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The Passion will be told--boldly, perhaps perversely--in two dead tongues: Latin, used by the Roman occupiers of Palestine, and Aramaic, the language of most Semites at the time of Christ. If it's hard for the actors to speak their lines, it will be a challenge for the audience too: Gibson wants to show the film without subtitles. "The audience will have to focus on the visuals," he says. "But they had silent films before talkies arrived, and people went to see them."
Jesus has been the subject of a hundred or so films, from Edison's The Passion Play at Oberammergau in 1898 to a quartet of Stan Brakhage experimental shorts in 2001. The story has been filmed by Cecil B. DeMille, Nicholas Ray, George Stevens. The Messiah has been portrayed with stolid reverence (in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth) and Surrealist blasphemy (Luis Bunuel's L'Age d'Or). Often he sings: in Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, in a born-again Bollywood musical and in the Canadian kung-fu horror comedy Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.
Gibson has few kind words for previous Passion films. Mention Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (which, like Gibson's location shots, was filmed in the Italian town of Matera), and he fakes a big yawn. On Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ: "You've got Harvey Keitel as Judas saying"--and here Gibson shifts into a Brooklyn accent--"'Hey, you ovah dere.'"
Gibson's film will be Scorsesean in one aspect: its meticulous attention to violence. "It's gonna be hard to take," he says. "When the Romans scourged you, it wasn't a nice thing. Think about the Crucifixion--there's no way to sugarcoat that." Not if you're playing Jesus. Caviezel, a practicing Catholic who met and was blessed by Pope John Paul II, logged 15 shooting days on the Calvary cross--which may have been easier than wearing shackles and getting beaten and whipped. During one trouncing, he separated his left shoulder. "There's an immense amount of suffering on this," the actor says. "Fortunately, God is helping me."
Gibson is a more truculent Catholic. He scorns the Second Vatican Council, which in the 1960s replaced the Latin Mass with the liturgy in the language of the people and lots of perky folk songs. To Gibson, Vatican II "corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." He might also have noted that Catholicism flourished in those countries where it became a church of liberation--where priests welded traditional doctrine to radical social reform.
It's dodgy to argue theology with an actor-director who seemingly sees a fusion of the movie characters he has played and Christ: feisty, persecuted, able to take whatever punishment the bad guys can dish out. Gibson is determined to walk his own lonely path. But it hardly seems unreasonable that there can be a contemporary film about a Christian hero when there are so many about, say, serial killers. So Gibson pursues his passion to make The Passion.
Got a problem with that? Take it up with your new spiritual counselor: Mad Max. --With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles