He's an auteur.

Jesus and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"

The Film, the Gospels, and the Claims of History

Edited by Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb

Continuum, $17.95, 198 pp.

Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy

The Cross, the Questions, the Controversy

Edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia 

Open Court, $17.95, 271 pages

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was not nominated for Best Picture, but it was one of the most successful films of 2004. Indeed, the movie is barely a year old and already it is the subject of several books.

Jesus and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is written for viewers who believed the movie was true to either the Gospels or to history. Several essays challenge this view. The portrayals of Satan, Mary, the Jewish leaders, and Pilate are all scrutinized and found wanting. The depictions of Jesus' trial and procession to Calvary are also judged inaccurate. If moviegoers hope to learn what really happened to Jesus, the authors conclude, they had better turn elsewhere.

Many of the essays follow a similar method: they identify a subject from The Passion, such as Mary or Pilate, examine its depiction in the film, and then consider how the Gospels and Scripture scholars treat the same subject. This is a useful way of considering the accuracy of the film. The approach, though, privileges biblical accounts over the many images and stories in the Christian tradition. Fortunately, other essays explore the representation of Jesus in film and classical art, which helps place The Passion in a broader context.

Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy examines the film through a variety of lenses, including Christian theology, the ethics of nonviolence, Jewish mysticism, even the work of the philosopher Hegel. A number of the contributors use the film to explore traditional philosophical concerns such as the nature of moral responsibility and truth. Others use the film to explore "atonement theology" and other schools of thought that have sought to understand the meaning of Christ's death.

These essays are the most interesting in the book. Even those authors who disagree with Gibson's rendering of the Passion take seriously the complexity of "atonement theology" in Christian thought. As Jorge J. E. Gracia notes in one essay, much of the debate about the film had deeper roots in disagreements over theology. As these essays suggest, The Passion was a very ambitious film that sought to bring a theology of the cross to the center of contemporary culture.

One of the reasons that The Passion was so successful was that it managed to cross traditional religious lines in ways few people expected. By combining a Baroque Catholic sensibility with Protestant blood-atonement theology, Gibson managed to appeal to a wide swath of the Christian community. Protestant groups, in particular, were critical to the movie's success; without them, the movie would not have been one of the cultural events of 2004.

Yet if the film helped deepen some people's faith, there were good reasons why it alienated other viewers. As many critics have argued, the portrayal of the Jews in the film is troubling. In the conclusion to their volume, Kathleen Corley and Robert Webb refer to one of the most disturbing moments of the film: the scene where Satan moves among the Jewish crowds. In another essay, Thomas E. Wartenberg correctly notes that while Christians have found The Passion to be profoundly meaningful, Jews were understandably afraid that it revived very old and dangerous stereotypes.

One issue both volumes deal with is Gibson's Catholicism. The Passion of the Christ swims deeply in a particularly Catholic milieu, shaped by such influences as the Stations of the Cross, Marian devotionalism, Baroque painting, and the mysticism of an early nineteenth-century nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich. In many ways, the Catholic roots of The Passion are what make it so interesting--and so vexing. Indeed, one of the reasons the charge of anti-Semitism had such force was the long history of Catholic animosity toward the Jews.

The Passion of the Christ provides further evidence of the entwining of the Catholic imagination and popular film in America. Gibson can be seen as the latest in a long line of Catholic filmmakers (including John Ford, Frank Capra, and Martin Scorsese) who have influenced American culture. During the heyday of Hollywood's studio system, Catholicism was portrayed as comforting and uncontroversial, as Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien, and Bing Crosby made the Catholic priest into an American hero. Yet Gibson utilizes traditional Catholic images to create anything but a soothing consensus among viewers. It's a sign of the complexity of Catholic culture that filmmakers can draw upon such different elements in the tradition. Far from looking back, Gibson may be pushing the Catholic style in American films in new directions by engaging so deeply with Catholic devotionalism.

As the titles of these books indicate, The Passion should be seen as an expression of Mel Gibson's personal vision. Gibson neatly fits the popular image of the rebel auteur--determined to put his own art on screen, he made an end run around the Hollywood establishment, the scholarly community, and even the Catholic Church. (Remember that he is a schismatic Catholic.) One can be both impressed with Gibson's effort to introduce a countercultural theological vision into American movies and disturbed by his use of some of the darkest elements of that tradition.

Anthony Burke Smith is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton. His book, The Look of Catholics: Religion, Popular Culture, and National Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century America, will be published by the University Press of Kansas.