I regret the worsening of Jewish-Christian relations that is likely to result from the scenes

One begins to long, in fact, for the interruptions, the flashbacks. Thanks to the sensitive cinematography of Caleb Deshamel, these include some of the most visually appealing moments in the film. At one moment a candle-lit interior will recall Georges de la Tour, at another Christ’s face at the Last Supper will suggest Rembrandt’s famous head of Christ, at still another the cut and color of Mary’s veils will recall a Bellini pietà, and so forth. When Christ’s left hand gathers to a claw at the moment when the nail pierces it, a few viewers, surely, will think of the claw-like hands of the crucified Christ in the deeply moving Isenheim Altarpiece of Matthias Grünewald. These reminders and others like them hover, by choice or design, just below the threshold of visual consciousness. Actors in ordinary films make you think of other actors and other people you know. Scenes in this film make you think, instead, of art you are sure you must have seen somewhere, though you can’t quite remember where. It helps, of course, that the film was shot partly on location in Matera, Italy and that the Italian landscape, natural and built, is the visual backdrop to so much of the greatest Christian art. Time will tell whether this film will have any longer a life or any deeper an impact than its predecessors in the genre, all of which seem faded or eccentric failures in retrospect. The plot of the Gospel—good, beautiful man confronts evil, ugly establishment, loses everything, but then miraculously wins everything back in the end—is Christianity’s supreme gift to Hollywood. Think of good, beautiful Tom Cruise in “Jerry Maguire.”

 Think of good, beautiful Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke.” The list is endless. Generation after generation, the old story keeps on coming; only the faces change. Even Steven Spielberg couldn’t do his Holocaust movie, “Schindler’s List,” until he discovered Tom Keneally's book, "Schindler's Ark." Keneally had found within the supremely intractable catastrophe that was the holocaust a sub-story that conformed more or less to the Gospel archetype. “The Passion” conforms to the archetype in principle but differs from most Hollywood examples of it by severely contracting the beginning and the end (confrontation and triumph) and greatly expanding the middle (suffering and loss). As a result, despite the length of “The Passion,” I suspect audiences will walk out with a feeling of “Is that all?” Catharsis is withheld. Speaking personally, I regret the worsening of Jewish-Christian relations that is likely to result from the scenes I have lingered over in this review. I fear the use that may be made of the film by Muslim anti-Semites like Syrian president Bashar Assad. But both kinds of trouble may fade away as the film itself fades. More lasting, perhaps, may be a result of at least middling importance in Protestant-Catholic relations in the United States. I refer to the astonishing fact that in their embrace of “The Passion,” Evangelical Protestants are celebrating a portrayal of Jesus that visually and theologically—in every way, perhaps, except in the wail, thunder, and thud of John Debney’s deafening score—is flamboyantly, counter-Reformationally Roman. This film is awash in Catholic piety and Catholic imagery that the forebears of today’s evangelicals would have found religiously and esthetically repugnant. As I write, “The Passion” is being embraced most warmly by Bible Belt churches where, down to this day, the faithful kneel before crosses without corpses. What has come over them?

It is astonishing, finally, that political conservatives should embrace—during wartime—a film whose message is that when under murderous attack, one should not fight back but instead forgive one’s attackers and accept one’s death humbly as the will of God. Personally, I tend to think that a serious, life-challenging topic like pacifism is rarely if ever addressed effectively in a film. New films knock down old films as bowling balls knock down bowling pins in successive frames. Even the most grandiose of films asks so little of the filmgoer that the discussion almost never outlasts the hype.

Will this film be different? Perhaps it will be, but if it isn’t, fear not: Within the decade, there will be a remake. Of that, you can be certain. The Gospel is a story with legs—short ones, to be sure, but very, very sturdy.