For lo, the multitudes did gather in multiplexes across the land, as the prophets had foretold. And at last they beheld The Passion of the Christ, and did render unto Mel Gibson millions upon millions of dollars in ticket and merchandising sales.
On Wednesday, as the contentious portrayal of Christ’s last hours opened on over 4 500 screens across the United States, critics attacked its graphic violence and controversy over its alleged anti-semitism continued to rage. Jewish demonstrators protested in concentration camp uniforms outside a midnight screening in New York’s Times Square, while some reviewers compared the film to a ”snuff movie” for its excruciatingly detailed depiction of the crucifixion.
But far from deterring cinemagoers, the combination of hype and controversy has packed out movie theatres across the US. One cinema in Los Angeles had scheduled 21 showings of the film, starting approximately every half-hour throughout the day, while merchandising stalls put out racks of Passion T-shirts and necklaces.
The film is predicted to take at least $30-$40-million in US cinemas alone — it is opening simultaneously in Canada, Australia and New Zealand — and $10-million worth of tickets had been sold three or four days before its Ash Wednesday opening. ”The whole world needs to see this film to give us a perspective on what Jesus did for us,” one tearful filmgoer in New York told CNN, her voice trembling. Another told the broadcaster it was simply the best film she had ever seen.
In Texas, thousands of Christians rose before dawn to view the movie, with 6 000 filmgoers filling all 20 auditoriums at a multiplex in Plano, Dallas, for screenings from 6.30am onwards.
Arch Bonnema, the Christian businessman who reserved the theatre, had spent $42 000 on tickets, having told his wife: ”Honey, we’ve got to get as many people as possible to see this film because it’s changed my life.” He told the Associated Press: ”When you see the sacrifice that Jesus made, it makes you feel like, I have to do something better with my life.”
The film opens in the UK next month, but is unlikely to prove as successful here as it will on the other side of the Atlantic, where Gibson has courted the huge Christian market by offering previews to carefully selected church groups.
Neatly, the Passion seems to be serving both God and Mammon: the powerful evangelical movement in the US hopes to use the film to ”sell” Christianity to non-believers. Outreach, a Christian marketing organisation, has described the film as ”perhaps the best outreach opportunity in 2 000 years”. But not all churchgoers are happy to see the Bible turned into a blockbuster. Ole Anthony, who runs a Christian media watchdog, told CBS: ”They’re trying to put God in the spiritual supermarket and try to market him like they do Madison Avenue — it’s a shame.”
No one doubts that Gibson’s faith is sincere. Brought up in a staunchly Catholic family, he briefly considered entering the priesthood as a teenager and passionately embraced Christianity again in his mid-30s. Industry executives thought he was crazy to sink $25-million of his own money into a subtitled movie made in Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic and many observers saw it as a classic piece of self-indulgence by a cosseted Hollywood star.
Reviews on Wednesday were as mixed as the film’s reception from religious leaders, but many critics attacked the movie’s graphic — and, say some, gratuitous – violence. ”It’s a two-hour, six-minute snuff movie – The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre — that thinks it’s an act of faith,” wrote David Edelstein, film critic for the online magazine, Slate.com.
David Denby described the film as ”a sickening death trip” in the New Yorker, adding: ”Jesus said: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’ not ‘Let the little children watch me suffer.”’
But the high-profile critic Roger Ebert said he was ”deeply moved”, while Rolling Stone magazine hedged its bets, with Peter Travers observing that the film was ”powerfully moving and fanatically obtuse in equal doses … scenes range from classic to poor and all stops in between.”
Having ridden out the storm over anti-semitism, Gibson is unlikely to be fazed by the reviews. ”Inadvertently, all the problems and the conflicts and stuff — this is some of the best marketing and publicity I have ever seen,” he told the New Yorker.
Others question just how ”inadvertent” the media storm really was. The row first surfaced when Jewish-Catholic experts read the screenplay and asked Gibson to make substantial changes because of their concerns. Gibson’s production company, Ikon, claim that the scholars went public before asking the company for revisions. But Paula Frederiksen, one of those on the panel, has alleged that Ikon deliberately leaked their comments to the media and has since ”worked hard to keep the controversy alive”. The director is insistent that the film is not prejudiced, telling one interviewer: ”To be anti-semitic is to be un-Christian, and I’m not.” His sole compromise has been to remove the subtitles when the ”blood curse” — the moment when the crowd, having chosen to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus, cried: ”His blood be on us and on our children” — is shown. The contentious remark appears in only one gospel, and campaigners hoped that it would be removed from the film entirely, as it has been from Passion plays.
The row over the movie has threatened the recent rapprochement of the Christian right and the Jewish community in the US. Protests against the movie have roused the wrath of William Donohue, the president of America’s Catholic League and an enthusiastic supporter of the film. ”I understand why people in the Jewish community might be hyper-sensitive about anti-semitism,” he said. ”I’m sensitive about anti-Catholicism. But there have never been pogroms in the USA. For Jewish people to turn up in concentration camp outfits today is provocative and anti-Catholic.”
The very warnings of anti-semitism may attract some Jewish viewers. Anni Erbibou, a real estate broker, was one of the first through the doors at an early morning screening in New York on Wednesday. ”I am Jewish and I want to know how the Jews are depicted,” he told Reuters. ”Jesus was a Jew. Why so much animosity for 2000 years?” – Guardian Unlimited Â