One of Australias most respected film reviewers and self confessed atheist,
Peter Thompson (brother of well known Australian actor Jack Thompson) did a
review of "The Passion of the Christ" this morning on the "Sunday" show and
it's one of the best I've seen so far.

http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/film_reviews/article_1494.asp


Film: The Passion of the Christ
February 29, 2004
Reporter : Peter Thompson

Peter's verdict: violent and heavy going
Director: Mel Gibson
Genre: drama

As a non-believer, I've always been mystified by the story of the martyrdom
of Christ. It seems to me that an omnipotent God could have found a better
way to save us from ourselves than sacrificing his son. I don't mean any
disrespect to Christians - we're all free to say and think what we like
within generally accepted limits, at least here in Australia. The problem
with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is that it's almost impossible
to see it clearly outside the inflated controversy that surrounds it.
Indeed, Gibson himself has thrown down the gauntlet by suggesting any
criticism of his film is the work of dark forces. More of that in a minute,
but first, the loaded question of anti-Semitism which has dominated so much
of the discussion in recent months.

If you go looking for hatred of Jews in the film, you won't find it. The
Jewish leaders scream for Christ's blood but even they are ultimately
shocked by the depth of his suffering and there are many sympathetic Jewish
figures. Although he's played by the non-Jewish Jim Caviezel, Christ's own
Jewishness is acknowledged. And Gibson has explicitly distanced himself from
anti-Semitism in his interview with the American journalist Diane Sawyer.

MEL GIBSON: "To be racist in any form, to be anti-Semitic, is a sin! It's
been condemned by one Papal Council after another. There are encyclicals on
it. To be anti-Semitic is to be un-Christian and I'm not."

But no matter how sincere these protestations are, it's hard to see how The
Passion of the Christ can help to bring Jews and Christians, or anyone else,
closer together. Any attempt at balance in Gibson's film is almost totally
submerged under its unremitting, almost indescribable violence. It crowds
out every other impression and yet it's precisely what he intended.

MEL GIBSON: "I wanted it to be shocking and I also wanted it to be extreme.
I wanted it to push the viewer over the edge. And it does that. I think it
pushes one over the edge. So they see the enormity, the enormity of that
sacrifice, to see that someone could endure that and still come back with
love."

We can't show you just how extreme that violence gets but I don't think it's
unfair to predict that audiences will be initially nauseated and ultimately
numbed by what they see. Gibson's defence is that, as the Pope may or may
not have said, it is as it was. And this raises possibly the film's biggest
conundrum. On the one hand, Gibson claims his film to be historically
accurate.

DIANE SAWYER: "Do you have a literal belief of The Bible, every sentence of
it?"

MEL GIBSON: "Yes, you either accept the whole thing or you don't accept it
at all."

And yet he also confirms what would seem to be patently obvious: it's his
own, often poetic, elaboration on what's found in the four New Testament
Gospels.

MEL GIBSON: "It really is my vision. Boy! I'm not taking myself out of the
equation here. I'm a proud bugger! I did this! But I did it with God's help.
I mean, this is my vision of what happened, according to the Gospels, and
what I wanted to show, the aspects of it I wanted to show."

The other controversy, largely fuelled by Gibson himself, is that dark
forces marshalled themselves against the making of the film and are now
working to undermine its message.

MEL GIBSON: "For me, I think evil is something, when it comes to you, it's
not necessarily going to come with a sign saying 'I'm evil' - it will
usually come in an enticing form."

DIANE SAWYER: "And you said at one point 'the big dark force doesn't want us
to make this film'. What was the force?"

MEL GIBSON: "It's the thing you can't see. See, I'm a believer, by the way.
So if you believe, you believe that there are big realms of good and evil
and they're slugging it out."

It reminds you of the fevered gossip surrounding the making of The Exorcist,
a film I greatly admire, all those years ago. But apparently there were no
Satanic manifestations on the set of The Passion of the Christ. Gibson is,
like the rest of us, free to hold to his beliefs. But it's a bit rich to
claim victim status in any debate over the film.

Spending a large slice of the personal fortune he's made as one of the most
popular movie stars of all time, and an Oscar-winning producer, he's made
exactly the film he wanted to make. It's a film of prodigious energy and
overwhelming emotional intensity. But as passionately as he believes in the
literal truth of the story he's telling, he also believes he has enemies.

DIANE SAWYER: "Is the world full of conspiracies to you?"

MEL GIBSON: "See, it's gotten a bad name, conspiracy. Ha ha. It's only
logical to assume conspiracies are everywhere because that's what people do.
They conspire! If you can't get the message, get the man. So I think that's
what we're engaged in here. We're engaged in character assassination."

But a last word on what he believes is the true message of his film.

MEL GIBSON: "Jesus Christ was crucified for all men of all creeds for all
time and he died for all of us."

Hopefully, Mel Gibson has been reassured by the unanimous support he's
received from the churches and by the large audiences flocking to see The
Passion of the Christ. Personally, I found it heavy going but, even as a
non-believer, I'm convinced there is enormous value in the Christian
tradition.

One only has to listen to Handel's Messiah, for example, to be overwhelmed
by its inspirational power. And whatever the failings of the churches over
the centuries, many devout Christians have proven themselves extraordinarily
courageous people.

But, like Islam and unlike many other religions, Christianity is also a
proselytising faith; it actively seeks converts. In the service of that
faith, Mel Gibson has produced not a thoughtful treatise on the nature of
the divine like Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ but a blood-soaked
battering ram.