By Erin Free
“This movie is about faith, hope, love and forgiveness,” co-writer, producer, and director, Mel Gibson, said upon the release of The Passion Of The Christ. “Themes that are as important now as they were in Jesus’ time. I’m not a preacher, and I’m not a pastor. But I really feel that my career was leading me to make The Passion Of The Christ. The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic. I hope the film has the power to evangelize.” One man’s deeply personal interpretation of The Gospels, or a blood splattered horror film tailor made for Christians? Anti-Semitism or life affirming experience? The questions and the controversy swirled around Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ on its release, and the film because nothing short of a media lightning rod. “It kind of put me back on my heels a little bit,” Gibson said of the controversy ignited by the film. “I expected some level of turbulence, because when one delves into religion and politics – people’s deeply held beliefs – you’re going to stir things up. But it was a surprise to have shots being fired over the bow while I was still filming, and then to have various loud voices in the press – people who hadn’t seen the work – really slinging mud.”
But there was something about The Passion Of The Christ that nobody could argue with: it was a mammoth, from-left-field box office success. Critics and theologians went nuts in the media, while the punters (including large, usually conservative church groups, who fascinatingly took no issue with the film’s extraordinary levels of violence) flooded into cinemas for one of the most visually stunning, emotionally rending, and cataclysmically bloody films ever made. Mel Gibson’s artistic influences (he wanted the film to look like a Caravaggio painting), his original ideas (the film unspools in the archaic Aramaic language, and was originally to have no subtitles!), and his unconventional approach to casting (unlike the religious films of the past, there are no big names, with Monica Bellucci, playing Mary Magdalene, the most recognisable face) all combine to create a forceful and utterly stand-alone experience.
The film’s beating heart, however, is actor, Jim Caviezel (currently starring on TV’s Person Of Interest), who still stands as the best movie Jesus ever. “To prepare for this role, I went into my backyard swimming pool and practiced walking on water,” the actor James Caviezel joked on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Though obviously injecting much needed levity into the firestorm of controversy, the role was a deeply personal one for the actor. While obviously not able to draw on his own life experiences to shape his performance as the only son of The Big Guy Upstairs (though he did jest with Gibson upon accepting the part that “it is eerie. My initials are J.C. and I am 33-years-old”), Caviezel had a different bedrock upon which to lay its foundations: his own faith. A devout Catholic, the actor (whose finest moment prior to Gibson’s feverish religious mini-epic was as the Christ-like Private Witt in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line) drew upon his own strict belief system to dredge up a performance of soulful brilliance. Ironically, it nearly killed him. As well as separating his shoulder during the intensely physical shoot, Caviezel also received a thirteen-inch gash in his back through a mishap while filming the horrendous scourging scene. Most alarmingly, the actor was also struck by lightning (along with assistant director, Jan Michelini) during filming of the climactic crucifixion scene. “I felt the electricity in my head,” Caviezel has said. “It didn’t hit my heart.” Though he went through his own mini-Passion Play, The Passion Of The Christ represented a different kind of personal film for the actor. “None of us did it for money; this was all for love,” Caviezel has said. “I took nothing for it, Mel took nothing for it; everyone donated their own time – they did it for love.”
