Friday, May 09, 2003

Monica Bellucci (Mary Magdalene) Defends "Passion"

Monica Bellucci, who stars in Mel Gibson's upcoming Passion, downplayed to SCI FI Wire reports that the movie about Jesus Christ's last days would cast Jews in a bad light. Controversy has swirled around Gibson's pet project, which some fear may resurrect the canard that Jews killed Christ—a position formally denounced by the Catholic church. Gibson has previously taken issue with some of the church's more recent policies.

"It's so funny for me that everybody's talking about it being so controversial, and nobody's seen the movie," Bellucci said in an interview while promoting her upcoming sequel film The Matrix Reloaded. "Visually it's going to be something beautiful and strong, but ... everybody [already] knows the story. So I don't understand what can be so controversial." She added: "It's not the Jews. I mean, it was the political situation. It was the Romans who killed Jesus. They put Jesus on the cross, not the Jews."

But Bellucci acknowledged that she had not yet seen a finished version of Gibson's movie, which stars Jim Caviezel and was reportedly shot in ancient languages, such as Latin and Aramaic, with no subtitles. "We just finished about two months ago," she said. As for the controversy, she said, "It's good for us. It's good to be controversial. ... I have nothing against controversy." Passion is tentatively slated for an April 2004 release.