Posted: 3/11/04
COMMENTARY:
Atonement and “The Passion”
By Reagan White
Show business has always liked the logic of making a fortune by standing convention on its head. But sometimes, it’s the logic that gets upended.
Recent investments by Rosie O’Donnell and Mel Gibson are a case in point. O’Donnell bet $10 million on a Broadway musical about Boy George called “Taboo” and lost every nickel. Mel Gibson put down $30 million on a movie about Jesus’ crucifixion, voiced the dialogue entirely in Aramaic and Latin, and quadrupled his money in less than a week.
Jay Leno said “The Passion of the Christ” has done so well, “there’s now talk of turning it into a book.”
Others have been less sanguine about Gibson’s Thunderdome treatment of show business logic. A frequent accusation is that he is trading in anti-Semitism. If this were true, audiences should be emerging from the movie fizzing with hatred for Jews. They aren’t, and not just because Gibson expunged the Bible’s “his blood be on us, and on our children.”
It’s because the real theological epicenter of this movie is the Atonement, and his unmistakable stance on the issue has smoked out Gibson’s true adversaries—post-Christian theologians. Just as C.S. Lewis predicted, more than a few of them have put God in the dock—that is, on trial—for offering his Son for our sins.
As for opposition to the movie on the basis of show business rules, perhaps the most interesting charge laid against Gibson’s film has been leveled by A.O. Scott, who wrote in The New York Times that Gibson was unable “to think beyond the conventional logic of movie narrative.” While most movies end by avenging earlier episodes of violence against innocence, Scott contends “The Passion of the Christ” incites the audience to demand justice, and then ends without providing it. The resulting “inconclusiveness” is “Mr. Gibson’s most serious artistic failure,” Scott wrote.
Indeed, in Gibson’s movie, after Jesus is taken down from the cross, anyone in the audience who expects cosmic-level payback is left hanging. Yes, there is a resurrection—its portrayal has been described as “poetically economic”—but a glimpse of Jesus revived hardly scratches the surface of what justice would seem to demand after seeing him tortured to death. Accordingly, the question may fairly be raised: Is “The Passion of the Christ” an unfinished movie?
After all, the New Testament tells us of many things that happened after the crucifixion and resurrection. It’s safe to assume Gibson is aware of them. Shouldn’t we expect a more satisfying conclusion from the star of “Lethal Weapon” and “Braveheart”?
Actually, this is where one might expect more of a writer reviewing a major motion picture for The New York Times. Scott accuses Gibson of failing to think beyond the logic of the conventional Hollywood ending, and then notes specifically how Gibson’s film is unconventional. Nevertheless, a defender of traditional Christianity can hardly pretend that such quibbling constitutes a response to Scott’s indictment.
By refusing to use the resurrection as a counterbalance to the horrors of the crucifixion, Gibson has left the moviegoer in a predicament familiar to Christians everywhere: “In medias res”—Waiting for the other shoe to drop. The omission of any cinematic climax adroitly highlights this fact: The story of God’s business with humanity did not end at Golgotha.
Yes, atonement was made for the sins of the world. Yes, Jesus was vindicated on Easter morning. But the legions of angels who stood by ready to intervene at the crucifixion still await the command to commence judgment on what the ancient prophets said will be “the great and terrible Day of the Lord.”
Horace—no stranger to the logic of drama—advised a budding epic poet not to feel compelled to begin at the beginning of a story, but to start right at a decisive point in its middle instead. He coined “in medias res” to express this idea. Gibson’s drama does something even more unconventional; it reaches its end, makes the audience realize that the final act is still to come, and—to top it off—assures them they are inescapably involved.
It’s a drama that breaches the walls between story and reality and leaves each viewer aware of their part to play in the impending final act. Could there be room in show business for a new kind of logic?
Reagan White Jr. is a member of First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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