In vino veritas, they say. This week, admirers of auteur Mel Gibson were granted a rare glimpse inside the soul of this national treasure, when Gibson was arrested in Malibu for driving under the influence. Longtime students of the Gibsonian oeuvre are aware that his unique brand of ultra orthodox splinter Catholicism informs every aspect of his work and life, so it comes as little surprise that upon meeting someone for the first time, even a deputy Sheriff busily applying handcuffs, the saintly director’s instinct would be to inquire after the man’s spiritual condition by asking the arresting officer if he was a Jew.
This interest is natural, when one considers that Pope John Paul II, the most beloved pontiff in living memory, was deeply concerned with reconciling Christianity and Judaism, and referred to the Jewish people as “our elder brothers in faith.” That Gibson should echo the Holy Father’s encomium is all the more touching when one recalls that Gibson belongs to a breakaway sect of Catholicism run by his dad which rejects the legitimacy of every Pope chosen since Vatican II. But armed with this new insight — Gibson’s previously unknown concern with Jewish penetration of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — many previously arcane elements of the gifted actor-director’s body of work may be illuminated, exposed as tesselae, so to speak, of a gorgeous spiritual mosaic. Let us consider the following films, and see what we may glean from them regarding the influence of faith upon art.
Braveheart (1995)
The Man Without A Face (1993)
We Were Soldiers (2002)
The Patriot (2000)
Signs (2002)
In reviewing the oeuvre of Mel Gibson, it becomes clear that his work as both actor and director is thoroughly infused with his Christian faith. That he is, as pundit Dennis Prager might say*, a “Judeo-Christian Soldier/Marching as to war.”
And that he really, really doesn’t like Jews.
*just not to Mel’s face.