How do you rate a piece of art that can as inadequately be defined as cinema as the paintings on the roof of the Sistine Chapel as ceiling decoration? How do we go about slotting and defining a film as passionate and intense as The Passion Of The Christ? Is it a Biblical fable like Cecil de Mille’s epic The Ten Commandments or funky like Norman Jewison’ Jesus Christ Superstar, or raw-and-riveting like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ. In pursuit of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus Christ as he is whipped, flogged, lacerated and dragged with the cross before being nailed , the writer-director Mel Gibson takes us into the soul of the sublimest suffering of civilization as inflicted on its sporadic saints and saviours.

The inbuilt temptation of depicting gruesome and graphic violence is to have the camera stand witness in gloriously voyeuristic wonderment.