The story of Jesus Christ has been told numerous times on film. Musicals such as Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar have been kitschy cinematic staples since the 1960's and 70's, Martin Scorcese moved millions with The Last Temptation of Christ and Cecil B. Demille brought Jewish outrage upon himself with the initial release of his 1927 film The King of Kings. Demille was the most recent filmmaker to bring such criticism until rumors began to circulate of Mel Gibson's ambitious project taken straight from the Gospels, then-tentatively titled The Passion of Christ.Countless rumors, religious protests and a small title change later, The Passion of the Christ is now playing in theaters all over the country. But while the pre-release debate focused largely on rumors of extreme anti-Semitism, Gibson's Passion has a deeper, much more fatal flaw. The movie is disturbingly presumptive and narrow in its focus-Gibson concerns himself with the last 12 hours of Christ's life and not much more than that at all.

The movie begins in the Garden of Gethsemane with Judas' betrayal of Jesus to the High Priests. For anyone not familiar with the story of Christ, the story told in the Gospels, this would be immediately problematic. Even for someone informed, it could be an issue. Why is Jesus hiding in a garden? Why is Judas betraying him? Or, even more importantly, who is Judas? How does he know Jesus? What did Jesus do wrong to warrant his arrest? Who are these men in tall hats and big robes? None of these questions are answered in the next 126 minutes of this film; Gibson assumes that because he knows, and you are going to see his movie, that you must know as well.

That presumption undermines the movie as a whole. Very little is told to the viewer about Jesus himself, other than a few relatively inconsequential (and sometimes ridiculous) flashbacks. One of the most moving elements of the story of Jesus is that he wasn't born into a royal family, or a family deeply involved in the ruling Jewish hierarchy at that time. He was a carpenter; the son of a carpenter and relatively poor. The movie's only reference to this humanizing element of a largely divine figure is a ridiculous flashback that seems to credit Jesus with the invention of the table and chairs as we know them.

But more importantly, those of us who are unfamiliar with the full story of Jesus are not given any insight into his religious significance. We are not shown the supposed Son of God performing any miracles, or even preaching his message to his disciples (aside from a brief and trivial flashback as he is dying on the cross). Nor do we see anything of previous episodes of persecution, from either the Romans or the Jews. This leaves us with an empty character, one who is cold and distant unless you are already familiar with him. In any other movie, that would be considered poor filmmaking.

There is also the issue of historical accuracy. Gibson has said time and again that he told this story based solely on the story of the Gospels. That is untrue, as he has also admitted to using a book written by 19th century nun Ann Catherine Emmerich which details her vivid visions of Christ's torture and crucifixion. Indeed, some of the most memorable scenes in the movie (such as Christ's brutal whipping at the hands of the Romans) are guided by this literature. So if Gibson was so willing to make his movie historically "accurate" in that manner, why not in others?

There is the issue of Pontius Pilate. The Gospels depict him as a ruler who is generally ambiguous toward Jesus; he just wants to pacify the yelling crowd. Gibson takes that characterization one step further in The Passion of the Christ by portraying Pilate as both morally conflicted and compassionate as well. Unfortunately, those characterizations don't jive with what is known to be historical fact.

Historically, Pilate was a ruthless and brutal Roman ruler, described by first-century historian Josephus as a notoriously harsh prefect who was quick to crucify even potential political rebels. The truth is, Pilate had a more vested interest in the death of Jesus than the Jewish Orthodoxy did. Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem stirred up major popular interest, a historically documented fact. To Pilate, who had already had problems with the Jews rebelling against Roman rule, this made Jesus a potential political threat. This would have justified his decision to crucify Jesus, as crucifixion was carried out almost exclusively for political executions.
According to Jewish law, claiming to be the son of God is not blasphemy, and if it had been, the Jews would have condemned Jesus to death via their own means, namely stoning. That Jesus was crucified speaks to him being perceived as a political threat by Pilate. And when the Gospels were written, between 70 and 110 years after the crucifixion itself, the Jews and the followers of Jesus-who had not yet completely separated themselves from Judaism-had just been defeated by the Romans in the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66-74. Consequently, as the early Christians began to distance themselves from Judaism, it was wiser to align themselves with the Romans by portraying Pilate as a much less evil man, and to alienate the Jews by placing more blame on them for Jesus' death.

But Gibson has no patience for these nuances. Instead, he chooses gore over complexity and meaning, cinematic grandiosity over the honest and nuanced telling of what is obviously an important historical event. Gibson's blind storytelling does a disservice to one of the most moving stories in the history of literature. Whether you, like Gibson, take the Gospel as truth or just as a stunning piece of writing, there is no doubt that those words have the power to move millions of hearts and minds-so much power, in fact, that those words began an entire religion. The Passion of the Christ is an unfortunately Hollywood-infected, glamorized and simplified version of what is, in essence, a very personal and human tragedy.