Movie Analysis: THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Themes: compassion, suffering, death
MPAA Rating: R
Year: 2004

This story is a masterpiece of narrative relevancy. One of the greatest challenges a storyteller can face is that of shaping historical fact into a compelling story line while maintaining strict accuracy. This story meets this challenge and surpasses it by adhering devoutly to the backbone of the story--the redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ.

Fully developed characters must have multilayered goals, motivations, and conflicts. Often this is difficult to achieve in a true story, because these things manifest in real life in experiences that can imbalance traditional story structure. But The Passion hands the viewer the threads to all these in the beginning, and then skillfully braids them together.

Jesus' goal, motivation, and conflict are clearly delineated in the first scene. His external goal is to pay the price for mankind's sin, while internally he wants to fulfill his mission on earth. His external motivation sources from the family and friends that he loves, while his internal motivation is an unquenchable desire to please God. His external conflict is the limits of a natural human body, and his internal conflict is relentless psychological warfare waged by Satan.

With this heart beating at the core of the story, every narrative artery finds its way home again.

The story is violent, nearly from beginning to end, but what elevates the violence beyond the reach of numbing gore is the unrelenting relevancy of every blow. Every individual act is emotionally connected to the characters, furthering the story line.

The Passion expertly draws the line between relevant violence and gore. Gore separates the act of violence from the person of the character. One example of this is in Black Hawk Down, when one of the American soldiers loses his leg, and his comrade vainly attempts to gouge his hand up the victim's leg to grasp a retracting artery. The scene is raw, shocking, and bloody. It leaves the surviving characters deeply shaken for the rest of the scene. But the characters that this violence occurs to could be exchanged for any others without alteration to the physical, emotional, or thematic outcome of the story. It could even be suggested that the scene is excessive and at best one- or two-dimensional.

To keep from falling flat each scene should accomplish no less than three story purposes. The Passion accomplishes this by securely tying every act of violence first to the goal of Jesus Christ. It is his foremost plan to suffer the full penalty of sin for mankind. Simultaneously each blow serves as a direct conflict to this goal, threatening to further his opponent Satan's goal of killing him before Jesus' mission is accomplished. Thirdly, the storytellers use the violence to characterize not only Jesus, but those around him--his family, friends, and persecutors.

A character without a flaw is typically hard to make sympathetic to viewers. But for all his divinity, Jesus is characterized in a way that implores sympathy while commanding respect. His faultlessness does not make him distant or weak, because he never uses it to lord himself over others or act in any way superior. He is without sin, but not without suffering and pain, love and temptation--all emotions that are universal to the human condition. His internal conflict, the determination to love in the face of virulent, unceasing hatred, is riveting and powerful.

The key roles in The Passion are filled with well-rounded characters. Their personal goals, motivations, and conflicts are eternally impacted by Jesus' suffering. The story's strong narrative train travels compelling emotional terrain all the way to its satisfying destination on Resurrection Morning.