It gives The Duke no pleasure to announce that in The Passion Of The Christ, Mel Gibson has crafted one of my favourite films of all ever. Still fairly secure in its placing amidst the Top Three Flicks Of 2004, only Oldboy has really offered any serious competition as of yet. And anyway, it’s technically a 2003 number.
Also, I was rather alarmed earlier today when, reflecting on this state of events with a good friend, Sir George, I realised that I don’t actually dislike any of the flicks Gibson has directed. In fact, truth be told, I kinda rather like them. To take this matter to a statistical head, I own two-thirds of Mel Gibson’s filmography on DVD. Only Man Without A Face is missing from the (shudder) Complete Collection.
I guess it makes sense. The three films he has made thus far all basically tell the same story. Some fella, a misunderstood outsider type, is persecuted and attacked, then ends up getting a dose of the good ol’ torture, either mentally, as in Man Without A Face (which should by all rights be called Fella With A Face That’s Burned A Bit On One Side), or physically as in the spectacularly barbaric ending of Braveheart, or both, as in this flick discussed herein, The Passionate Christs or whatever.
Anyone who follows The Duke’s intellectually challenging musings on cinema will know that Passion Of The Christ was destined to become a firm favourite. It combines two of my most beloved of filmic genres, the exploitation flick and the religious epic, and better yet, looks like one of those Titian paintings I so adore.
I’ve saw the damn thing five times by now, and today the DVD arrived in Mondo Towers. Thus, I can delete the copy I downloaded a few months back.
Sorry Mel Gibson, but I still saw the damn thing twice in the cinema and anyway, although you seem to have maybe forgotten about a fair old portion of his philosophical musings, Jesus used to go on quite a bit about the old “forgiveness” and so on.
I repent, motherfucker.
So, then, the fact is that The Duke was going to buy this flick on digital disc regardless of any extras or any of that kinda stuff. I have a serious DVD addiction, and this had to be part of the collection, end of story. A little something would’ve been nice, though (If ever a film cried out for “Easter eggs”, this is it). Mark Kermode made a brilliant documentary on the film for Channel 4 around the time of the theatrical release, for example. It would've been nice to see it on here.
But this naive assumption on The Duke’s part failed to take two very important considerations into account.
To wit; that Kermode’s film maybe offered a little too much of the “personal” malarkey than Icon films would be comfortable with, and also, that this right here is the apex of cinematic achievement, you motherfucking commoner, and if you thought it was gonna be sullied by anything so vulgar as a “commentary” or some shit then you better think the hell again, is what, and this time you better think something along the lines of “Of course there won’t be no extras, what the hell more do you need than the most awe-inspiring of all filmic product?”
So, nary an extra. Well, there’s actually an extra of sorts. Way down at the bottom of the DVD packaging, there’s a mention of something along the lines of an “Audio Descriptive Track”. The Duke pondered the possibilities; was this just some fancy way of saying there is, in fact, a commentary on the disc after all? What would this entail, this “Audio Descriptive Track”?
Turns out, it’s an audio description of what’s going on in the film. For example; “Text appears onscreen. (reads text). Jesus walks over to two bearded men. The bearded men are sitting by a tree.” And so on and so forth.
It does provide something of the “fun”, however, to see how the narrator handles the half-hour whipping, flailing extravaganza. “The roman soldier hits Jesus.” Again and again.
But to hell with the lack-of-extras, the film itself is as amazing as ever, and looks fantastic. The sound is also remarkable, all those eerie children wailing around the speakers, coupled with that ominous, sinister soundtrack what is so marvellous within the film, but when listened to on CD actually turns out to be a bit lacking in the “meat” department.
It’s also possible to pick up on things you missed first time around, probably on account of you had to look away, or maybe went out for a piss and missed all the scourging. The level of detail in the violence is really rather inspiring. What about when one of the whip things with spikes on the end catches the side of Christ’s jaw for a moment? Tiny details a fella might miss. Like maybe the nineteenth time he staggers and then falls down.
It’s well documented that The Duke is a demented motherfucker, and obviously more sensitive souls might not want to watch this thing more than once. I find the whole thing so breathtakingly beautiful, however, that I could watch it a dozen times a week. I might fast- forward some of the stumbling, falling, getting up again though. And the CGI ending still sucks.
I believe that the wonderful South Park episode, The Passion Of The Jew, is to be released on Region 1 DVD on Tuesday as well. The disc features two bonus episodes, Christian Rock Hard, when Cartman formed a Christian rock band, and Red Hot Catholic Love, when the priest visited the Vatican and we find out that the Catholic Church is run by a giant spider. Brilliant.
