A 'Passion' for responsible film criticism

By Les Roka

March 15. 2004 | Some reviews for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ have been irresponsible and hardly helpful for readers, an embarrassment to a journalistic tradition of critics as arbiters of art and culture.

Controversial works of arts such as Gibson's ambitious and intensely personal statement of his faith challenge critics to provide socially reverberating commentary to help readers gauge the contemporary cultural impact of films that transcend traditional boundaries of mainstream and art house cinema.

Unfortunately, too many critics today have settled into the role of consumer advocate, glancing frequently at the side to see how a studio will angle its promotion of a film based on the critical noise of a newspaper, magazine or broadcast reviewer. And, then there are the select critics, the poseurs who want to esteem virtually every piece of art cinema.

Problems with many reviews about The Passion are the excessive reaction to the portrayal of violence and what the critics allege are insinuations of anti-Semitism. These could be legitimate concerns in the critic's terrain but they deserve a more thoughtful consideration than hyperbolically emotional rants that have attempted to address marketing and theological concerns simultaneously in sweeping generalizations.

Gibson's film has upended a lot of Hollywood's conventional wisdom. The long public relations campaign prior to the film's release has paid handsomely, contrary to a few predictions about the film's potentially catastrophic box office failure. As of this writing, The Passion is set to become the highest-grossing R-rated film in history, easily surpassing the Matrix Reloaded. The film also refocuses Gibson's place in the industry as an ambitious director with substantial artistic vision.

Works of art such as The Passion, I believe, separate the genuine from the pretentious when it comes to journalistic criticism. Reviewers should welcome this film not on its immediate positive or negative merits but for its capacity to engage the viewer in a dialogue rare in contemporary film. Critics have an extraordinary opportunity to offer a public lesson about how the value of art in contemporary culture is determined and to begin the discourse that ultimately determines the legacy of Gibson's film.

Excerpts from reviews such as the following do little to engage that type of discussion.

"You're thinking there must be something to The Passion of the Christ besides watching a man tortured to death, right? Actually, no: This is a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie -- The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre -- that thinks it's an act of faith," David Edelstein wrote for Slate, the online magazine.

Challenging Gibson's legitimacy to produce a film of gravitas, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle wrote that "instead of letting his reverence broaden him, Gibson uses his action-movie expertise to reduce the Crucifixion to something kinetic, literal and merely tragic. The story doesn't make Gibson bigger; he makes it smaller."

Finally, the Village Voice's Richard Goldstein, who obsesses continuously about the packaging of the artist and tends to dismiss immediately works of art that often are daring and bold (he wrote two famously scathing reviews of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album), offered this:

"The real story here is the rise of a newly mobilized market and the crossing over of its values. In that respect, Gibson has done what Pat Robertson could only dream about, by enlisting the very techniques his co-religionists object to in Hollywood films. Among these aesthetic values, none is more commercial -- and less faithful to the Gospel -- than ultra-violence. You won't find epistles dwelling on the finer points of human brutality in the New Testament, but you will find such lessons in the cinema of Brian De Palma. When you see Jesus soaked in gore, think of the blood-bucket scene in Carrie."

Similar examples abound in mainstream publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Boston Globe, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times.

The Passion certainly stretched the critical abilities of reviewers who wanted to shy away from theological discussions but nevertheless felt compelled to dismiss the film for its violence and implications about who might have been responsible for the Crucifixion.

However, a few writers managed to transcend the plane of ordinary criticism, offering examples that can inspire intelligent discussions about contemporary art. Roger Ebert, arguably the nation's best known film critic, sought to provide artistic context about the film's violence without a theological preface. The passage from his Chicago Sun Times review is worth quoting in full:

"It is a film about an idea. An idea that it is necessary to fully comprehend the Passion if Christianity is to make any sense. Gibson has communicated his idea with a singleminded urgency. Many will disagree. Some will agree, but be horrified by the graphic treatment. I myself am no longer religious in the sense that a long-ago altar boy thought he should be, but I can respond to the power of belief whether I agree or not, and when I find it in a film, I must respect it."

On the matter of anti-Semitism, Michael Medved provided this helpful perspective in the Christian Science Monitor:

"The interest of Jewish continuity and vitality can hardly be served by a battle over a movie that will succeed with the public regardless of our discomfort. Rather than wasting energy and good will to discredit an artful and ambitious film, we would do more for the cause of Judaism to emphasize the positive and productive aspects of our own sacred tradition."

Anti-Semitic concerns also are dashed by Steven Greydanus, film critic for the National Catholic Register and the creator of www.decentfilms.com:

"Finally, at the moment of the crucifixion itself, Mel Gibson's own hand holds the nail to be driven through Jesus' hand, symbolizing the director's acknowledgement that it was finally for his own sins -- for the sins of the whole world, not of any one generation or people -- that Jesus died. That is the message of the film, and the final answer to concerns about anti-Semitism, and The Passion of the Christ never loses sight of it."

Aaron Mesh, a film reviewer from Chattanooga, takes the critic's enterprise in full swing with this gem:

"I have a friend who loathes the Lord of the Rings movies for taking characters who in Tolkien's fiction are symbolically fixed and making them into dynamic, changing figures. The Middle Ages attitude of The Passion achieves the opposite: it turns vibrant, complex humans into static icons for audience adoration. The story begins in medias res; any background of who the characters are must be scrounged from brief flashbacks. (As a tool for Christian evangelism, which is how the movie has often been marketed, it's hard to imagine The Passion sparking mass conversions. Most post-viewing discussions will have to start with identifying exactly who that Jesus fellow was.)"

When art confronts popular perceptions and standards of aesthetics, taste, and audience appeal as in The Passion, critics should effectively serve their audiences as personal witnesses, opening up avenues for dialogue that permits us to focus not on marketing dynamics but the cultural phenomenon emanating from this film.

--Les Roka teaches public relations in the USU department of journalism and communication. He is the author of an academic article exploring the critical reaction to Sgt. Pepper.

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