"I’m a believer," Mel Gibson told the world in a widely viewed February television interview with ABC’s Primetime co-anchor, Diane Sawyer.

Gibson masterfully fielded questions from Sawyer about all aspects of his film, The Passion of The Christ, which opened in theatres across the country on February 25.

The graphic violence of this film along with its presupposed controversy has been on the front pages of newspapers for weeks and the topic of talk shows around the clock this past month.

The film’s haunting music, dark to light imagery and buckets of blood were woven into a cacophony of disturbing love scenes as Gibson’s Passion portrayed the last earthly hours of the life of Jesus Christ.

While film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper echoed many reviewers in giving the movie "Two thumbs way up," there’s been an equally negative reaction to the film.

"Instead of being moved by Christ’s suffering, or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins," ranted Dave Ansen in Newsweek.

Gibson’s evident faith and personal appreciation for the pain Christ endured going to the cross on behalf of humanity could easily be mistaken as a lust for explicit violence unless the viewer knew the story.

Today people are talking about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. During Gibson’s Sawyer interview, when asked who killed Jesus, Gibson replied, "The big answer is, we all did. I’ll be the first in the culpability stakes here."

In the crucifixion scene of the film the arm seen swinging the hammer to drive the first nail into Jesus’ hands is Gibson’s.

The film has been given an 18A rating because of the graphic violence of Christ’s suffering. "You don’t take a child to the penitentiary to witness someone’s execution," Franklin Graham said in a TV interview. "This movie is about the execution of Jesus Christ."

by John Syratt