Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ tried to scare Christians into evangelical submission. We look back at the anti-Semite's film.
When I was young, teetering on the edge of sleep each night, I would test my love for God. My fists would clench beneath the thin sheet, my eyes would scrunch closed, my muscles went rigid, shaking with the effort of my focus. I would think about all the good things in my life and tell God I loved him, counting each declaration as it ticked past; 10 times, then 20, then 50.
“Because of my experience I started to focus on the Passion of Jesus, which for me, growing up as a kid, had always been sanitized and not real, like a fairytale,” hecame together. The first scene opens with Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane while being, who skulks around our sweaty protagonist, peering out beneath a dark cape.