Mel has put $25m of his own money into the project, plus a big chunk of
Mel. He produced, directed, and co-wrote the screenplay but (modestly) does
not star. That honour goes to James Caviezel (remember him as the Count of
Monte Cristo? Now he’s Cristo).
It’s a tricky subject. Previous films about Jesus – from Pasolini
through Python to Scorsese – have offended on grounds of blasphemy. Gibson
is faithful to the Gospel account – to the point that characters speak in
Aramaic and Latin. Laudable. The problem is that the Jews (”Let him be
crucified… his blood be on us”) come out rather badly in the four
apostolic versions.
A member of the cast defied Mel’s prohibition and leaked the screenplay
(”Anyone here read Aramaic?”). Anti-defamation bodies lodged pre-emptive
strikes. Gibson responded with a damage-control blitz, inviting selected
audiences to a rough-cut early screening. He denies anti-Semitic intent.
But, just like Riggs steaming down the freeway (sans car) after the bad
guys, nothing is going to stop him now.
What makes Mel run? There is perennial confusion as to whether he is Oz
or Yank. He’s both. Born in the US, his family emigrated to Australia in
1968 when Gibson’s father feared his elder sons might be drafted for
Vietnam. Mel was 12 – too young to serve but old enough to know what was
going on. It may have been lingering draft-dodger guilt that induced him,
34 years later, to give himself the lead as Lt-Col Hal Moore (ruthless
killer of many Viet Cong) in We Were Heroes. Mel hit the big time in 1979
as Mad Max – the Judge Dredd of the Outback after nuclear apocalypse (a
biblically prophesied event that fascinates Gibson and that he explores,
idiosyncratically, in his recent hit Signs). At this primal stage of his
career, Mel was both physically beautiful and wholly Australian. His first
appearance as Mumbling Max was dubbed for American release.
Superstardom came with Lethal Weapon and its progeny. Gibson was now
free to make the films he wanted. Braveheart gave full rein to a toxic
Anglophobia – a prejudice (”pommy bastards”) acquired in his heavy
drinking days down under.
For Gibsonologists the key cine-text is his romance of the American
revolution, The Patriot (2000). The film certifies Gibson’s loyalty to the
fatherland (America) and to the father generally. It’s the fifth
commandment in celluloid. Mel plays a ferociously patriotic patriarch,
Benjamin Martin (”Mad Dad”), father of many children (Gibson’s father,
incidentally, had 11; Mel he has seven, and is still going). The patriot’s
sons disobey him only to realise that their father, at the end of the day,
is the fount of all moral wisdom and temporal power.
Gibson, as the tabloids record, ran a prodigal course in the 1980s – AA
and religion saved him. More significantly, it was his father’s religion.
Hutton Gibson is a hardline Catholic traditionalist. In 1994, (the year Mel
was doing Braveheart) he published a virulent 500-page tirade, The Enemy Is
Here. It proclaims (as Hutton had been long proclaiming in monthly
newsletters) that since 1958, the Catholic church has been abducted by
anti-Popes – currently ”Garrulous Karolus, the Koran Kisser”.
For hardliners like Hutton the vernacular mass is an abomination. And,
of course, the Gospel account that that the Jews killed Christ is, well,
gospel truth. Nor did six million die. Nor was Osama responsible for 9/11.
Drawing on $2m of his petty cash, Mel has built his own ”traditionalist
Catholic” church in Malibu (he’s still a star, for God’s sake). Services
are in Latin, congregations small, and don’t expect to see Steven Spielberg
among them. — GUARDIAN NEWSPAPERS LIMITED 2003