Jesuits rarely receive frantic calls from Hollywood megastars rushing to finish movies that are causing media firestorms.<\/p>\n\n
But Father William Fulco is getting used to it, as Mel Gibson completes his cathartic epic \u201cThe Passion of the Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
While mixing dialogue the other day, Gibson hit a scene in which a man standing at a door lacked something to say. The director needed a line \u2014 right now. Fulco\u2019s first question was unique to this project: Was this character supposed to speak Latin or first-century Aramaic?<\/p>\n\n
\u201cMel said the camera was not on the speaker\u2019s face, so we did not need to synchronize what he said with his the movements of his mouth,\u201d said Fulco, who translated the screenplay into the two ancient languages, with English subtitles.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe character needed to say something in Aramaic in the ballpark of, \u2018What do you want?\u2019 So I had him say in rather colloquial early Aramaic, \u2018MAH? MAH BA\u2019EH?\u2019 That is literally, \u2018What? What wanting?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n\n
That worked.<\/p>\n\n
It has been nearly two years since Fulco answered the telephone and heard a strange voice blurt out: \u201cHey Padre! It\u2019s Mel!\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Gibson\u2019s proposal was unusual, but fit the Jesuit\u2019s skills as a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Fulco began digging into Hebrew texts seeking the roots of the now-dead Aramaic language, while simultaneously exploring dialects such as Syriac spoken today in tiny Christian enclaves in Iran, Syria and Turkey. He also stepped into heated academic debates between those who favor a more Italian-friendly Latin and those who reject this approach.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting hate mail about Latin pronunciations,\u201d said Fulco. \u201cOn guy wrote who was angry about what he called \u2018these ecclesiastical bastardizations\u2019 of the Latin. Not only was he going to boycott the movie, he said he was going to call his high school Latin teacher and tell her to boycott the movie as well. \u2026<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI have to keep reminding people: This is not a documentary. We had to make artistic choices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Legions of critics, of course, oppose the film for other reasons. Liberal Catholics and some Jewish leaders claim the script is tainted by anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, Gibson \u2014 who has invested $25 million in the project \u2014 has previewed early versions to rapt audiences of traditional Catholics, evangelicals and others. The film opens on 2,000 U.S. screens on Feb. 25, which is Ash Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n
It is crucial to realize that the images and language at the heart of \u201cThe Passion of the Christ\u201d flow directly out of Gibson\u2019s personal dedication to Catholicism in one of its most traditional and mysterious forms \u2014 the 16th century Latin Mass.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t go to any other services,\u201d the director told the Eternal Word Television Network. \u201cI go to the old Tridentine Rite. That\u2019s the way that I first saw it when I was a kid. So I think that that informs one\u2019s understanding of how to transcend language. Now, initially, I didn\u2019t understand the Latin. \u2026 But I understood the meaning and the message and what they were doing. I understood it very fully and it was very moving and emotional and efficacious, if I may say so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The goal of the movie is to shake modern audiences by brashly juxtaposing the \u201csacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice of the altar \u2014 which is the same thing,\u201d said Gibson. This ancient union of symbols and sounds has never lost its hold on him. There is, he stressed, \u201ca lot of power in these dead languages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Thus, the seemingly bizarre choice of Latin and Aramaic was actually part of the message. The goal of Gibson\u2019s multicultural, multilingual team was to make a statement that transcended any one time, culture and tongue.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t want another movie with Jesus as some kind of Aryan superman or Jesus as a surfer,\u201d said Fulco. \u201cWe saw one movie in which Jesus was almost this Michael Jackson kind of character. Try to imagine that. \u2026<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t want an American Jesus, or a Japanese Jesus or a French Jesus. What we wanted was a language that allowed Jesus to be none of these nationalities, so that he can be all of them at the same time. This is a universal story.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jesuits rarely receive frantic calls from Hollywood megastars rushing to finish movies that are causing media firestorms. But Father William Fulco is getting used to it, as Mel Gibson completes his cathartic epic \u201cThe Passion of the Christ.\u201d While mixing dialogue the other day, Gibson hit a scene in which a man standing at a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64,308,431,544,1542,856],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-semitism","tag-easter","tag-hollywood","tag-mel-gibson","tag-movies","tag-the-passion"],"yoast_head":"\n