Both the Golden Globes and the Broadcast Film Critics passed
over The Passion of The Christ for any major nominations
this year. The American Film Institute made no mention of The
Passion in its 2004 best films of the year announcement. And
according to USA Today’s Oscar Oracle, The
Passion isn’t on the radar screen for even a single nomination
when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out
nominations at the end of January.
In the shadow of a public debate over the propriety of the words
“Merry Christmas” at department stores, a big battle in the culture
war is looming. The Passion of The Christ, one of the most
powerful, commercially successful, and, by any measure, brilliant
films of the year is being utterly rejected by the Hollywood elites
this award season, demonstrating yet again their tone deaf disdain
for all things middle-American.
What’s going on here? Well, the cultural elites took a whooping
on Election Day, 2004. And they are taking it out on Mel
Gibson.
The official reasons for denying The Passion an Oscar
nomination are fivefold. Herewith, I will attempt to discredit them
all:
The Passion is just a sadomasochistic bloodbath with
quasi-religious overtones.
The body count in The Passion is one (actually it’s
zero, but that argument is too big a leap for the average Academy
member, so we’ll just stick with one), far fewer than Mel Gibson’s
1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart, 1974’s The
Godfather Part II, or even 1991’s The Silence of the
Lambs in which the main character is a cannibal.
In 1994 The Academy nominated Pulp Fiction in which an
overdosed woman is resuscitated with a hypodermic stab to the
heart. Fargo, in which a murder victim is shredded to bits
in a wood chipper, was nominated for Best Picture in 1996. And two
years later Saving Private Ryan was nominated because it depicted
some of the most graphic and realistic war scenes in cinematic
history, not despite it.
The Academy has a long-running love affair with blood and guts,
so the idea that The Passion was just too gory doesn’t
hold water.
The Academy doesn’t do religious
films.
This argument is a little sturdier. But on closer examination,
we determine it, too is a fallacy. Ben Hur won the Best
Picture Oscar in 1959. Schindler’s List won in 1993.
The Ten Commandments was nominated in 1956. The Diary
of Anne Frank was nominated in 1959, as was The Nun’s
Story. The Exorcist was nominated in 1973.
Just last year The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The
King won the Oscar for Best Picture and its director Peter
Jackson won for Best Director. Said J.R.R. Tolkien of his master
work, “The Lord of the Rings is, of course, a
fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at
first, but consciously in the revision.”
The Passion just reflects Mel Gibson’s obscure brand
of extreme Catholicism.
Not true. Regardless of Mel Gibson’s own denominational
oddities, the film depicts an event no orthodox Christian —
Catholic or Protestant — denies occurred. Contemporary
non-Christian texts from Roman Jewish historian Josephus
substantiate at least the gist of what Gibson captures on
screen.
Moreover, Martin Scorsese was nominated for his direction of
1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which includes
artistic creations for which there is no scriptural support.
The factual errors disqualify the film for any
nominations.
There are only two serious “errors” in The Passion so
far as I understand this argument. The first is that none of the
Gospels has Satan moving through the crowd of Jews during Christ’s
passion, as Gibson does in the film.
This is a legitimate theological gripe, but a cinematic one?
Besides, who’s to say Satan wasn’t there? Satan obviously took a
considerable interest in the life, suffering, and death of
Jesus.
The second criticism is that the ten graphic minutes Gibson
dedicates to the flogging of Jesus is drenched in gruesome detail
for which there is no scriptural substantiation. Matthew, Mark and
John only say Christ was flogged; they mention no amount of time
and the severity is never indicated. But it would be irrational to
believe the flogging was mild considering the intensity of Jesus’
suffering throughout the balance of his Passion, about which the
Gospels leave little to the imagination.
Regardless, given the Academy has named Titanic Best
Picture and nominated Oliver Stone for Best Director
(JFK), we can reasonably assert that historical accuracy
is not a prerequisite for Oscar glory.
The Oscars don’t do foreign language
films.
This myth actually applies to the Golden Globes, not the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy nominated La
Vita é Bella (AKA: Life is Beautiful) for Best
Picture in 1998. The film’s leading man, Roberto Benigni, won the
Best Actor that year.
This is not a legitimate reason to pass over The
Passion.
Red Staters may have won on Election Day. But the cultural
elites will always have Hollywood.
