Wired Mesh

Anthony Lane Belatedly Reviews The Passion (Sort Of)

Actually, this week Lane offers thoughts on the re-release of Monty Python's The Life of Brian, but he sticks in a few pointed words about that Gibson movie.

“Life of Brian” contains not a shred of blasphemy. It lacks the withering designs of the true heretic—the cruel intent that led Buñuel, say, to stage his boozy parody of the Last Supper, in “Viridiana.” The Pythons are enlightened jesters, whose scorn is reserved for those who persist in walking in darkness, although the anniversary release of “Life of Brian” strikes me not so much as a frontal assault on “The Passion of the Christ”—and surely some enterprising theatre owner will screen them as a double bill—as a sharp sideways nudge, bright with opportunism. After all, nobody could deny that Gibson fulfills his believer’s task as energetically as Palin, Cleese, and the rest of the gang launch their liberal raids. To complain that “The Passion of the Christ” is possessed by death makes no sense, because Christianity itself makes no sense without the shroud of death; the story of Jesus, shorn of its climactic sufferings, dwindles into a set of difficult ethics.

It's hard not to see this bit of criticism as a broadside at Lane's fellow New Yorker reviewer David Denby, who attacked The Passion as "a sickening death trip." My immediate thought is that Lane has a laudable understanding of Christian soteriology, but I'm open to other insights from all them theologians out there...