Word: jesus
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...Gibson’s mania to present the extent of Jesus’ suffering, character is lost. By the end of the film, Jesus begins to resemble a piñata more than a man. The effect is that it is hard to understand quite what the point of all this is. It is never clear why he is so dangerous. It is never clear why he doesn’t take his numerous opportunities to speak up and prevent his death. It is never clear why everyone is so passionate about this presence, who, in the film, shows...
Even the villainous Caiphas, the head Jewish rabbi, is a straw man. He is only characterized by his desire to kill Jesus. There is no subtlety, only his desire to kill this man, the hollowest of villains. Mary Magdalene, played by red-hot actress Monica Bellucci, has even less to do. The extent of her interaction with Jesus is to wash his feet in a flashback sequence and sob with mother Mary as they watch Jesus get led to his death. But since the audience has never been exposed to these characters, their mourning comes close to farce...
Oddly enough, the only deeply felt character is Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), who comes off as nuanced but ultimately unwilling to risk a rebellion to save one madman. After Pilate meets with Jesus, he discusses the nature of truth with his wife, symbolizing his interest in understanding this mysterious man. This is such an odd gesture because Pilate, one of two heathens positively portrayed in the film is, in the historical record, capriciously violent and, as such, doesn’t really evoke any more feeling than any of the other characters...
...only really effective scene is Jesus’ interaction with Satan, played by Rosalinda Celentano, who creates a scary-ass presence. The audience gets scared and so connects with the scared Jesus, giving us an emotional connection to him for the first and last time, before the violence begins full throttle...
During this seemingly endless savagery, the audience is directly implicated twice, once by Jesus and once by Mary Magdalene, as if to ask, “Look at what is being done to this great man. What are you going to do in response?” The problematic response based on the movie itself is that we must revenge ourselves upon the Jews, a feature that makes this film implicitly if not explicitly anti-Semitic...