Ancient language
transcends all
current culturesEmbodying Christ in 'The Passion of the Christ'
Screenplay blends epic qualities and intimacy
A moving Caravaggio
Westwood, Calif. >> One of director Mel Gibson's first decisions as director of "The Passion of the Christ" was to have his star Jim Caviezel speak Aramaic, an ancient language related to Hebrew that would have been spoken by Jesus 2,000 years ago.
Today, Aramaic is used only in remote parts of the Middle East, and to bring the language to film, Gibson sought the help of Father William Fulco, 68, chairman of Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Gibson also consulted native speakers of Aramaic dialects to get a sense of the language's sound and rhythm. The beauty of hearing this dying language, he recalls, was moving.
Gibson told the Star-Bulletin that the film's "foreign language" had another benefit: Learning Aramaic became a uniting factor among the cast.
"To bring a cast from all over the world to one place and have them all learn this one language gave them a sense of common ground, of what they share and of connections that transcend language," he said. "It brought out a different level of performance. In a sense, it became good old-fashioned filmmaking because we were so committed to telling the story with pure imagery and expressiveness as much as anything else."
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Jim Caviezel, second from right, as Jesus Christ, along with the rest of the crew of "The Passion of the Christ," spoke Aramaic phonetically for the film.
The Star-Bulletin caught up with Father Fulco at his office at Loyola-Marymount.
Star-Bulletin: What exactly was your assignment?
Father William Fulco: I had to translate the entire script into first-century Aramaic for the Jewish characters and "street Latin" for the Roman characters.
SB: Did your duties stop there?
WF: No, after translating the script, I was the on-set dialogue coach and was on call to the production, providing last-minute translations and consultations. The entire international cast had to learn portions of Aramaic, mostly phonetically.
SB: Exactly what was Aramaic?
WF: Aramaic was the language of education and trade spoken the world over, like English is today. By the eighth century B.C., the Aramaic tongue was widely in use from Egypt to Asia Major to Pakistan and was the main language of the great empires of Assyria, Babylon and later the Chaldean Empire and the imperial government of Mesopotamia. The language also spread to Palestine, supplanting Hebrew as the main tongue sometime between 721 and 500 B.C. Much of Jewish law was formed, debated and transmitted in Aramaic, and it was the language that formed the basis of the Talmud.
SB: Is there a common thread in Aramaic?
WF: As the historical language of expressing religious ideas, Aramaic ties together Judaism and Christianity.
SB: How long did it take to translate the script's dialogue; what was the most difficult part?
WF: I did it in stages depending how soon the scenes had to be shot. I was on the set in case they needed emergency dialogue when something else just didn't work.
The hardest thing was coming onto the set and having to translate dialogue into Aramaic off the top of my head, or taking modern-day idioms and making an Aramaic equivalent. Even single words can be very hard. I remember "monkey" was in a line in there, and I had a hard time finding the Aramaic word, so I would try to find near-Aramaic idioms.
SB: Who was responsible for the English subtitles?
WF: I was, mostly, and I tried to keep the Aramaic definitions as close to the English translation as possible. The problem is we know very little about first-century Aramaic, so I had to go backward into Old Testament Aramaic of the two books that have it, Daniel and Ezra, then look through later books of the fourth and eighth centuries A.D. What I tried to construct was something plausible and to have the actors speak it in such a way that it sounds like a language.
SB: Did you do the coaching as well?
WF: Yes, I coached all the actors individually. I had an assistant, a Jewish woman from Libya who knew Hebrew and modern Arabic, so she had a good ear for the Semitic languages. It was my job to teach the actors the phrasing so they knew what they were saying.
SB: Which actor had the toughest job?
WF: Jim, definitely. He had the most lines and was under such physical stress he really had to concentrate. He has a great ear and caught on very quickly. The actors who had really had the roughest times were the Roman soldiers doing bit parts.
SB: What about your having to do Automatic Dialogue Replacement?
WF: I almost forgot. That probably was the hardest part for me. Sometimes, when I wasn't on the set, they needed spontaneous vocabulary from the soldiers who were speaking Italian, and once some actor actually said "konichi wa."
When I heard that I said, "What the hell am I going to do with that?" So I would have to perfectly synchronize Aramaic with their mouth expressions in editing and still have it mean what it was in the context.
SB: Where were you on the set during filming?
WF: Mel and I usually were behind the monitors, and if there was a gross mispronunciation, I would ask if we could cut that and do it again.
SB: How did Mel Gibson find you?
WF: Mel phoned Yale University to ask if they had an Aramaic (scholar) there, and the one they found said they don't get involved with Hollywood. Then he called UC-Berkeley, where I had taught for years, and they put him in contact with me.
Then someone at Icon Productions -- Mel's company -- called me, but I was about to leave for Jerusalem (May 2002). I really didn't understand what they wanted, so I said we could talk when I returned.
So I'm in Jerusalem and I get this call from someone named Mel who says, "Hey, padre, this is Mel. I got a project for you." I actually said, "Mel who?"
He spent an hour describing the film, and I was so turned on by his passion and vision, I knew I couldn't resist this one. When I returned, we flew to the South Italy location on his private jet -- that was a kick. I was there a week that first time.
SB: How important is it that the film uses the authentic ancient languages?
WF: Very important. If you used English or Japanese or German or another modern language, inevitably the listener carries the baggage of that language with him or her. If it's in English, you have all kinds of associations with American culture. Doing it in the ancient languages transcends every contemporary culture.
When we were in Rome doing the casting, we played on a VCR various earlier versions of "The Last Supper," and some were very funny. There was Jesus as a California surfer, and another one who sounded like Michael Jackson, who turns to the disciples and says in this high-pitched Michael Jackson tone, "Now, I'm not going to be with you much longer." That was so bad.
SB: How did it feel to be a part of a major Hollywood film?
WF: It was great. It brought together everything I've ever done in my life: scholarly in terms of linguistics and scripture and theology; pastorally because I was a bit of the chaplain for the cast and crew; interpersonally because I learned how to relate to people who can be somewhat formidable.
SB: What's your opinion about the anti-Semitic charges made against Gibson and the film?
WF: "Passion" is certainly not anti-Semitic. Anyone who sees it will feel that way. The problem is that many people are reacting as if this film is a documentary, and it isn't.
Even the Gospels are not documentary. All Scripture, including the Hebrew Bible, are combinations of actual events and someone's interpretation. As such, you cannot pull them apart. ... The four Gospels are four different versions of that sort of thing.
Mel is taking this event in Jesus' life and giving it meaning through his artistic medium, which is film. It's important to remember that. I'm very proud of this film.
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