Pitchfork: Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard To Score With Mel Gibson

Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard To Score With Mel Gibson
Great improvement over "The Ballad Of John and Yoko" used incessantly in rough cut

[Posted Thursday, December 11th, 2003 04:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

Lisa Gerrard, one-half of the ethereal, ambient, world beat duo Dead Can Dance, has been tapped to compose the score to the controversial new Mel Gibson film The Passion Of The Christ. This will mark her second solo outing in the film score game, as she also scored Niki Caro's The Whale Rider back in 2002. Just because she's only handled one other soundtrack on her own doesn't mean she's some sort of amateur, though. Gerrard has also contributed to the soundtracks for Gladiator, Ali, Heat, The Insider, Black Hawk Down, and many more.

Gerrard is certainly walking into a proverbial shit-storm of controversy, as early screenings of The Passion Of The Christ have brought about a great deal of criticism and complaints from Jewish communities worldwide. The film, which depicts the final 12 hours in the life of Jesus, has already seen a great deal of protest from the Anti-Defamation League for what it claims is promoting anti-Semitism. In a statement made to the New Yorker Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said, "The film can fuel, trigger, stimulate, induce, rationalize, [and] legitimize anti-Semitism." A spokesman for the Roman Centurions' league offered similar concerns.

Gibson insists that his film is not meant to do any of those things. He has made no secret of the fact that he follows a rather traditional vein of Catholicism, and he maintains that his attempts were to create a film that adhered quite strictly to the Biblical accounts of Christ's death (even going so far as to record the principal dialogue in two dead languages-- Aramaic and Latin). It would seem that he is aware of how the film could be seen in this manner, however, for he's admitted that he regrets cutting scenes that he felt would bring about too much controversy and/or too much moody Gerrard scoring. The film will arrive in theaters in March of 2004, and Gerrard's score will presumably hit stores the same month.