Later, when the film comes out on VHS tape and the hype has died down, the movie can be watched with some concentration. Now, it seems, people are watching other movie-goers as much as they're watching the movie. It's like going to church to see who's there (and who's not).
A few people have told me "The Passion" has changed their lives, but I wonder about this. I've always thought real life was bigger than a movie, that if a single movie can change a life, it must be a slightly shaky life.
Plus, I have a thing about Jesus movies that goes back to grade school. Every year before all us brats were turned loose for Christmas break, we had to go to the gym and watch a movie called "The Life of Christ."
It was black and white and the film jumped and rattled in the ancient projector. I don't remember any of the credits, but this film ruined six Christmases for me.
We had to go to the gym, because somebody higher up thought it was best for us (required watching) and there was no "extra" teachers to watch over the kids who wanted to stay in the classroom. I would try to be sick on the film day, and that worked only a couple times.
I could not watch the graphic (for those times) crucifixion. I took a lot of ribbing for this, but having stepped on a rusty nail or two, I knew what it felt like.
When that nail went through that rubber hand close-up, it was almost unbearable psychological pain. And it shook my confidence in all adults. Nobody in the movie said no in the lead-up to the climactic scenes.
I said no to myself on my eight inches of bleacher space, but it didn't count. The movie went right on, and adults would later ask me how I would like it if that had happened to me. I thought it might. It was hard to trust anybody over 30.
In interviews about "The Passion," Gibson has said he does not mean for the movie to be anti-Semitic nor unnecessarily violent; he wanted to depict Jesus as the Redeemer of mankind. Yet, "Jesus" is a lot like Mel Gibson.
It is easy to understand why people would want to see and hear Jesus. He is such a huge presence in history, but He is that partly because He can't be seen.
The Bible does not describe him, and the Koran has only a very brief description, an unkind one. His hair was too red to be pleasing to the Middle Eastern idea of handsome, and He is reported to have had freckles, also something Muslims did not consider good looking.
Add to this the infrequent baths and the dust of the country He walked, and Jesus bears no resemblance to a 2004 sexy yet sensitive Gibson-like character. You would imagine Him leaving the 23rd take of the trial scene, getting into sweats and Nikes and jogging around the set.
Maybe Jesus would do that, but it seems best not to know that He would. It is best not to know too much about what He looked like.
He has had a lot of faces. Puritans who settled the East Coast didn't pay much attention to Him at all, too concerned about their angry and punishing God.
Churches have tailored Jesus to whatever their congregations seem to need at the time. Painted and sculpted as a feminine figure, He brought women to church, but then, churches got concerned about so few men showing up that Jesus changed.
The figure on the cross got pumped up, more muscle-bound. He has been a blonde German, a doe-eyed Hippie, something akin to natives in "Hair," and the most recent depiction -- a Rock star. If Jesus becomes a rapper or something R&B'ish, I'll just have to say no louder than I did in fourth grade.
See the Gibson Jesus if you want to, and I'd like to hear what you think about it. But it seems to me that Jesus, the real one, has lasted as long as He has because His message was so basic, simple and universal, and because He has remained invisible.
This combination and the usefulness of it can best be understood by reading the bible Thomas Jefferson made for himself.
He cut all the direct quotes from Jesus out of the Bible, stuck them on a few pages and threw the rest of it away.
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