Box Office Shepherds

(5 of 5)

There's one more way in which those men did something similar this year. At a time when the U.S. is engaged in a costly war with no end in sight, they made films that hinged on a simple, easily understood human tragedy: a mother sacrifices her son. But how each regards that sacrifice goes to the essence of the different messages their films convey. Early on in The Passion of the Christ, as she watches her son being led into the temple to be scorned and interrogated, Mary looks into the camera and says, "It has begun. So be it." Acceptance of what Gibson understands as God's will is at the heart of the director's message to a scornful, disobedient world and also the mantra of the religious right.

The mother in Moore's film is Lila Lipscomb, whose son Michael died in Iraq. Moore presents her at first as a self-described "conservative Democrat," patriotic and proud of her boy in uniform. But his death leads her to question much that she believes, above all about the war. Late in the film, Lipscomb is confronted by a woman on the street in Washington who first doubts that Lipscomb lost a son in Iraq, then tells her to blame it on al-Qaeda. But the grieving mother doesn't accept that al-Qaeda was linked to Iraq, and at that point she cries out the words that could be Moore's working motto: "People think they know, but you don't know!"

Moore's working motto? Gibson's too. For all the things that separated them this year, both directors worked from the same script--to convey the truth, or at least the truth as they see it, to a world in urgent need of it. People think they know, but you don't know. Who could have imagined there would be so many millions of people ready to hear their pitch? Almost no one--except them.

Time.com

Box Office Shepherds

Mel Gibson and Michael Moore made very different movies with the same message: The truth shall make you free