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Film stirs passions on all sides
February 25, 2004
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| Actor Jim Caviezel, as Jesus, looks out at a customer from "The Passion of the Christ"-branded artwork in the Northwestern Bookstore in Roseville. Coffee-table books of the movie are already backordered at many Twin Cities Christian shops. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich) |
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Brooklyn Center, Minn. — Even if you weren't able to screen the film in Rome along with the Pope, there were ways to see "The Passion of the Christ" before the official opening. One was to score a free ticket from the many Christian radio stations around the country sponsoring sneak-previews, like one in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.
Jeff Cavins, a morning host with the Catholic "Relevant Radio" network, welcomes about 350 ticket-holders filing into the theater.
"I cannot remember anything that (comes) close to this big of a media event, and has Catholics, Protestants, people of all faiths coming together to discuss the one thing that is the center of our faith, which is the suffering and the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ," he said.
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|  Selling "The Passion" | | |
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Rumors of the film's gore and concerns about anti-Semitism have fed interest for months among the media and the general public. But this night's crowd represents the core, target audience: Deeply religious people, hoping for a jarring and moving affirmation of their faith.
Chuck Knapp is a host for the Protestant co-sponsor of the event, Christian radio station KTIS.
"Once we've learned how to deal with (the content of the film), we can go out to our neighbors that don't have a relationship with the Lord and just explain it a little bit about it to them and ask them to come and see it," Knapp said. "I plan to see it again and again."
Brad Wiederholt of Plymouth is grabbing dinner nearby before the show. He says Christians "are talking about it because it's just a good Christian message and they want to use it as an evangelization tool, and rightfully so."
He hasn't seen it yet, but he compares "The Passion" -- as it is known in these circles -- to Schindler's List. He says the Steven Spielberg film used brutal imagery to drive home the truth about the Jewish plight during World War II. Now Mel Gibson has done the same for the crucifixion of Jesus.
"I think it's going to be a realistic, kind of as-it-happened type thing," he said. "Anytime you can stick to the truth of what happened, I think it's good."
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Both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are texts that are the work of both human imagination and interpretation, as well as inspiration.
- Rabbi Barry Cytron | |
This sentiment worries Rabbi Barry Cytron, who directs the Jay Phillips Center for Jewish Christian Dialogue, a project of the University of St. Thomas and St. John's University. He has not seen the film, but has researched its contents for a recent article. He shares the concern of many Jews and some Christians that the facts as portrayed in the film will be taken for granted as true -- especially the notion that the Jewish community was the driving force behind the death of Jesus. The four Gospels don't agree on this point, and Cytron says Gibson inserted "clear episodes inside the movie which are not based upon anything in the Gospels."
What's more, Cytron and many scholars believe the texts themselves are somewhat lacking as historical documents.
"Both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are texts that are the work of both human imagination and interpretation, as well as inspiration -- however theologically that's understood," he said.
Some scholars argue the Gospels were written in a political context, at a time when it was in the interest of their authors to discredit the Jews and win converts to Christianity.
Like the movie's many Christian promoters, Cytron hopes "The Passion" becomes what he calls a "teachable moment." But Cytron's idea of what that means is quite different. He sees an opportunity to scrutinize the details of the film: What we know, what we think we know, what we may never know.
He plans a series of lectures in the coming weeks to keep raising those questions.
He will address "things that viewers need to be on the alert for as they go to watch the movie: Questions of its historical accuracy, issues of its accusation, the way in which it paints all the Jews -- if it does, which we don't know yet (because) we haven't seen the movie -- with a broad brush, confusing the whole with the part, which is a pretty standard form of prejudice."
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| Brengman expects "engaging discussions" with students | | |
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Defenders of the film say focusing on the role of the Jews misses the point. Pastor J. Konrad Höle ministers to a multi-denominational church in Plymouth that has rented a theater and is giving tickets to the public for a showing this weekend. He says most Christians believe nobody crucified Jesus, and that it happened because it was the will of God.
"He sent his son because it was his idea," Höle said. "I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but Jesus would have died if it was the Muppets who put him up on the cross. It did not matter who did what."
That question is likely to surface at schools across the state. It will almost certainly be a topic at St. Agnes, a Catholic K-12 school in St. Paul, where all 225 high school students will see the film on a field trip. Headmaster Jeff Brengman hopes for "engaging discussions" about the film's content, especially from older students. But he doesn't expect the charges of anti-Semitism to be a focus.
"I seriously doubt that that issue will come up," Brengman said. "If it does, there might be a question about it, but I don't think it will be a pointed discussion."
The Vatican in 1965 issued its Vatican II pronouncement, asserting that Jews were not to blame for the death of Jesus, and Brengman believes that teaching will carry the day.
His top concern at the moment is sending young people to the R-rated movie. While he is allowing high schoolers to go, with a permission slip, he denied a teacher's request to take 7th and 8th grade students to the film.
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| Sen. Norm Coleman arrives for a recent pre-screening | | |
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"If in fact the scenes are graphic, with the beatings and crucifixion, what impact might that have just physiologically on some of the students?" Brengman said. "I'm hoping to get quite a number of parents who will go at the same time so that we can tend to the students' needs, because if it's as graphic as they say it is, it's going to need a good deal of care."
Indeed it might. Most students have undoubtedly seen violent movies before -- shootings, blood and mayhem are not hard to come by. But they have probably never seen anything like "The Passion of the Christ."
The movie amounts to the steady, two-hour beating and torture of one man. Perhaps the most graphic scene comes as Roman soldiers flog Jesus for a full ten minutes on-screen, prior to crucifixion.
Some women in nearby seats leaned toward the men they were with, and clung to them. The flogging scene has drawn the attention of some critics -- it receives scant mention in the Bible, but may be the defining moment of the film.
"The Passion" is relentlessly single-minded in its objective to depict physical suffering. Taken as a whole, it seems more like a piece of art than what we usually expect from a movie. It is a series of images, of mostly frozen faces. Characters don't develop, and they don't so much converse as speak at one another in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin.
The Jews in "The Passion" do not come off well. They are mostly denied the flashes of humanity and self-doubt allowed to Roman soldiers and especially to Pontius Pilate, who in this telling is extremely reluctant to put Jesus to death. The attempts to show a diversity of Jewish opinion feel like token gestures: A priest laments that part of the temple council is not present for Jesus's trial, and is thrown out; a crowd that followed Jesus to the trial initially supports him, but then turns on him in an instant, inexplicably. There are scenes of dubious Biblical origin, as when the trial breaks down and Jewish temple leaders take turns punching Jesus in the face.
Still, in a movie that does not lift its gaze from 12 hours in one city in the first century A.D., it's hard to find a condemnation of all Jews for all time, as some critics fear. Within this framework, it can only raise the question.
As other audiences have reportedly done, this one left the theater in total silence.
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