pair of 19th-century nuns) does not differ significantly in content or ideology from the modern cinemaâ??s other mainstream renderings of these events (Nicholas Rayâ??s King of Kings, Zeffirelliâ??s Jesus of Nazareth, et al.).

As time passes and The Passion breaks box office records, there are increasing parallels between this film and D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation .

What you wonâ??t find in The Passion of the Christ is the formal purity of a film like Bressonâ??s Diary of a Country Priest or the documentary-style lyricism of Pasoliniâ??s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (or, for that matter, last fallâ??s superb The Gospel of John), but rather the color-saturated wide-screen cinematography, â??impactâ?? editing and amped-up digital soundtrack that are the calling cards of the high-end Hollywood studio picture.