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TwitThisClarity and Controversy
RD: Your father. I have read in some articles that your father has some very conservative religious beliefs, and, according to at least one story, that he has questioned some of the accepted versions of the Holocaust. Is there anything you want to share about that?Gibson: My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life. He was born in 1918. He lost his mother at 2 years of age. He lost his father at 15. He went through the Depression. He signed up for World War II, went off to Guadalcanal, got malaria and shot at and didn't like it too much. Served his country fighting the forces of fascism. Came back, worked very hard physically, raised a family, put a roof over my head, clothed me, fed me, taught me my faith, loved me. I love him back. So I'll slug it out until my heart is black-and-blue if anyone ever tries to hurt him.
RD: You're going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?
Gibson: I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.
RD: So the point is that life is tragic and it is full of fighting and violence, mischief and malice.
Gibson: Absolutely.
RD: Many who have seen the film have said it is powerful, shattering. But some have also said the film is too graphic and violent. What do you say to that?
Gibson: It's pretty raw, and I think it's graphic, yes. But I believe that that's the reality of it. From many accounts I've read, I think it was actually more violent than what you're going to see in this film. According to the psalmists, you couldn't even recognize him as being a human. That's how bad it was.
RD: I must tell you, my Christian imagination never went so far as to imagine him whipped that many times. I wouldn't think a human being could survive that and carry a heavy cross up a hill.
Gibson: Yes, but we're not talking any human being [laughs].
RD: Were you trying to communicate something through the very graphic nature of the film?
Gibson: I wanted to impress on the viewers the enormousness of this sacrifice, the willingness -- and the horror of it. I wanted to overwhelm people with it. But it has escape hatches. There are little places of respite within the film where you can escape from the violence and find lyricism and beauty.
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