On the heels of all the hype and furor--Is it anti-Semitic? Is it “historical”?--I went to see “The Passion of the Christ on opening day, February 25, 2004 at the Metreon. My ticket was for Theatre 13, but we were relocated to the IMAX to accommodate Willie Brown, Robin Williams, and others, who viewed it in the smaller theatre. The IMAX certainly had the largest screen I had ever viewed a film on and we chose to sit dead center in the third row. At first, when the previews came on, I thought we had made a mistake sitting so close. But, for the “Passion,” it allowed one to become swept up into the film as it were, to hear every sigh, to “touch” every drop.

Well, the movie was not anti-Semitic. It adopted the Biblical position that the high priest was pivotal in bringing about Jesus’ death, but that it was Pilate (who, incidentally, was not portrayed as a diffident baffoon, or as a weakling, as he had been characterized in all the hype; he was more plausible as the ruthless tyrant who was, in the end, more interested in preserving his position--caught between a rock and a hard place) who gave the orders for the execution. If anything, the movie was anti-Greek. Take the inscription on the cross. The Scriptures” (John 19,19, e.g. and some manuscripts of Luke) say--since we are being scriptural--that “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. The “Passion” cross had it in Latin and Hebrew (or Aramaic) only. (Matthew and Mark are silent on the language.) A dire omission, since Greek culture pervaded Palestine and, indeed, the entire Mediterranean. All of the New Testament was written in Greek, for God’s sake! And it is plausible that Jesus even knew some Greek (the language of commerce), not Latin (the language of the Roman soldiers). After all, he spent so much time up in Capernaum, strategically situated on the east-west and also the north-south trade route, where so many of the inscriptions found are in Greek. But Mel Gibson has Jesus converse with Pilate in Latin! Come on, Mel. License is one thing, but when you’re out to portray things “as they happened,” ostensibly following even the Synoptic (that’s Matthew’s, Mark’s and Luke’s Gospel) accounts, this is surrealistic at best.

And I won’t even go to that hermaphrodite (or whatever it is you called that eerie “thing” you had insinuating itself in and out of scenes)--presumably Satan. Yes, the dialogue was largely from the Scriptures, but then there was an equal amount of dialogue that came from God knows where. Some was faintly recognizable as apocryphal, but some, well, it is, after all, a movie. But, in a movie, when you want a certain reaction from the audience (no doubt empathy for the character at the very least, if not outright conversion), you got, in the end, a certain numbness. Yes, an appreciation for the craft--beautiful cinematography and spell-binding scenes--but after the hundredth lashing, you became anesthetized. And all that falling. My God, had “Jesus” fallen one more time, I think I would not have been able to contain myself. I kept thinking, enough, already. Then, in a more than two-hour film, weren’t there more characters that one could have focused on? It was “Jesus,” then “Mary,” then “Caiaphas,” for the better part of the film. And their acting, while very good and engaging, isn’t Oscar-ish “wowing.” Caiaphas had a difficult enough time making sure he got the Aramaic stresses right. In all, I’m glad I viewed the film on opening day. (Incidentally, there were plenty of seats left in what became the first viewing of the film in San Francisco, attended mostly by people in their twenties and thirties.) It couldn’t have been the rain. It must have something to do with viewers’ hunch that hype, in the end, is just that--hype.

But, I’m glad I had the opportunity to see what the hype was all about. No, it didn’t convert me (if I weren’t already a Christian); it didn’t make me say, “my Lord and my God” as I would have expected Gibson’s own theological approach to attempt to do. Rather, when asked, after the movie let out, what I thought about it, I was speechless. My first articulation was, unexpectedly, “it was interesting.” It was interesting.

Rev. Stephen H. Kyriacou, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, San Francisco
415 864-8000, dean@annunciation.org
February 26, 2004