It is perhaps testament to the material that the film can be read both as a literal illustration of the story of Christ’s suffering at the hands of the Romans, betrayed by the threatened Rabbis of his own people, and an anti-authoritarian tract that questions the very assumptions of guilt and blame that many take for granted the film shares.

Unbearably violence and gory and bordering on sadistic fetishism, it is more graphic than a slasher movie, yet shot with a beatific beauty. Little time is spent on his teachings the film is dedicated to revealing the trial of his suffering in graphic detail, which Gibson apparently finds more important than Christ’s lessons and philosophy. Taking the Gospels as his source, Gibson creates his own cinematic version of the Passion Play, with James Caviezel as the tormented but unbending Jesus and Monica Bellucci as a vision of grace as the Magdalene.

The Passion of the Christ (2004), Mel Gibson’s passionate, personal, and visceral take on the final twelve hours of Christ’s life on Earth is, in its own way, as controversial as Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ.

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