FACT OR FICTION?
CHARLES OSGOOD, host:
Fact or Fiction? The question is asked of any motion picture based upon historical themes, but rarely has a film raised such heated questions about authenticity and intent as the film that was released this past Ash Wednesday. Our cover story is reported by Martha Teichner.
(Footage of religious mosaics)
MARTHA TEICHNER reporting:
(Voiceover) In the bloodless ecumenical comfort zone of American religion, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" arrives like a shock to the system.
(Footage of "The Passion of the Christ;" news articles; protesters)
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) The violence comes as a shock, even though you'd have to have been living under a rock to have missed the controversy surrounding the movie's release.
Unidentified Man #1: The movie clearly blames the Jewish people.
Unidentified Man #2: Mel Gibson, you are an anti-Semite.
Unidentified Man #3: We really believe this movie is going to impact your life.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Think of hurricane coverage on television.
Unidentified Man #4: (Voiceover) It is dangerous.
Unidentified Man #5: (Voiceover) Powerful.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) The build-up, the hype and finally landfall...
Unidentified Man #6: (Voiceover) On the phone to talk about it...
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) ...with every aspect of the storm discussed to death...
Unidentified Man #7: (Voiceover) ...deeply disturbing...
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) ...long before the thing actually hits.
(Footage of magazine with Mel Gibson on the cover)
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) And in the middle of it all, explaining himself, Mel Gibson.
(Excerpts from various television shows)
Unidentified Man #8: Are you anti-Semitic?
Mr. MEL GIBSON ("The Passion of the Christ"): Of course not. I don't want to lynch any Jews. I mean, it's like, it's not what I'm about. I love them.
I'm not playing the blame game at all.
I wanted it to be shocking, and I also wanted it to be extreme. I wanted it to push the viewer over the edge.
(Footage of "The Passion of the Christ")
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Given the magnitude of the flap, should Mel Gibson have made a tamer, more politically correct movie?
Professor JAMES SHAPIRO (Columbia University): It would have been a terrible film if Mel Gibson accommodated to his critics before this film came out. His job is to make a film that expresses his beliefs, his vision, his version.
(Footage of James Shapiro's book; illustration and photographs of passion play)
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Gibson has made the film version of a medieval passion play, according to passion play expert, Columbia University Professor James Shapiro.
Prof. SHAPIRO: Passion plays began in the 12th, 13th centuries, and they began as part of a movement in Christianity at that time, to focus, embrace the crucifixion and the suffering of Jesus more than any other aspect of his teachings or his resurrection.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Today, the passion play held every 10 years at Oberammergau in Germany is the best-known. It, too, has been accused of being anti-Semitic, like the film, for its perceived good guys vs. bad guys portrayal of Jesus and the Jews who condemned him.
Prof. SHAPIRO: Whether it's Shakespeare or Brecht or passion plays, theater is about conflict, and the sharper the conflict, the more powerful the drama.
(Footage of "The Passion of the Christ")
Mr. ROBERT BRENT TOPLIN (Author, "Reel History"): (Voiceover) It's a powerful movie, the graphic violence, the amazingly intelligent photography, use of shadows, use of colors and sound effects, so it makes us feel the passion and the pain.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Robert Brent Toplin has written extensively on how Hollywood portrays history. He finds Mel Gibson's take on the crucifixion and the vocabulary of Hollywood a perfect match.
(Footage of "Saving Private Ryan")
Mr. TOPLIN: (Voiceover) It's very much like "Saving Private Ryan," in the sense that we remember, above all, the experience of the soldiers at D-Day, so that's the modern kind of historical film, not so much a big picture of information, but more of a--an emotionally powerful hit.
(Footage of "The Passion of the Christ;" "The Last Temptation of Christ;" news articles, demonstrators)
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) So why is violence acclaimed as justifiable realism in "Saving Private Ryan," but now, in "The Passion," considered controversial and then some? Controversy, it seems, is inevitable any time a filmmaker dares to make a Jesus movie with a point of view, as Martin Scorsese learned the hard way in 1988. Tens of thousands of Catholics and evangelical Christians, the very people who've been flocking to Mel Gibson's film, protested Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ."
