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The Passion of the Christ
directed by Mel Gibson
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The furor over Mel Gibson's religious curiosity piece The Passion of the Christ buzzed before and during its theatrical release. The home-video version, out now, has rekindled the debate, mostly centering on how (or whether-- not that there's really any question) Gibson resurrects and exalts the traditional Christian view that the Jews were guilty of deicide.

But let's consider the film's strictly artistic merits. The Passion falls into three, somewhat overlapping, genres: the religious film, the horror film, and the pornographic sadomasochistic film. The Passion strives for the first, uses (badly) the techniques of the second, but succeeds most obviously in the third. Did Gibson misjudge his true audience?

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As a religious film, The Passion has to live up to some great past examples. We're not just talking about Martin Scorsese's vibrant 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ or Pier Paolo Pasolini's magnificent 1964 The Gospel According to St. Matthew, but even the lesser-praised: George Steven's 1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told or even Nicholas Rey's flawed but oddly moving 1961 King of Kings. Unfortunately, in this crowd, The Passion of the Christ is pretty much the loser. In Gibson's hands, the "passion" play is stiff and inflexible, often relying on a tableau vivant sense of spectacle instead of actual emotional weight. If you believe that Jesus was the Christ who died for the sins of mankind then you may be moved by the film-- but if you don't you'll be left cold. The Passion is strictly BYOB-- bring your own beliefs.

When The Passion is effective as filmmaking, which isn't very often, it's because Gibson draws upon stock techniques from contemporary horror films, like the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th series. The opening shots of a cloud passing before an ominous moon is the tip-off-- something bad is going to happen and we're going to see it in gory detail. The camera-work in the Temple, as well as in Pilate's court, is standard "what lurks behind the next corner" stuff, and Gibson's use of a creepy androgynous Satan-- who at one point seems to be holding a devil baby-- just reinforces this shock-schlock approach. Of course, the passion's narrative-line is essentially a supernatural horror story, with a masochistic twist-- here the main character knows he's being haunted and hunted and, with minimal questioning, goes to his fate. But the horror-tropes invoked here work far better in Final Destination or Jeepers Creepers than in this ostensibly religious film on a sacred subject.

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But where The Passion succeeds well-- though not perfectly-- is in its detailed depiction of Jesus's torture and death. The Romans used public execution of criminals and dissidents as a "shock and awe" tactic for social control: the more painful and hideous the deaths, the more useful. Gibson deserves credit for not underplaying the pain in this passion-- Pasolini and Scorsese hint at it only to lesser degrees-- but Gibson turns it into a fetish, intended to give visceral pleasure in itself, not enhance the story.

In this way The Passion of the Christ is far closer to the classic gay SM porn film than anything else. I'm not talking about the Catalina or All Worlds videos where cute, butch guys sort-of play around with leather and chains, but the more hardcore SM films, like Roger Earl's 1974 classic Born to Raise Hell with Val Martin, or his mid-1980s "Dungeons of Europe" series.

Intended for a hardcore gay SM audience, these films make no attempt to "simulate" the action, but are essentially documentary accounts of heavy bondage, humiliation, beating, and physical abuse. It's all about inciting sexual pleasure via depiction of pain. In Gibson's Passion, the extreme depictions of physical torture aren't necessary for the plot-- according to Christian belief, the redemption of humankind came about because Christ allowed himself to be killed; theologically the amount of suffering doesn't matter at all-- here it simply titillates and excites. While we never get to see James Caviezel's Jesus naked (except at the end, when there's a glimpse of the resurrection and a glimpse of his lovely butt), Gibson is careful to film his main character in a romantic, even sexualized manner.

The tension in the narrative is to see how far the "bottom" can go. When Jesus is on the way to be crucified-- the traditional Stations of the Cross-- every fall, every bleeding wound in his back is lovingly exposed. If the trial and public humiliation was foreplay, these scenes are the picture's heart. It's this visceral excitement-- the terror and pity as Aristotle would have it in the Poetics-- that give The Passion its small amount of power. This culminates in the grand finale of the crucifixion, in which all of the wounds, beatings, and humiliations are celebrated. The money-shot-- the payoff-- here is the resurrection, but as with the SM films, the cum shot-- while it's almost always included-- is really beside the point. The essence of Christianity is contained not the passion, but in the mystery of the resurrection-- and Gibson gives it a few seconds (and a nice butt). If the thrill of "Dungeons of Europe" is in seeing how far a bottom can go, the thrill in The Passion is to see just how much Jesus can take. And if that works for you, then this is a don't-miss movie.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com