It’s been awhile since I’ve last written here. The thoughts, theories and ideas continue to scream in my mind, but my time, unfortunately, leaves me little space to let them out. But you are not forgotten, I just need to get used to my new life and my new passe.

Nonetheless, today on my way back to Lisbon I had time to think about something that I haven’t thought about since 2004. Maybe because it’s Easter Sunday, today I was thinking about the concept of evil and the most terrifying image of the devil that I’ve ever seen in my life: the devil that in 2004 came to life in Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of Christ. Kind of ridiculous to think about this, right?

When the movie was released in 2004 there was a really big buzz about it: people said the images were too strong, critics said the argument was all wrong, people thought the actors were just amazing, and fans cried because Jim Cazievel deserved an Oscar nomination… you name it! Fuss aside, for me, the thing I found most impressive in the movie was satan’s representation and how Mel managed to portray it so realistically.

All our lives, religion beliefs aside, we have been haunted by stories, movies and testimonials about big red horned devils, spitting fire, with a bi-forked tale and with a really scary face and mean attitude.

Satan Image

But not in The Passion of Christ… here the devil has a human form: he talks, walks and looks like one of us. His face is as pale as ice and incredibly thin. His eyes are blue, almost white, completely empty in expression. You can’t really say if it’s a he or a she, it’s both! It has no hair or eye brows or anything that would make it look like a living being. His movements are fluid and ghost-like. In fact, although it has a humanoid form, you look at it and you know instantly that there is nothing human about that creature, it’s void, it’s dead, it’s empty, it’s cold… it’s just pure evil. I don’t know why I react like this when I see the character, but to me, never has evil been so perfectly portrayed in a character.

Another thing I found really curious, is that whenever the devil appears in the movie, he appears among people, he never appears alone, always hidden in the crowd. I find that surprisingly ironic and in some way really disturbing, because most of the times when we come to face evil, it doesn’t come in a horned scary figure, it comes in the form of people’s actions and behaviors. That is why, I think, I find that image so disturbing, because it’s probably the most realistic representation of Evil: it’s hidden among people, you can’t spot it easily because it’s among your equals, it can easily get to you, touch you and you won’t know it ’till is too late.

I’m not a very religious person, I’m kind of sceptic when it comes to Christ, Saints, Prophets and all those things, but as any other person, I know that evil exists, most of us have seen it and, unfortunately, most of us have experienced it and we know it doesn’t need Satan to exist. Like Shakespeare wisely put it  “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here“.

Mel Gibson did a great job, in my opinion, he portrayed the scariest and most disturbing devil in the History of Cinema.