Obviously, the controversy was devastating.
Mr. MARTIN SCORSESE (Filmmaker): Yes.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Fifteen years later, in an interview with SUNDAY MORNING, Scorsese acknowledged the pain it caused.
Mr. SCORSESE: People misunderstood. People did get offended, but I realized that it was kind of a humbling experience for me to think in those terms.
(Footage of "King of Kings")
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Hollywood has attempted non-confrontational biblical movies, like "King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told," in the 1960s.
Mr. TOPLIN: These movies were much like a Sunday school lesson. They were flops, especially "The Greatest Story Ever Told." It cost about $20 million, earned about $7 million.
TEICHNER: This is a copy of Life magazine from 1965. In it, a review of "The Greatest Story Ever Told." The director was George Stevens. Listen to this: (Reading) `Stevens has said that he believes his picture will have great ecumenical value because it does not offend any religion.' But, the review goes on, `By not offending anybody, he first bores and finally outrages all but the most pious of movie fans.' Here we have the Mel Gibson-"Passion" controversy in reverse.
Professor WILLIAM FULCO (Loyola Marymount University): We have an old Jesuit saying: Our job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) And that's the whole point of "The Passion of the Christ," according to William Fulco, a Jesuit priest, a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He was an adviser to the movie and translated the dialogue into Aramaic and Latin.
(Footage of "The Passion of the Christ")
Prof. FULCO: As part of the objections of the film, we're saying this is going to make Christians turn anti-Semitic, which, I think, people are either anti-Semitic or they're not, a film is not going to turn them into it.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) That's one view. Here's another.
Mr. TOPLIN: A lot of people laughingly push aside the notion that films will influence us. Oh, it's just a movie. But the record of Hollywood movies' effect on people is tremendous.
(Footage of "The Birth of a Nation")
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Toplin points to the 1915 D.W. Griffith film, "The Birth of a Nation."
Mr. TOPLIN: (Voiceover) It's a highly prejudiced film. That movie inspired the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan, and by the 1920s there were millions of card-carrying members. It makes African-Americans look terrible.
(Footage of history class)
Mr. ROBERT TUCKER (History Teacher): Now presumably the author of this film is trying to--has a certain message.
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) When Robert Tucker's history classes at Hastings High School in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, were studying the reconstruction period after the Civil War, they were required to watch "The Birth of a Nation" as propaganda. We asked the students to recall their reactions to the film.
Unidentified Student #1: Well, I think it was kind of shocking.
Unidentified Student #2: You know, some parts were a little--kind of uncomfortable, just watching, like, the Ku Klux Klan...
TEICHNER: Are you inclined to go into a movie and believe what you see as history in a movie?
Unidentified Student #3: I think that--I mean, I would like to say no, but I think depending on the presentation of it, I might be more inclined to believe it than not.
Mr. TUCKER: I think ideas should compete in the marketplace. I think people should be exposed to them and have a right to judge.
TEICHNER: How many of you think that you're going to try, with your parents or otherwise, to go see the Mel Gibson movie? Why?
Unidentified Student #4: Curiosity.
TEICHNER: Curiosity?
(Footage of "The Passion of the Christ")
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) But curiosity doesn't fully explain "The Passion of the Christ" phenomenon, the fault line that it's exposed.
Prof. SHAPIRO: What I'm trying to understand is what this says about us now, because passion plays always tell you about their moment. They don't tell you about what happened 2000 years ago. They tell you about how we like to imagine what happened 2,000 years ago.
Prof. FULCO: I think especially since the '60s, there's been an ecumenical `Let's be nice to one another,' not only amongst Christians and Jews, but amongst Christians and other--and Christians. But I think simmering beneath the surface there were real differences that never were really addressed, and I think that one thing the publicity this movie has--has created is that we have to face the issues now.
(Footage of movie-goers; "The Passion of the Christ")
TEICHNER: (Voiceover) And that seems to be happening if the box office is any gauge. By tomorrow, five days after opening, the film is expected to have made $100 million. That's blockbuster status by any reckoning.
(Visual of SUNDAY MORNING sun logo; footage of people playing poker)
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) Ahead, why a game from the past is holding its own.