I just heard part of a review of the new Mel Gibson movie that brought out a viewpoint I hadn’t yet heard. The fact that the reviewer had 12 years of Catholic education helped inform his experience, I think. He knew the story, in other words.
Rather than get into the whole notion of guilt or who did what and why, the reviewer (Robert Horton on KUOW) saw this new movie as a continuation of Gibson’s work portraying anti-authority figures (Mad Max, the Lethal Weapon series).
The presence of a charismatic rebel threatened the two competing power elites — the high priests and the Roman governor — and I’m sure they didn’t care who got rid of him or how (shades of Thomas á Becket’s martyrdom)[1]. Seen that way, it seems like an interesting concept.
The reviewer also pointed out/warned about the intensity and upfront presence of the violence: he saw it as senseless in that it didn’t further the story. Isn’t the senselessness of torturing and crucifying a political dissident part of the story? Other than some silliness with a fall from a bridge, broken only by the chains binding the hero, it seems to follow the written book(s) pretty closely.
fn1. As pointed out here, there’s no real chance of determining who bears responsibility for a 2000 year old crime. It seems we’ve had enough trouble in recent years sorting out the Holocaust, and we have living witnesses in that one.