I thought I would post these comments I received today from Dr. George Gabriel (George Gabriel was a classmate of Fr. John Romanides, an author, and translated several very good books from Greek)...
(I only cut out a personal note at the top, everything else is complete)
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My reservations about portrayals of our Lord and Savior, our Lady the Theotokos, and the saints by actors in motion pictures or on the stage go beyond the manner and method in which actors prepare and portray divine Persons and the saints. As I said earlier: it is unimaginable and offensive that actors could attempt to enter the “psyche” of the divine characters in order to identify with them and portray them. A Christian cannot even permit his imagination to ponder such a thing. What sons and daughters of Adam in their right mind, and if they believe, can identify with the Incarnate Son of God and the All-holy Theotokos? It is the simple fact of portrayal itself which puts me off. I say this knowing that passion plays in one form or another have almost one thousand years of history in Western Christianity. And the clergy usually played the roles of the sacred characters. There were occasional forms that appeared in the East, mostly in the middle of the second millenium, but the practice of portraying divine Persons in religious dramas had no ecclesiastical approbation and was even opposed by some saints, e.g. St. Symeon Archbishop of Thessalonika (15th c?). But my difficulty is not only based on this.
As Orthodox we have always been taught, and it was reconfirmed by the decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), "to portray in images our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the Son of God, His All-holy Mother, the saints, and angels." We identify the image or icon with the Person portrayed, the two being inseparable by definition, and our worship and veneration do not go to the medium or material but are transferred to the prototype, which is the Person. A portrayal of Christ by any person would seem to me a false image, whether on film or on stage, because it is an alternate icon, usurping the image, prototype, and Person and planting in the minds and imaginations of viewers a delusion and false Christ in image and person. St. Paul said it was not “robbery” for Jesus “to be in the form of God” since He indeed was God. Therefore, it seems to me, at the very least, that conversely it is certainly robbery for any son of Adam to be in the form of the Incarnate Son and Logos of God. So in my personal discipline, I scrupulously avoid the chance of false images of Christ our God when possible, especially living and "realistic" natural images of corruptible men under the power of the devil and death, of robbers, taking root in my mind and unconscience as residual images of Christ. In my opinion, an image of God Made Flesh can exist only in an icon, with the exception of certain saints’ vision, i.e., theoria, of Christ God in person-to-person communication, in the uncreated light, during those temporary experiences of divinization or theosis while in this world. Therefore, for the bodily eyes of the rest of us, only the icon can be identified with the divine Person. And in the East we never use models to pose for icons.
Then there is also the issue of portraying and viewing the acts of mockery, insult, and horrific assault against God in the flesh. In the Church, these actions were confined to very little narration and details, and iconographic representation was especially limited. One who is alien to Orthodoxy may wonder at the absence in icons of a realistic, crucified Christ writhing in pain with His eyes rolled back, or a dead Christ with His head bowed down and His body hanging very low from the nails in His members. Even the dead Christ in Byzantine icons appears almost to suspend Himself on the Cross. In Byzantine iconography we never portrayed God in any manner of ridicule, derision, and mockery or of actually being assaulted and murdered. Even His ascent and placement on the Cross is very peaceful and voluntary. He is never shown being laid down on the Cross and nailed and then set upright. Rather, the Byzantines showed Him peacefully ascending a ladder up to an already upright Cross voluntarily, by His good will or eudokia. We make little or no display of bruises and a bloodied and soiled body. We do not even quote the Cross’s original plaque that mocked Him saying, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in three languages, which you often see today represented by the Latin initials INRI. The Byzantines would not even dare to write these words of derision in an icon. Instead they wrote or abbreviated His true title, "The King of Glory" (O Basileus tis Doxis). It was in post-Byzantine times that some iconographers borrowed the INRI from western painting. This appears to me a serious error that, sadly, has been ignored in the Church.
