/ 20 August 2003

Mel Gibson’s passion

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