Mel Gibsons 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, has been highly controversial because many critics have argued that Gibsons own conservative religious beliefs influenced him to make a movie that is essentially conservative. We can perhaps better see the essentially religiously conservative and in many ways religiously intolerant message of this film if we contrast it to another recent film version of the traditional medieval passion play, Denys Arcands 1989 Jesus of Montreal.
