The Guardian

London

Mel Gibson’s new film, ‘The Passion of the Christ’, opened in the US on Wednesday. This in itself is out of the ordinary. Most films open on Fridays. But when you realise that last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, it all clicks into place. Nothing is left to chance with a big movie.

In the US alone, ‘The Passion’ took $20 million at the box office on the first day. The film’s budget was $25 million. Somebody up there must like Mel Gibson.

‘The Passion’ tells the story of Christ’s last 12 hours. Producer, director and co-writer Gibson resisted the temptation to cast himself as the lead, and instead gave the part to the young American actor Jim Caviezel. Monica Belluci plays Mary Magdalene.

Then a few details about the film jump out: it is not in English but a mixture of Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic with English subtitles; the film has been given an R rating in the US, not for its sexual content, but for its violence; and then there is its treatment of history and Biblical myth.

It is the latter that has caused most comment among those who have not seen the film and yet shock at the film’s violence is the one issue that unites those who have seen it.

But the most potent controversy, and potentially the most far-reaching for the director and indeed critics, has centred on the film’s treatment of Jews. Gibson has been variously accused of brutalising the Jewish characters in the film, of portraying Jews as stock film villains and of blaming the Jews for the death of Christ.

Particular spice was added to this controversy when it emerged, notably in a report in the New York Times last year, that Gibson is what is known as a “Roman Catholic traditionalist”. This is a follower of a small and obscure church that denies the legitimacy of Vatican II, the decree promulgated by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s that to some extent liberalised the Catholic church.

Gibson follows the teachings of the Society of Pius X, whose leader is the excommunicated French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and has put considerable funds into churches in California, as well as building his own private chapel in Malibu.

“Enough is enough,” Gibson, 48, told the Los Angeles Times recently. “They’re trying to make me some cult wacko. All I do is go and pray. For myself. For my family. For the whole world. That’s what I do.”

For some, the actor’s family might just be the cause of this lurch to conviction, an odd trait in an action-movie hero. Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, is an 85-year-old traditionalist firebrand. His self-published books include ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ and ‘The Enemy Here’.

Since he was tracked down last year by the New York Times, to which he made some unguarded comments about the Holocaust, Hutton Gibson has kept a fairly low profile. But have his views on the Holocaust influenced his son?

In a prime-time US television interview, Gibson did not do enough to satisfy some. Earlier in the year, talking to the former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, Gibson used these words when asked if the Holocaust had happened: “Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. World War II killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933.”

“I’m stunned by that reaction,” Gibson told LA Times of the allegations of anti-Semitism surrounding the film. “It wasn’t something that I was completely aware of.”

And many point out that, while the alleged anti-Semitism of the film may have been overplayed, its message could be interpreted differently in other territories.

And the film will almost certainly make money. While Gibson has for his part shunned the Hollywood media that can reputedly make or break a film, he has carefully cultivated the religious groups who could equally make or break this film. A procession of religious leaders have been ushered into private screenings, and Gibson has travelled the US presenting the film to church groups.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich came in for a beating from Gibson following his questioning of the film’s religious politics: “I want to kill him,” Gibson said of Rich, “I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.” Nothing sells like controversy.