Mel indulged his blood lust and anti-semitism in an extravagant enterprise designed to entertain his Jew-hating brethren. Yes, designed on purpose, with malice of forethought.
This author eloquently lays to bare what Mel Gibson did:
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Mel Gibson’s Passion Play
Mr. Gibson has fashioned a blunt instrument of propaganda, edged with artistry, whose visceral power gives it the potential to become his most lethal weapon of all.
By Bruce Chilton
Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion
Bard College
March 2004
(snip)
Medieval passion plays entertained their audiences and at the same time drew them into the sufferings of Christ. These efforts indulged flights of fancy and superstition, manufacturing perfidious Jews, assorted demons, buxom Magdalenes, gargoyle-faced demons, and the like, but they also offered vivid realizations of how Christ, by following the way of the cross, was transformed into his resurrected glory. The intent was to open the path of Christ to all believers.
(snip)
There are many more Jewish tormenters than in the Gospels. Satan weaves in and out of their midst as Jesus is betrayed, mocked, and denied. Satan’s hairless face and head somehow seemed familiar to me, but I could not quite place him at the beginning of the film. I lost my curiosity about that for a while, diverted by the baroque portrayal of the violence inflicted on Jesus by the high priest Caiaphas and his colleagues. They are all opulently but darkly dressed; their interior corruption is manifest. If we have any doubt about the moral standing of the high priesthood, one of Caiaphas’ colleagues wears an eye-patch. Pirates of the Caribbean meets Ben-Hur.
(snip)
As a passion play, this film is a hokey but reverent meditation on the death of Jesus. The music sustains the stately pace through what amounts to the Stations of the Cross that Cyril developed in Jerusalem and that Christians still use for devotion today. The score is derivative, sounding much like some of the work in Gladiator, but it comports well with the film’s tableaux and occasional bursts of violence and splattered blood. (Acting in this case requires no comment because there is no room for it in between static images and violent outbursts, most of which involve flaying latex skin.) More successfully, the camera work affects the aim of a passion play. We look on the action, appalled and uplifted by the various characters. The blind hatred of Caiaphas, the crazed disorientation of Judas, the mute betrayal of Peter, the dithering good will of Pilate, the magnificent loyalty of Jesus’ mother, the smoldering devotion of the Magdalene, the chaste quasi-conversion of Pilate’s wife, the sadistic pleasure of the Roman soldiers, the clueless cross-bearing of Simon of Cyrene: all reflect and heighten our own responses. We ask, as we should, where would we be and where are we in this action? As the film’s deliberate rhythm proceeds, Jesus himself looks up from his agonies to fix his gaze on the characters and on us so as to underline that question.
(snip)
Monty Python tried to be funny and succeeded because Brian was not about Jesus, but Brian. Putting this cockney hero into situations like those Jesus faced, under obviously phony historical circumstances, makes for brilliant parody. In Mr. Gibson’s case, the parody is equally powerful, although unintentional. By mixing together the genre of the passion play with the pretension of historical accuracy, Gibson has inadvertently made his passion play into pious vaudeville. Claims that this film reflects the Gospels or history are cynical. Critics who treat it as a historical work have confused their profession with self-promotion. Were this film directed by Mel Brooks, we would have something to watch with pleasure. But Mr. Gibson’s Passion is libelous farce, poor art, and an incentive for credulous viewers to confuse Christian faith with hatred. After I went home, I watched Die Hard with my younger son and felt morally restored.
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Chilton_Passion.htm
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