Is it as it was?

Let's start from the conclusion since that is usually a very good place to start from. The Passion of the Christ is a powerful film about the greatest love story ever told. Perhaps it is too powerful.

Due to the polysemic nature of audiovisual products in general and the controversial treatment given to this subject in particular, it is quite natural that diametrically opposed reviews are given by different people who read it in opposite ways.

While I oscillate between the admiration of its several cinematographic gems and the shock at the brutality it depicts in an unnecessarily horrific way, I find it possible to recommend it to adults so long as they can stomach violent scenes. I think that there are more than enough positive elements that do redeem these scenes of excessive violence.

Now let's go to the beginning.

To do a twist on a phrase attributed (later the attribution was denied) to the Pope after he saw an unfinished version of the film: Is it as it was? In other words does the film give us what happened as it really happened?

My answer is in the negative as screen events - films, TV programmes, etc. - never give us things as they really are. Screen events give us representations from one or more particular angles.

In this film Mel Gibson gives us his own particular interpretation and perspective of the last hours of Christ before his passion and death.

Other film directors in the past 100 years gave us different perspectives in many other films. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905), From the Manger to the Cross (1912) and Intolerance (1916) show the interest shown by the cinema in this subject from its very beginning.

For 35 years, 1927-1961, Jesus was not seen face-on as a character in American studio Gospel films. He was glimpsed in part (a hand, an arm, his legs on the cross or was seen from a distance) in films like The Robe and Ben Hur in the 1950s.

The first time that audiences had heard an actor speak the words of Jesus was when Jeffrey Hunter spoke in King of Kings. The popular musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell gave us a radically new perspective.

Zeffirelli's rendition can be considered to be poetical. (Zeffirelli is very critical of Gibson's film.) I particularly like Pasolini's The Gospel according to St Matthew. This Italian Marxist used the same town that Gibson used - Sassi di Matera. Scorsese - another Catholic director - gave us The Last Temptation, which many considered as offensive.

Gibson's is another theological and artistic interpretation. It is definitely not the interpretation of the Passion as his spin-doctors tried to communicate. Their emphasis that we have here the Gospel's narrative is only partially true since the film is "sweetened" by scenes based on the writings of the stigmatised visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich and on the imagination/creativity of the director himself.

Gibson's theological perspective emphasises the value of the physical suffering of Christ more than anything else. It is true that - in a general way - he places this suffering in a redemptive context.

Isaiah's prophecy about the Suffering Servant takes the whole screen at the very beginning of the film and provides us with an important interpretative key. At the beginning of the film, before the drama is unleashed, an anguished Magdalene asks the Virgin:

"Why is this night so different from any other?" - the question that the youngest member of each Jewish family asks the elder at the beginning of the annual celebration of the Passover.

"Because," Mary answers, "we were all slaves and now we will no longer be so."

Gibson also ties this suffering to the Eucharist. Gibson looks at the Eucharist in Tridentine terms: it is above all Jesus' sacrifice, the bloodless renewal of the passion more than a fraternal meal. It is relevant to note here that the 90-year-old Rosminian Fr Jean-Marie Charles-Roux used to celebrate the Tridentine Mass every day for Gibson and the rest of the crew.

The Tridentine Mass emphasises the mystery element of the celebration more than the participatory aspect. Gibson reflects this bias in his original determination to use Latin and Aramaic without any subtitles. A decision which was finally changed. The Rosminian described Gibson as "a scrupulous, devout Catholic who went to confession often".

The over-emphasis on the aspect of physical suffering is a distinctive feature of The Passion but it is also perhaps its greatest weakness. It is true that the passion and the crucifixion must have been exceedingly brutal and that many representations of Jesus coated in saccharine may have dulled our senses to their brutality.

It is also true that an offence should also be measured in virtue of the status of who received it. In this case the Son of God received the offence. As a result, what was normally brutal become monstrous. But does one have to give an almost blow-by-blow visual representation of the scourging and the crucifixion?

Should not an artist be able to communicate the horror, barbarity and monstrosity of what the Lord suffered without being extremely - and in my opinion unnecessarily too - graphic? We had the scrounging in three stages. The first stage should have sufficed to communicate its horror and Christ's great love for us to undergo all this.

Due to this extreme emphasis on the physical suffering of the Lord, the film departs from the focus of the Gospels, which chronicle the psychological torment more than the physical torment and which document the "why" of the suffering much more than its description.

The emphasis on physical suffering presents another danger: viewers can be awed by it to the point of not concentrating enough on the reason why it happened.

One final point on this aspect: I cannot understand how our censors gave this film a "12" certificate. Gibson himself was quoted as saying that he would not recommend this film to anyone under the age of 13. The film office of the US bishops gave it an adults certificate. But Cardinal George Bell has requested that all senior students in Catholic schools be invited to see the film.

As I noted in the introduction of this piece, Gibson presents us with a number of cinematographic gems. Lighting is used in strategic ways, e.g. Gethsemane blue, the confined space of the High Priest's court lamplit, the broad daylight of the Way of the Cross.

Some of the frames clearly evoke the traditions of Christian painting. The dramatic use of slow motion, fantastic editing and flashbacks are some other gems. The continuous use of close-ups to explore interior emotions and reality together with the above-average acting skills of most of the cast are two added plusses.

Jim Caviezel is a more than believable Jesus but I particularly liked Maia Morgenstern's rendition of Our Lady. She is so touching! The scene where she wipes the blood and skin "dirtying" (should I say sanctifying?) the floor after the scourging, is striking.

The Pietà-like tableau when Jesus is placed on Mary's lap after the Crucifixion is so beautiful. It remained stuck in my mind more that all the other scenes. There is so much tenderness. It is really true that love redeems all.

There are two particularly touching sequences. In one Mary is lying on the floor while the camera tilts down to Christ tied underground beneath that very same spot. The mother's love for her son makes her feel him even when "buried" underground.

In another scene we see Mary struggling to get close to Jesus as he stumbles under the cross through the winding, narrow streets. He suddenly falls. Gibson cuts to Christ's childhood. He falls and his mother is able to pick him up, something she cannot do now.

When she finally reaches Jesus, and he is on the ground, crushed by the weight of the cross, it is he who comforts her with his words: "See, mother, I make all things new."

Is Gibson's film anti-Semitic? Perhaps Jews are more qualified than us Christians to answer that question. But I really do not believe that it is. A number of scenes which were described as being anti-Semitic by critics writing before the film was released did not make it to the final version.

It would have been anti-Semitic had Gibson blamed the Jews as a people for the death of Christ. He does not do that. On the contrary, Gibson symbolically takes responsibility for the Crucifixion. His hand is seen nailing Jesus to the cross. This scene should help us realise that each and every one of us is to blame since our sins were the culprits, which crucified the Lord.

If The Passion makes people realise this, it will make the passage from a work of art to a tool of evangelisation.