Word: jesus
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...scab that is the Vatican," he barks at two startled nuns in his taxi), one of which, when it turns out to be true, earned him a death sentence from today's Sanhedrin, the CIA. In Signs, the Gibson character saw alien creatures attacking his family; The Passion's Jesus sees Satan everywhere, clouding men's minds, taking the form of snakes and little boys, following Jesus up Calvary to gloat and grimace...
Braveheart was gaudily violent, in spurts. This one is crimson carnage from the moment Jesus is condemned, half an hour into the 127-min. film. One of his eyes is caked closed from a beating by Jewish goons, but the Romans are the pros. They take their time applying 80 or so wince-worthy lashes to his body, and the camera pays avid attention to the whole draining spectacle. He falls three times, which is fine for Catholic fidelity but wasteful and redundant as movie drama...
Western Christianity has seen this treatment before, although not before about A.D. 1000. The stunning concept of divine self-sacrifice--"Jesus Christ and him crucified," as Paul put it--is the faith's heart, bound inextricably with his glorious rising three days later. But the grisly specifics of his mortification before then were of little interest to most Christians until the turn of the second millennium...
Inspired as much by Renaissance iconography, the Stations of the Cross and the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary as by the Gospels' terse narratives, Gibson portrays Jesus' agony and death in acute and lavish detail. In the end, all that gore tends to blunt not only the story's natural power but even the sense of horror at what a god-man has to endure to save all men. The Passion may be unique in movie history in devoting most of its length to the torture of one man who doesn't fight back. He takes a flaying and keeps...
...film's true shock lies in Gibson's vision of what is most important in the Jesus story, in the relentless, near pornographic feast of flayed flesh. Gibson gives us Christ's blood, not in a Communion cup, but by the gallon. Blood spraying from Jesus' shackled body; blood sluicing to the Cross's foot. This Passion begins just before Jesus' arrest. It ends with a blink-length Resurrection. The bulk of his ministry, miracles and post-Resurrection appearances are absent, and his preaching of love flicked at in telegraphically brief flashbacks. Meanwhile, his scourging, handled in all four Gospels...