.:::rejesus - the passion:::.


							Click here to follow Easter on rejesus. Nigel Stafford-Clark, who produced The Passion, was interviewed by Simon Jenkins. Click here for interview video clips.
			NIGEL STAFFORD-CLARK The story of Jesus is hugely significant in our culture. What made you want to retell it to a TV generation? The last time this story was told on TV was the Zeffirelli version in the late 1970s. I do feel it's a story that should be told to every new generation, and now, 30 years later, felt like a good time to tell it. After I finished Bleak House, I was watching the DVD of Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew, which I hadn't seen for almost 40 years. As I was watching and enjoying it again, I was thinking about other versions of the story on film which I felt were successful – and I really couldn't think of any others. There were versions that concentrated on very limited aspects of the story: Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ concentrated on human sexual temptation, while Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ concentrated on the violence around the last 24 hours of Christ's life. And then there was Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, which told the whole story. But like so many other versions of this story, it felt almost as though you were watching it through a plate of sheet glass. Because this story is not just a story, but is also the background of one of the world's great religions, I felt that it had always been told almost stepping away from it. And that's not how to tell a story. I felt it was worth looking at putting the story back into context, because previous versions told it as if it took place in a vacuum. It didn't. It took place in a real place, at a real time. All the events up to and including the crucifixion are historical fact. Jesus really existed. Had you been in Jerusalem in AD33, you would have seen these events taking place, and yet when the story's told, it often feels almost mythic. So I thought, what about putting it back into a real world? As soon as we started to do that, the story started to come alive in a way that was quite extraordinary, because suddenly it felt very, very real. Looking at the drama, it feels very in your face. The street scenes are very dirty and real, and the camera is right in the middle of the action. Why did you go for that approach? We wanted to place the audience right into the centre of the story, because it was important to make the audience feel as though they are being told it for the first time. This was something we did when we made Bleak House: we developed a style for hand held cameras, which gives the feeling of eavesdropping on conversations, almost as though you, the audience, are an extra member of the crowd. It's a wonderful way to tell this story, because you can place the audience right in the middle of Jerusalem in this extraordinary week and they can follow the drama as it unfolds. It gives it an enormous energy. The story all takes place in a week. Jesus comes in on the Sunday and by the end of the week he's dead. During that week, every day the stakes rise for all the characters involved, including Jesus. This is a story which has everything a story should have. It has a ticking clock; it has tension that rises from moment to moment; it has a climax that's almost too shattering to contemplate, and then it has the most extraordinary epilogue. So that's the style of the drama we wanted to make. The strength of Frank Deasy's script is that he's found a language for Jesus and the disciples which is simple and direct. It doesn't feel unnecessarily contemporary, which would be all wrong, but nor does it feel like these characters are speaking to us from history. Instead, it feels as if they're right there in front of us. It takes the audience back into their world. Does that mean you're interpreting Jesus as more human than divine? In the Zeffirelli film, Jesus often seems to be very aloof – sometimes it's almost as though there's a gap between his feet and the ground. How did you approach that whole question? We didn't feel that portraying Jesus as an aloof figure is a good way of expressing divinity – but we did feel it's quite a poor way of expressing humanity. And what we were trying to do was emphasise the humanity of Jesus, because that's the side of him that tends to be rather short changed in the different film versions of this story. His divinity is something that each member of the audience has to make up their own mind about, and it's expressed through his teaching, his attitude to people around him, and through what happens to him during the course of that week, as he fulfils his destiny. If Jesus feels distant and aloof, then it's very hard to become engaged with his struggle with himself. If on the other hand you depict him in a way which allows the audience to engage with him on an emotional level, then when he's faced by the struggle between the two sides of himself, it becomes almost unbearably painful for the audience. And that's what we were trying to do; we were trying to draw the audience in. When it comes to the really big issues behind it all, we wanted to present the story and allow people to come to it with whatever is inside them, and to draw from it whatever they wish. I think that approach feels right for the time we're in. I think everybody, whether they believe in Jesus as the Son of God or not, is looking for something beyond their everyday life. They're looking for something with greater purpose to it. The point about this story is that it delivers a feeling that there is something more important than just everyday life, and now is a good moment to be delivering that message. Did you find the production was personally a spiritual challenge? I knew from the beginning this was not going to be like taking on Dickens or a contemporary story. But I don't think I'd really appreciated quite the sort of weight we were going to be carrying until we got more and more deeply involved in the material and realised that this is different from anything else we'd ever done. For many people, this story is the most important thing in their lives – and that's a heavy responsibility, if you're trying tell it. Then for other people, this story has played a big part in their lives and the lives of their ancestors, but in not such a positive way. For the Jewish community, this story has been used as a rod to beat them with for 2,000 years. So that's another set of factors you have to take into account. That said, however, you have to follow your instincts as a storyteller. Otherwise you won't do the story justice. The project was very emotional while we were making it. There were scenes where the actors were in tears, and where the actors watching were in tears. There was also an element of survival, because we were working in Morocco in about 40 degrees of heat, and we were faced with unprecedented weather conditions. We went to shoot the Garden of Gethsemane scene, and were blown off it by a rainstorm. We went up to Golgotha to shoot the crucifixion, and were blown off it by a thunderstorm of biblical proportions. We knew all the time that if we could get through it, we had the chance to do something we would all remember for the rest of our lives. Are there scenes which you're pleased with above others? There were scenes outside the main iconic events which were important to me. One of them is the scene between Joseph of Arimathea, played by David Oyelowo, and Caiaphas, played by Ben Daniels, in which Joseph says, "You didn't tell me you were going to do this. You shut me out of your counsels, you're putting an innocent man to death." And Caiaphas says, "Look, I've spent fifteen years building up a relationship with Pilate so our people will be safe. I've destroyed that relationship in the course of one morning. I have Roman soldiers on the streets, my people are calling for me to be deposed, I have the possibility of a riot. Do you really think I would have gone through all of that if I thought this man was innocent?" It gives us the opportunity to see what Caiaphas must have been going through. I don't think any version of this story I've ever seen has enabled Caiaphas to have that moment. What you're seeing is a fundamentally decent man in an impossible situation. The two actors were so good in that scene that you really get a sense that these events were affecting not just the central characters, but everybody around them was never going to be the same again. It's a wonderful microcosm of what happened next, because nobody around these events was ever the same again. And the ripples from these events spread and spread and spread, and are still spreading 2,000 years later. Another personal favourite of mine is the scene we play out by a river. Jesus and the disciples have left the temple, it's deep into the story and Jesus turns to the disciples and tells them what's going to happen. This is straight from the Gospels. He says, "What's actually going to happen is that I'm going to be taken by these powerful men, I'm going to be whipped, wounded and put to death." And they can't believe what they're hearing. What this scene does – and it's another piece of wonderful writing by Frank Deasy – is put you right into the midst of the disciples. When you hear Jesus say these things, you too feel, "How is this going to help?" As one of them says to him, "I gave up my family, two fishing boats and my life to follow you. I didn't do that so you could hand yourself over to the Romans and be put to death." On the one hand, it's intensely shocking. But on the other hand, the way the lines are written, the way that Joe Mawle delivers them, and of course the background materials we were drawing on, makes this an absolutely pivotal moment. Because what Jesus is saying to them is that your expectations are completely wrong. This is not what it's about. This is about something much more important than temporal power, or changing the basis of how we worship. This is about a triumph over death, about something both simpler and bigger than anything you'd imagined. It's an extraordinarily strong moment, and it encapsulates everything that Jesus was teaching, which is that it's all simpler and bigger than you think it is.



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