Mel Gibson to Direct "Passion"

Mel Gibson has apparently decided to make his own movie about Christ's last day, encompassing the suffering His Passion. Jim Caviezel is to play Jesus, and the movie will be shot in the ancient languages of Aramaic and Latin, with a little Hebrew (and Mel doesn't want subtitles, it would distract from the experience). Aside from using the Gospels, he will be drawing from the books "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ" by the mystic nun Anne Catherine Emmerich and "The City of God" by the mystic nun Mary of Agreda to flesh out some of the chronology. He has also tapped Caleb Deschanel as his cinemetographer, and wants the film to look "Caravaggio-esque." They are filming in Rome and Matera, Italy, to give the feel of the ancient city of Jerusalem. Currently, Gibson is financing it himself but has no distributor. Mel is creating it as an expression of his own faith that has come full circle in the last 12 years, and he noted that many spiritual and miraculous things have happened on the set.

What's particularly fascinating is the way God seems to be working in incredible ways through miraculous situations both on and off the set. "There is an interesting power in the script", Gibson notes. "There have been a lot of unusual things happening, good things like people being healed of diseases, a couple of people have had sight and hearing restored, another guy was struck by lightning while we were filming the crucifixion scene and he just got up and walked away. There was even a little six year old girl (the daughter of a person connected with the crew) who had epilepsy since she was born and had up to 50 epileptic fits a day, she doesn't have them anymore for over a month now." He marvels at how this movie has effected or touched most of the cast in some deep and personal way. "And they really give you a lot of hope, it's like wow! I mean, we're not kidding around about this, it's really happening."

When asked about why he decided, seemingly suddenly, to focus on a movie about Jesus' Passion, Gibson replied:

"When I was growing up the whole story of the Passion was very sanitized and distant, it seemed to me very much like a fairy tale. Then from about the age of 15 to age 35, I kind of did my own thing as it were, not that I didn't believe in God, I just didn't practice faith or give it much consideration. I went through that period in my life where you put a lot of other things first. So coming back 20 years later, it seemed so distant, you know? I had to reconsider and say to myself, now hang on a minute, this isn't a fairy tale and this actually happened, this is real. And that started me thinking about what it must have been like, what Christ went through and I started seeing it in film terms."

What does Gibson hope the film will accomplish?

Mel Gibson’s heart, passion and hope for his film is simply this; "My hope is that this movie has a tremendous message of faith, hope, love, forgiveness and a message of tremendous courage and sacrifice. My hope is that it will effect people on a very profound level and somehow change them and that message is a pretty good message to be pushing right now. There's so much turmoil in the world today, on the brink of everybody at each others throats, I think usually when the world is tried in this way people usually start going back to something higher to fill a void in their souls, particularly if the earth is crying out in pain from all the suffering and fear that's inflicted by war and hatred. For me, I don't think there's a better message you could put out there, than what's in this movie."