With the ear being even more prone to wander than the eye, this dual engagement of the senses deepens the viewer’s immersion in the action, the reading eye serving to support the listening ear.
Furthermore, the subtitles add a subtlety to the viewer’s experience of the work, requiring a visual involvement with the words and not merely an aural engagement. Having Christ speak in Hollywood English would have vulgarized and trivialized His words, much as the vernacular vulgarizes and trivializes the words of consecration at the Mass. This daring decision to let the story speak in archaic “dead” languages is truly inspired, adding a paradoxical depth and power, the numinous serving to ennoble the luminous, much as Latin ennobles and illuminates the liturgy. And, what is more, the sparing dialogue is either in Aramaic or Latin, requiring the use of subtitles. No word is uttered that is not absolutely necessary, and each word is delivered with pinpoint potency. The dialogue, of which there is very little, is sparing, succinct, and to the point. It does so, paradoxically, by breaking all the rules. It transcends the genre, defying its limitations. It is so good, in fact, that it is inadequate to see it as being merely a film. This year, our daughter having recently turned thirteen, we took it out, dusted it down, and watched it together as a family. For years, therefore, our copy of the DVD gathered dust amongst the many neglected disks in a cabinet in the playroom. Gibson’s presentation of the Passion being unsuitable for young eyes. This came to an end after our daughter became old enough to be affected by what she saw on the screen, the gruesome violence of Mr. There was a period of several years after its release that my wife and I had made a point of watching it during Holy Week. It’s been seventeen years since the premiere of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, and it’s been almost as long since I’d last seen it. It calls us to prayer and leads us to the contemplation that takes us into the presence of Christ Himself. It would be more accurate to describe it as a moving icon. It is inadequate to describe Mel Gibson’s masterpiece, “The Passion of the Christ,” as a film it is much more than that.
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