In Orthodoxy, it is regarded as virtual blasphemy to behold God being mocked and assaulted. But this is inescapable in a dramatization of the Passion in graphic and violent detail. In some ancient icons, the angels hovering over the Crucifixion are depicted turning their faces away and shielding their eyes, not wishing to view the shame and violence being done to God in the flesh. The hymns of Holy and Great Week echo the Gospels and the same sensibility, saying that the sun could not bear the sight of this deicide or theoktonia and it darkened the day. The earth shuddered at the enormity. The temple veil was torn down. I present here a sampling of Holy Week hymns (in my own crude translation from the Gk):
“Before your holy Cross, the soldiers were mocking You, and the angelic armies were stunned. For, You were crowned with a wreath of insolence, You who painted the earth with flowers. And You who encompassed the sky with clouds wore the robe of mockery. Such economy indeed, O Christ, is your compassion known to be and the great mercy. Glory be to Thee.” (Third Hour of Great Friday)
“He Who wears light as a garment stood naked at judgment and accepted blows on the face from hands He Himself had created. And the transgressing nation nailed the Lord of Glory to the Cross. Then the temple veil was rent and the sun became dark not bearing to see being assaulted God who makes the universe tremble. Him let us worship.” (10th Antiphon, Matins of Great Friday)
“Today the temple veil is torn down in censure of the transgressors, and, seeing the Master crucified, the sun hides its rays.” (12th Antiphon, Matins of Great Friday)
“When You were crucified, O Christ, all of creation beheld it and trembled. The foundations of the earth shuddered for fear of Thy power...” (Lauds, Matins of Great Friday)
If you permit, I will add my final note about the passion play movies in general. Without first-hand knowledge I cannot be certain, but it would be safe to say that very detailed action-filming of the Lord undergoing the mockery, the beatings, the stripes, the nails, and the unimaginable pain of a slow death by crucifixion will be necessary for the greatest moral and theological significance of the Passion from a western Christian point of view. The emphasis on the Passion with all its brutality and horror goes hand in hand with the underlying western idea of redemption: the greater the pain and horror, the more efficacious the redemption for divine justice demanded a punishment of human sin in such a manner as to have infinite merits, to satisfy divine justice, to avenge the offense against the honor and nature of God by Adam and all men through their co-sinning "in Adam" at Eden and their inherited guilt. This kind of juridical redemption has a particular view of the nature of man which is manifested in two basic variants, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and both are in disagreement with the Apostolic faith. The first perceives utter depravity and inherent evil in humanity, which is in its nature unredeemable, but, following Luther, teaches that God merely "imputes" sanctity to an unsanctifiable nature in order to either enable the will to accept the name of Jesus and be saved (but never divinized), or, following Calvin, teaches the fulfillment of the salvation of the predestined chosen ones. The second, the Roman Catholic, teaches an in tact and holy human nature needing only the truth of Christ to restore the intellect to comprehension of God and the enlightenment for an accompanying perfect life that is natural to the "universal" or eternal “idea” of the immortal nature of the soul. But fundamental to both general categories of western Christianity is the idea that the totality of redemption is accomplished by the Passion at the moment of Christ's giving up of the spirit, because at that very moment justice is satisfied, the divine honor is restored, the moral force or merits of the God-Man are infinitely sufficient to extend to all sins of all humanity forever, enabling the Father to countenance man again and to juridically forgive his sins, which, in this scheme, was impossible before Christ's death.
So I would venture to say that Mel Gibson's film will seek to present a most convincing case for this kind of redemption. If it is true to the western theological model, the Savior's resurrection from the dead will be presented not as the fulfillment and completion of redemption but as the proof of the Savior's divinity, which proof then validates the effectiveness of the Passion.
I have searched to find an example of the icon showing the angels turning their faces away from the sight of God being murdered on the Cross, but no luck. I have seen it in Greece, an utterly heart-stopping example, specifically at Mystras in the Church called Perivleptos (13th c.). I do have an example of Christ ascending the Cross (also at Mystras) and I will try to scan it and send it to you.
I also loved the film The Ten Commandments. Problem is, even now I begin to picture Charleton Heston as Moses when we have OT readings in church! :ohvey: After my family returned to the Orthodox church (Slava Bogu!!:)) I of course became annoyed with film portrayals (especially modern) of the Lord and the saints.