Mel Gibson famously directed The Passion of the Christ in 2004,. It was the highest-grossing religious film of all time with over $600 million worldwide despite its R-rating. It also received nominations for Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, and Best Original Score at the Academy Awards and also a nomination for Best Original Score at the Golden Globe Awards. Here are some interesting facts you may not know about the film:

The Inspiration

Mel Gibson was influenced by reading The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ  by Anne Catherine Emmerich, a nun in the Eighteenth Century.

“She was always taking other people’s illnesses and she had these visions of the Passion of Christ. All of it completely meshes with the four gospels. It’s incredible the minutiae of what she gets into. She tells you about what Jesus was wearing, what the stitching was like… Now there’s nothing to say that you have to believe this, because it’s a vision and it can’t be one hundred per cent verified. But in reading you become deeply involved in the emotional aspects, and from your other reading you start cross-referencing in your brain.”[1]

You can watch an extended interview with Mel Gibson in 2004 where he develops his inspiration and motivation:

Self-Funded by Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson used his own money to fund the production of the film and invested his own money to ensure there was no censorship or interference from studios. He wanted it to be historically realistic and so it was filmed entirely in Aramaic with English subtitles. Mel Gibson wanted to use the ancient language that would have been spoken at the time of Jesus. However the historical elements also meant that some people were afraid that the film would be accused of being anti-Semitic. Accusations that the film perpetuated antisemitic stereotypes about the Jewish community in Jesus’ day did lead to some religious organizations organising protests and boycotts as they deemed it controversial and offensive.

Injuries During Filming

Jim Caviezel was injured on different occasion during the filming. During the scourging scene, Jim was also accidentally whipped. Twice! He reported that it literally knocked the wind out of him. ‘I turned around and looked at the guy, and I tell you, I may be playing Jesus, but I felt like Satan at that moment … a couple of expletives came out of my mouth.’[2]At one point the cross was dropped unto his shoulder resulting in a shoulder separation. Given that the cross weighed 130 pounds, it would have been incredibly painful. That scene is still in the film so the pain in his face would have been real. And to top it all off, he was literally struck by lightning while he was on the cross. ‘I knew about four seconds before it happened that I was going to get hit’, he said.

Religious Experiences

Legionary Father John Bartunek recalled that ‘everyone felt comfortable talking about issues of faith’ and that ‘being a priest in the midst of that, was like a lightning rod for spiritual conversations.’ He told how Luca Lionello who was a self-proclaimed “angry atheist” experienced a conversion as a result of playing the role of Judas. “He asked for confession. Apparently he had been completely transformed by the experience. He baptized his children, sanctified his marriage and came back to the Church.”[3]

The Most Important Film

Overall, The Passion of the Christ was the most important film Mel Gibson ever made and his version of the Easter Story was the pinnacle of his work to date:

“It’s all been working up to this. It was even in the background when I’ve made other films, as if they were dry runs for this one. I’d reached a horrible place where I was thinking about jumping out of a window. I wasn’t maintaining myself spiritually at all. I believed, but there’s a difference between knowing that something exists and actually doing something about it…I was looking down from twelve floors and seriously thinking I didn’t want to stay, but I was too much of a chicken to go splat. So I was stuck in this suspended agony, and it was like I just had to give up. I cried out in prayer, “Help! I need some help here.”… It was strange but things actually got worse for about six months. It was like a trial by fire. But I think you get to a place where, humanly speaking, there’s no solution to the Gordian knot that your life has become. So I thought, okay I just have to let what happens happen, and suffer, and hand it all over. And I watched very slowly over the course of six months this thing that had been the most hideous knot drop out into a straight line. I was staggered that my prayer was so effective…”

[1] The quotes in this blog are from an interview Ken Duncan conducted with Mel Gibson in Rome during filming of The Passion. See https://sightmagazine.com.au/features/mel-gibson-on-the-passion-of-the-christ-2 /

[2] https://www.looper.com/107673/bizarre-things-happened-set-passion-christ/

[3] https://www.looper.com/107673/bizarre-things-happened-set-passion-christ/