WASHINGTON — When I first heard that Mel Gibson was making a
movie about Christ’s passion, I didn’t believe I’d ever see it. At
the time, the swirl of rumors said it was to be a three-hour
religious epic, in Aramaic, without subtitles. I doubted it would
ever make it to video, never mind a full theatrical release.
A year-and-a-half later I found myself standing in line with at
least 100 other people hoping to get into an Ash Wednesday matinee
of The Passion of the Christ. Many of us bunched together
for over an hour waiting for the theater manager to open the doors.
Camera crews from three local television stations made appearances
while we idled, stopping long enough to get a shot of the line and
to ask a few old ladies why they were excited to see the movie.
As show time crept closer, some surprisingly un-Christian
behavior began. A teenage couple in matching “Jesus: The Choice of
a New Generation” T-shirts made out against the wall next to me
without the slightest prick of self-consciousness. I gawked in
spite of myself and wondered what their parents would do if they
found out this was the real reason they let their kids play
hooky.
There was also an awful lot of shouting near the front of the
line when someone tried to cut. “It starts back there, chump!” a
man shouted finally, waving his arms. When the thwarted cutter gave
up and headed for the back of the line, he made sure his shoulder
more than brushed into the man who called him out. So much for
turning the other cheek.
Finally, the line moved forward. I bought my ticket and walked
inside. A church group was hunkered down in the theater adjacent to
the one in which The Passion was about to show. Later, I
would hear the sarcastic bravado of Ice Cube flowing out of that
room as Barbershop 2: Back in Business played, but at this
point a preacher was finishing up an energetic pre-Passion
sermon.
“Mel Gibson has given you an opportunity to praise God with your
dollars,” one immaculately dressed young man, all smiles, told
three older women in the back of the room. “When you buy a ticket
to this movie, it sends a message. It is telling people, God is
alive and well — and he’s still got one heck of an audience.”
HE WASN’T TEASING about the audience. The Passion is a
difficult film to describe. It is as unrelenting as it is powerful.
The air in the packed theater crackled with electricity, as the
hype and the reality collided on the screen above us.
For all the talk of ultra-violence and gore, the film isn’t any
harsher than your typical Martin Scorsese pic. But knowing where
the story is going, the tragedy of what this man suffered despite
his goodness and innocence — I never felt anyone in
Goodfellas was being unreasonably whacked, for example —
made watching it all the harder to bear.
But watch we did, the silence punctuated only with sobs from
every corner of the theater. A black woman in her mid-sixties
seated next to me passed tissues down our row. During the
crucifixion scene she became overwhelmed and burst into loud
sobs.
“It’s going to be all right,” I whispered. She calmed slowly and
put her hand on mine, squeezing tightly when the nails were
hammered into Jesus’ hands and feet. When the lights came up, she
hugged me and said, “God bless you.”
I looked around, and saw other aisles were full of people wiping
away tears, hands on each other’s shoulders or locked in embrace.
And I thought to myself, This is unlike anything I have ever
seen.
