What language did they speak in Sodom?
Not true, as far as I know, but the astounding success of Mel Gibson's Biblical bloodbath in dead languages prompts a few thoughts, both whimsical and serious, about the effects the film's triumph could have on Hollywood and the public.
When Gibson announced his project at a press conference in Rome in September 2002, I was by no means alone in thinking that about five people would ever pay to see it, especially after Gibson said that he intended to present it in Aramaic without subtitles. "They think I'm crazy," Gibson allowed, referring to prospective financiers, "and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius." He then added, in Italian, that for him the film would be "buono per l'anima, non buono per il portafoglio" (good for the soul, not good for the wallet). Little could he know.
IN THE EARLY PLANNING stages of "Braveheart," Gibson reportedly wanted to make his eventual Oscar winner in the appropriate languages, presumably Celtic, Middle English and maybe even Norman French, but was talked out of it. With "The Passion" having already made more money domestically than "Braveheart" ever did (and far more than every other Jesus movie put together), it's fair to speculate that Hollywood executives are already hearing pitches from filmmakers in which part of the appeal will be the exotic tongues in which the proposed pics will be spoken.
Given the industry's bandwagon propensities, there's no way that some Biblical epics won't shortly be put into development, especially if the stories offer ample opportunities for heavy violence (which many of them do). The Old Testament, which hasn't been much dealt with on the bigscreen since the John Huston-Dino De Laurentiis "The Bible" nearly 40 years ago, offers plenty of tales of terrible conflict (and less occasion for religious controversy). Today, the opportunity to portray the sin preceding punishment is far more boundless than it was in Cecil B. DeMille's day. But what language did they speak in Sodom and Gomorrah? Let's get it right! Do you have anything in Esperanto? (Remember "Incubus" with William Shatner?) How about Sumerian?
It's tempting to muse that perhaps the time has finally arrived for Terrence Malick to return his attention to the project he worked on for a long time after "Days of Heaven"; it dealt with the creation of the world. This abandoned film had nothing to do with Adam and Eve, but the opening scenes of "The Thin Red Line" (with Jim Caviezel, no less) conjure up a verdant, unspoiled paradise (and the proximity of a threat to it) more convincingly than any film I can remember.
STRAYING FROM THE BIBLE but remaining in the epic field, is it now possible to imagine the stories of Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra in which the principals speak Greek, as they would have, or a new version of "Quo Vadis?" in which the audience gets to see more than it ever wanted to about what happened when Christians were thrown to the lions.
And it should be now or never for John Milius to finally make his long-awaited Viking epic, only now he could do it in Norse, and with a blood budget that would make Mel Gibson drool.
Quite apart from whatever momentary frenzies "The Passion" may generate in agency or executive suites, Gibson's film at this point is emerging as highly significant on a couple of fronts that couldn't have been imagined before it came out, when all people could talk about was its imagined anti-Semitic content.
First, never before has the contemporary Christian market, which is often portrayed as indifferent at best and hostile at worst to pop culture, been tapped to anywhere near this extent by a motion picture. For years, a number of Christian-themed pics have been marketed almost exclusively at the target audience, and the most any of these grossed was $12.6 million (1999's "The Omega Code"). Gibson's epic has startlingly exposed the extent of this seriously untapped public, which is unlikely to remain so ignored in the future.
Second, "The Passion" shows that foreign languages and subtitles absolutely do not matter if viewers are grabbed by what they're watching. Supposedly, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which "The Passion" passed after five days of release as the biggest-grossing foreign-language film ever released in the U.S., demonstrated this four years ago. But "The Passion" represents a much more persuasive case given that it's not an action spectacle.
ALTHOUGH GIBSON'S FILM has none of the subtlety and grace of the best silent films, it is the contemporary picture that most decisively resurrects the power and universal impact of silent cinema. In Rome a year-and-a-half ago, Gibson said, "I want to show the film without subtitles. Hopefully, I'll be able to transcend language barriers with visual storytelling. If I fail, I'll put subtitles on it, though I don't want to." (It is to be hoped that Gibson will insist upon subtitles even in the many countries --Italy, for starters -- where dubbing prevails and subtitling has been out of use since the Fascist era.)
In the end, it wasn't because Gibson failed that there are subtitles on the film; after all, silent pictures had intertitles, and offering "The Passion" without providing translation would have represented a pointless frustration. The drama comes through regardless, and the film, much as Gibson hoped, revives the long-forgotten ideal of aspiring to tell a story in strictly visual terms.
